Thread

1. ryanschaefer · 1790190580 · focus · HN ↗

   I’m confused why AI companies are using agents in-house for this type of research instead of partnering externally.

   I guess the improvement loop is tighter and they have more control over how discoveries can be used for marketing?

   But, in my mind, it begins to feel like they are setting themselves up to be “everything” companies instead of focusing on their core product…

   1. Insanity · 1790190735 · focus · HN ↗

      Because their core product is not a long-term sustainable business strategy. Local hardware and models will continue to improve to the point of not needing the hosted solutions. And if you do need a hosted solution, remember that the big cloud providers already offer these solutions, so signing up for OpenAI/Anthropic _and_ AWS/GCP/Azure is not a sound business decision compared to just signing up with 1 of them that offers your cloud infra + GenAI infra. (Which is why the long-term benefits for cloud companies will probably be for the likes of AWS and not the likes of OpenAI).

      They'll continue to burn money for marginal model improvements in the next few years all the while having no moat _and_ having Open-Weight / Local models eat their lunch.

      The only way for them to stay relevant as a company is to expand beyond simply providing the models.

      1. user43928 · 1790239317 · focus · HN ↗

         Open models still don't beat February's Mythos.

         I don't know if the gap will close or rather widen with more compute coming online.

         Being half a year to one year behind could be meaningful, not to mention that competitors may not have the necessary compute to train and serve models of a certain size.

         This could be a significant advantage for OpenAI and Anthropic, and if they make breakthroughs in robotics or science, that is worth far more than mediocre coding assistants.

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