OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT, may not be as successful as its $80 billion valuation suggests, according to AI experts. Carlos Perez, author and founder of Intuit Machines, expressed his concern about OpenAI’s position in the AI industry, stating that there are signs of their execution unraveling. He mentioned factors such as uncompetitive pricing, diminishing returns, the perceived absence of cofounder Ilya Sutskever, employee turnover, and poor execution.
Perez’s comments come after reports of Elon Musk filing a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman. Musk’s lawsuit alleges that OpenAI, a company he co-founded, broke its promise to remain “open” by collaborating with Microsoft instead of advancing open-source artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity.
Gary Marcus from NYU compared OpenAI to WeWork, a unicorn startup that ultimately went bankrupt. Marcus suggested that OpenAI’s growth, fueled by its ChatGPT service and investments from Microsoft, could lead to a similar downfall.
OpenAI’s charter states that their main focus is developing AGI for the benefit of humanity. However, Musk claims that the company is no longer working on AGI for the benefit of humanity and is exploiting it for profit. He is seeking an injunction to force OpenAI to stop this practice.
Determining what qualifies as AGI or AGI-adjacent technology legally or scientifically could pose a challenge for the courts. If the courts rule that OpenAI must cease its operations, the company would lose its main sources of revenue and its first-mover advantage. Additionally, third-party services built on OpenAI’s models, such as automated trading services and AI-powered analysis tools, would be severely impacted.