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Comment by sxanus | Hacker News Reader

OpenAI's ChatGPT plugins may revolutionise the traditional customer journey. With access to the internet and all websites, it's now possible to bypass browsers and middlemen. This end-to-end system could mean the future of AI, where devices become unnecessary and OpenAI owns the entire journey.

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Terrifying that one company would own the world.

That'll most likely not happen. Or they'll be declared a public utility soon enough.

For now we are still living in a world governed by humans

The history of economics seems to imply that it’s more likely than not. As for the public utility part, even the internet itself isn’t, which is arguably more impactful than AI.

Which specific part of history of economics implies that this is more likely than not?

Every transformative technology has been concentrated into a few powerful companies that have a natural monopoly. OpenAI has all the hallmarks.

I can't name a transformative technology that has remained concentrated into a few powerful companies long-term. Can you?

Besides that, it doesn't seem to me there's a natural monopoly available in this landscape. All natural monopolies have some kind of natural physical barrier precluding other companies from forming. What would the natural physical barrier be in the case of... machine learning? Or LLMs?

Internet cable owners are in fact required to provide access to third party resellers at a fixed price in many European countries.

Net neutrality was upheld here by the courts and required phone companies to cancel plans.

It may happen (no guarantee obviously).

Right now I'm less concerned about the AI apocalypse but good old human greed.

Agreed. Though I had a strange moment on a podcast when I realized mid sentence that human greed might be how the AI starts to fool humans into doing its bidding. https://youtu.be/vYhtYjXNBCU

Google didn't get defined as public utility.

Unless they make very bad decisions with which lobbyists to hire, I think there is essentially no chance they end up being declared a public utility.

Sadly, most people don't have a clue which world they live in.

> With access to the internet and all websites

This has me wondering... Does ChatGPT honor robots.txt?

Apparently it does.

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