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Comment by mandevil | Hacker News Reader

What is the support for the idea that AI is a winner takes all market? I don't see any network effects or lock-in in this market. If you built a IDE that queries two different services, I don't think anyone would object or notice. Is the idea that all of those users providing actual user-data makes the next generation better? I haven't seen much evidence for that either, everyone seems to have slowed down and been disappointed with the pace of their improvements.

I do see that OpenAI has a brand recognition that, e.g. Anthropic doesn't have, but what else leads you to think that it is winner take most/all?

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> What is the support for the idea that AI is a winner takes all market?

A lot of people seem to have the idea (or at least SELL the idea, I'm not sure if they actually believe it) that this all leads to superhuman intelligence AGI and whoever hits that first is the "winner takes all" winner.

But yeah firstly as someone who uses LLMs often I don't believe there is reason to think that LLMs lead to AGI (and I think people selling the idea that this is a foregone outcome are hucksters).

And secondly, even if I ended up being wrong about that, there's no indication that any of the known groups working on LLMs is very far ahead of anyone else on LLM technology so even if you believed that LLMs are going to lead to AGI I don't see why that wouldn't just mean that like 3-5 super human intelligences were created around the same time which is still not a winner takes all situation unless those AIs go full Skynet and only one ends up standing at the end. (This last part is a joke, hopefully).

> unless those AIs go full Skynet and only one ends up standing at the end. (This last part is a joke, hopefully).

But is it a joke? One could argue that Skynet follows from Omohundro's Basic AI Drives: It's self-protection technologically extended backward in time.

> A lot of people seem to have the idea (or at least SELL the idea, I'm not sure if they actually believe it) that this all leads to superhuman intelligence AGI and whoever hits that first is the "winner takes all" winner.

... Wait, why would making the basilisk give you a monopoly? Do they think their magic super intelligence would do their bidding or something? Have they never seen any sci-fi?

(The idea that LLMs will lead to superhuman intelligence seems ludicrous on the face of it, but even going along with that it doesn't make any sense.)

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