So basically they are admitting that not enough people will pay for it to be a profitable business. Also that they don’t have any significant improvements to the tech coming up.
https://dianawolftorres.substack.com/p/is-agi-just-around-th...
And that's not his only bold claim about AGI.
It seems plausible to me, since I get so many low quality poorly targeted ads on repeat. I can't imagine those ads are generating much revenue, but it makes sense if their primary purpose is just to beat me into paying for a subscription.
But why compare these two businesses? They are completely different. From the estimates I've seen, Youtube operating costs are a fraction of what OpenAI is burning yearly.
Pessimists before ads: OpenAI is a bubble fueled by dumb money waiting to pop, they'll never be profitable!
Pessimists after ads: Ok it's not a bubble but advertising is evil!
Pessimists after hearing paid subscribers won't get ads: Pffftttt $20 per month??? Profit is evil!! I can spin up a local LLM on my Linux machine for free!
Pessimists after admitting you can just choose not to use ChatGPT, a result of the free market: But I don't like that OTHER people are using ChatGPT because they're obviously dumb if they don't agree with me!
Since when capitalism is about stopping trying to make more money right when you become profitable? If they can find a way to make 10x the revenue needed to be profitable, they will.