Monologue: OpenAI Is Getting Desperate

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:04Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50%, and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Call Zone Media Hello you, it's your Better Offline monologue and I'm your host Ed Zitrom.

0:36Now, next week, I'm going to have a two-part that digs into Microsoft's data center pullback and OpenAI's shaky new funding situation. But this week's monologue focuses on OpenAI's new model, GPT 4.5. You may be wondering what it does differently to GPT 4.0 or Claude Sonnet 3.7 or any number of other large language models. And if I'm honest, I have absolutely no idea. Thankfully, neither does Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who said, and I quote, that GPT-4.5 was the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person to him. Which makes me wonder what the other models have been like. So I went back and look.

1:15So compare this to the launch of GPT-4.0, which Altman called OpenAI's best model ever, saying that it was fast, smart, natively multimodal, referring to the ability to accept text as well as audio and video, and photos as well, and available to all ChatGPT users, including on their free plan, adding that it was a very good model, especially at coding. By contrast, Altman summarized GPT 4.5 as a giant expensive model, one that required hundreds of thousands of GPUs to launch beyond ChatGPT Pro. It started there, it's still not, as I record this, out to plus users or free users. Now, GPT Pro, of course, is OpenAI's$200 a month subscription.

1:56And it's unclear when Plus, which is the$20 a month one, will get it, but apparently it's in the next few days. Altman also added that GPT 4.5 isn't a reasoning model and won't crush benchmarks on account of it being a different kind of intelligence that has, and all of these are quotes, magic to it that Sam Altman had not felt before. yeah just you know shit's not doing well when you have to just be like it's magic it's it's literally magic i made magic now what does the magic do i'm i'm really not sure in fact it's pretty difficult to find exactly what it is that gpt 4.5 does differently or what it's good at or indeed really anything about him benj edwards over at arstentica had one developer call it a lemon GPT 4.5 costs an incredible$75 per million input tokens, prompts and data pushed into a model, and$150 per million output tokens is in the thing it creates.

2:54A token is like 0.7. I think one token is maybe three words. Someone will get up my ass for this. Nevertheless, this seems like a lot. It isn't when you're running a company. And by the way, this is roughly 3 ,000 % more expensive for input tokens and 1500 % more expensive for output tokens than GPT-40 for results that OpenAI co-founder Andrzej Karpathy described as a little bit better and awesome, but also not exactly in ways that are trivial to point to. That translates to, it's a little bit better, but I can't really tell you why. And yes, you're going to hear me say something similar in next week's episode, because the larger picture for OpenAI right now is pretty fucking dire, considering their main backer SoftBank has to borrow billions of dollars to fund them.

3:39Nevertheless, back to 4.5. Since launch, which was for some reason on the day that Sam Altman's child was being born in the hospital, he's been posting some really weird shit since though. A few days after launch, Altman claimed that GPT 4.5 was the first time people had been emailing with such passion, asking that OpenAI promised never to stop offering a specific model or even replace it with an update, at which point I assume everybody in the room started clapping and they saluted Sam Altman and said, thank you, sir, for making this happen. And by the way, what I'm suggesting is that no one's ever done this, or like one freak did, or maybe Altman emailed it to himself.

4:18Just shut up. Just your company burns$5 billion a year. And the best you've got is this warmed up dog shit about people marine todding you over your model and never taking it away. Has OpenAI ever even taken away a model? Jesus fucking Christ. These companies... Anyway. A few days later, Altman posted a conversation where he asked GPT 4.5 if it believed it was real, leading to a series of bullet points with things like, what do we mean by real? Only for GPT 4.5, saying that it believed that it was not an independent consciousness, but rather a structured experience happening within your consciousness, referring to Sam Altman, which is the kind of shit that's only impressive if you're an imbecile or so stoned you've texted eight of your friends the question, what if the Joker was Batman?

5:04And by the way, the answer to that is called The Batman Who Laughs, and it's one of the worst comics ever written. If you want to talk to me about DC Metal, please email me at ez, that's E-Z or Z, if you're Canadian or British, at betteroffline.com. I really, if you are working for DC Comics right now and you had anything to do with Death Metal or The Batman Who Laughs, you and I have a grievance. You and I need to talk. Sorry, what this is a tech pop-ups room right back to open ai more worryingly sam altman posted an idea for paid plans where your 20 plus subscription converts the credits you can use across features like deep research o1 gpt 4.5 sora and so on with no fixed limits per feature and you choose what you want if you run out of credits you can buy more this to be clear is an attempt to raise prices without actually raising them by attempting to limit usage of open ai's more expensive models ChatGPT Plus and other subscriptions give you a limit, for example, a limit of 80 messages every three hours on GPT-4.0, but using one doesn't limit your use of other products.

6:07Here, OpenAI is trying to create a rent-seeking model where power users have to pay for more credits if they want to use, say, OpenAI's more expensive models like Sora and O1, and I imagine any situation like this will be one where they hope that people simply won't use their credits or overuse them and have to pay for top-ups. This is, of course, all theoretical, but it heavily suggests that OpenAI is getting desperate. And now the information is reporting that OpenAI executives have told some investors that they will be charging$2 ,000 per month for their low-end agent product. And yes, that's a quote.

6:40Sold to, and again I quote, high-income knowledge workers with supposed mid-tier agents for software development costing possibly$10 ,000 a month, with supposed PhD-level research agents costing $20 ,000 a month. And I will tell you, the PhDs I know would probably do it for half. And they'd even work for an annoying arsehole like Sam Altman. Now, you may wonder what any of these things do, and the answer is that neither I nor the information know. As of right now, the only operational agent OpenAI has is Operator, OpenAI's agent that sometimes successfully uses a web browser to search for something in minutes, which would usually take you seconds.

7:17The information attempted to suggest that the$2 ,000 a month agent would be some sort of thing that could sort through and rank sales lead. But I'm sorry, do I really have to read this shit with a straight face? $20 ,000 for a PhD level agent? What the fuck does that mean? What would it do? Why do these companies, I get emails every week having to justify my fucking cynicism, but these shitheads, they're allowed to just make up stuff and leak it to the information. The information publishes it. We're all meant to be impressed. What the fucking, what the fuck? I'm allowed to rant on these. They're allowing me to rant on these.

7:50It's just, it sickens me. I have had this week at least five people email me and be like, well, Ed, what would it take to change your mind about this stuff? Why do I have to fucking do it? Why do I? The multi-billion dollar companies do a dogshit job of actually explaining this stuff or selling it. They lose billions of dollars, but I'm the guy who has to justify myself? Oh, well, I'll keep doing it. Nevertheless, nestled at the bottom of this article is a far more obvious pale horse. OpenAI is planning to charge 20 % to 30 % of pro-customers, the$200 a month subscription that loses them money every time, a higher price because of how many research queries they're doing, with Altman, according to the information, suggesting some sort of, hey, guess what, a la carte or pay-as-you-go approach.

8:35I want to be clear about something. This is not a company that's cooking. This is not a company that's worked out anything. Open AI is unprofitable, unsustainable, and deeply, deeply lost. These are the actions of a desperate company run by a desperate man. If only Sam Altman had a thoughtful friend to talk about all these problems too.

9:12Park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Are you a business owner or entrepreneur in need of a fast funding solution? Amerifactors provides fast capital. Call today for a free no obligation quote at 800-884-FUND. Startups, rapid growth stage or struggling, even with less than perfect credit, including bankruptcies. In business for over 34 years, thousands of satisfied clients have transformed their cash flow with Amerifactors. Call Amerifactors today at 800-884-FUND. That's 800-884-3863. Or visit Amerifactors.com. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.

9:49Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at MintMobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for a three-month plan equivalent to$15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile.com. Brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash?

10:24Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit Progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. This is an iHeart Podcast.