Sam Altman has grand dreams.
To me, this is the guy to watch out for. He has shown how he wants to be the one to control AI. There was a big move with the Biden Administration to achieve regulatory capture. Altman was one of the vocal proponents claiming that generative AI can only be trusted in the hands of a few major technology companies.
Whenever companies turn to government asking for regulation, this is usually what happens. Regulatory capture is dangerous because it pushes start ups out of the industry. Compliance is expensive, something larger companies can afford. It is the smaller entities that fail to have the resources to compete.
This is why many industries have only a handful of players. It is impossible for newer companies to enter due to the fact that there are huge costs. Regulation only adds to the burden.
Altman showed his colors on this one. Unfortunately, this is not out of character. His fight with Elon Musk also shows his thinking.
OpenAI was set up as a not-for-profit, designed to create AI that benefitted humanity. Altman has turned it into a for profit by creating another arm to the company. This is the basis of the lawsuit that was filed.
Altman believes that OpenAI could be worth $100 trillion. If he controls all of AI, this could be the case.
Sam Altman: One AI To Rule Them All
Personal feelings aside, Altman is a sharp cookie.
His latest idea is to simplify the product line. The company has created an assortment of applications utilizing its underlying model. There is Sora, Dalle, GPT-Vision and reasoning.
The goal here is to merge some of the different models, streamlining the process. It also will provide more ease of use through the interface.
We are looking at a competitive space. xAI just released Grok3 to rave reviews. Gemini (from Google) is well respected by many. Then we have all the smaller models that are getting attention.
Altman is making a good move here from a business perspective.
In other words, GPT-5 will be a kind of AI hub capable of doing everything its various models do now, from creating images to creative writing to complex reasoning and programming, depending on the task. Users won’t need to choose which model is best for the task.
Users do not want to have to switch applications The future is accessing all features from one platform. This is something I discussed on a number of occassions. It is vital for platforms to develop a host of AI services and provide them to users.
The AI Internet
The future of the Internet is AI. Altman is developing an application that will offer a host of services to its users. Others are working on the same thing.
xAI is seeing Grok integrated into X. Google and Meta are pushing their AI services into all their applications.
The winners in the future will be those platforms that offer the most utility to its users. My view, in a competitive market, OpenAI has an issue with its platform. Social media incorporating AI services gives it a huge advantage. There are already users who are in the habit of interacting with those applications on a daily basis.
One major turning point will be the development of agents. Where will those reside? This is something else to watch for in the evolution of the industry.
My opinion is that we need massive distribution of these services. I am against the idea of One AI to rule them all.