Experts say OpenAI is in an ‘exciting place’ and ‘could be the next WeWork’
According to some artificial intelligence (AI) experts, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has an $80 billion valuation that many analysts believe.
Carlos Perez, author and founder of Intuit Machines, in a March 1 post on the X social media platform expressed his doubts that “OpenAI is in a difficult position in the recognized leadership in the AI space.” He further commented, “There are several indicators that show that their performance is being resolved.”
In explaining his position, Perez cited a number of influential factors, including competitive pricing, the ability to reduce turnover, the perceived absence – or indifference – of company founder Ilya Sutskever, staff turnover and “poor execution”.
Piss poor execution
Perez's comments follow reports that Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman.
Musk's accusations, as Cointelegraph recently reported , that OpenAI, which he co-founded, broke his promise to remain “open” — a term that refers to the development of technological solutions offered to the open-source community.
According to the lawsuit, when OpenAI partnered with Microsoft, it “departed from its fundamental principles of promoting open source Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity.”
The next WeWork?
New York University's Gary Marcus, a best-selling author and AI expert who recently testified before the US government about the dangers of AI, compared Perez's sentiment to WeWork's.
WeWork, a unicorn startup once valued at nearly $50 billion, has finally declared bankruptcy. Many experts attributed the company's failure to the fact that growth was largely fueled by taking on debt.
OpenAI's growth has arguably been fueled by its chat GPT service and an injection of funds from its corporate partner, Microsoft.
But AGI for whom?
According to the company's charter, its main focus is on developing AGI – machines that can perform any task that a person with the appropriate resources can perform – for the benefit of humanity.
However, Musk has said the company is no longer working on AGI to benefit humanity, and is asking the courts to issue an injunction to stop “exploiting” OpenAI for profit.
This can be tricky for courts because there is no legal or scientific definition of what exactly AGI is, or what AGI-related technology is.
In the event that courts find that OpenAI must cease operating its services, the company may lose its primary sources of revenue and first-mover advantage.
Additionally, third-party services built on OpenAI models may be adversely affected. In the crypto world, for example, shutting down ChatGPT could end up killing a large number of automated trading services, customer service bots, and AI-powered analytics tools.
