“Actually, OpenAI could stop making models and be one of the most valuable companies in the world just because of ChatGPT. That's their most valuable asset.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
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“Actually ads are good. They are societal good. They get, they are the driver of all the consumer surplus that tech throws off.”
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“The way that it shows up messily is we somehow do pass the law banning TikTok and it didn't get banned. And now it is sold, but China still controls the algorithm. So I think it's a big disaster.”
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“What we clearly need is some sort of market mechanism For data generation that in the long run will replace what we're getting from journalistic enterprises, which are even more doomed than ever before.”
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“I think OpenAI might be a bigger threat to Facebook than Google, something worth considering”
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Insight
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“If you're using the easiest possible way to target ads, which is based on the context of the conversation, we're going to show you a roughly relevant ad. Number one, your market's way smaller because you have to hope someone starts a conversation that matches …”
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