How are the numerous conversational AI companies differencing themselves?

1 points by yalogin 3y ago ↗ HN

May be I am naive, but these conversational AI companies like open AI, Anthropic et al more or less do the same thing. They are extremely generic in functionality and so each of them strive to do everything. How are they able to differentiate? Even more so, all of them will achieve scale over time. What is the moat for someone like open AI? Is it that they are first and so have users? Enterprise users?

3 comments

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climatologist 3y ago ↗

Presumably at some point one of them will achieve singularity and have a self-sufficient superintelligence that will recursively self-improve. I recommend contributing your inputs to the team which you believe is most likely to reach this milestone first because once that happens it is game over for any other AI company.

Ted Chiang has an excellent short story about this situation called "Understand".

janalsncm 3y ago ↗

I would imagine cost is the main differentiator. I don’t see regulation limiting the number of options any time soon, (this is why OpenAI wants licensing/regulation) so I am assuming prices will continue to fall.

brucethemoose2 3y ago ↗

The moat is popularity and name recognition.

Highly personalized/flavored chat services like character.ai or even WolframAlpha have existed in various niches well before GPT 3.5.

Additionally, OpenAI's moat is that GPT4 is SOTA in many niches... for now. And also very accessible, since its API is so popular.