the problem with the YouTube analogy is that media platforms have significant network affects that NN providers don't. OpenAI can't command a premium because every year that goes by the cost to train an equivalent model to theirs decreases.
Youtube didn't either at the time. The front page was widely seen as garbage, and everyone I knew watched videos because they were embedded or linked from external sites. "If they introduced ads, people will just switch to other video hosts, wont they?". Many of the cooler creators used Vimeo. It was the good recommendation algorithm that came later, that I think allowed an actual network effect, and I don't remember people predicting that.
The field is too young to know what will keep users, but there are definitely things that plausibly could create a lock-in effect. I mentioned one ("ChatGPT knows me") which could grow over time as people have shared more of themselves with ChatGPT. There's also pilots of multi-person chats, and the social elements in Sora. Some people already feel compelled to stick to the "person" they're comfortable talking to. The chance of OpenAI finding something isn't zero.
That's a bit revisionist. Network effects were obvious when Google acquired Youtube. Google Video had the edge technically, but it didn't matter because Youtube had the users/content and Google saw that very clearly in their user growth before they made their offer.
I'm not sure about it having the edge, I thought Google video had a worse interface between them at the time. But that point feels eerily relevant anyway: a lot of normal people I see don't care if Claude/Gemini/etc are better models technically, they're comfortable with ChatGPT already.
A lot of YT's growth at the time was word of mouth and brand among the population, which is currently ChatGPT's position.
ChatGPT is losing their brand positioning to Google, Anthropic, and Chinese Open Source
Altman knows this and why he called code red. If OpenAI hasn't produce a fully new model in 1.5 years, how much longer can they hang on before people will turn to alternatives that are technically better? How long before they could feasibly put out a new model if they are having issues in pre-training?
They're losing their benchmark lead to those companies. But no chance that your average user is even aware of Anthropic, much less OSS models. The brand is mostly fine IMO, it's the product that needs to catch up.
Maybe ChatGPT is sticky enough that people won't switch. But since we're talking about something as old as Google Video, we could also talk about AltaVista, which was "good enough" until people discovered a better and more useful alternative.
A lot of "normal people" are learning fast about ChatGPT alternatives now. Gemini in particular is getting a lot of mainstream buzz. Things like this [1] with 14k likes are happening everyday on social. Marc Benioff's love for Gemini broke through into the mainstream also.
