> The general fallacy of the “but inference is profitable” argument is that it tends to ignore all the costs of building and training the model. Given the fact that 1) that’s not trivial, and 2) the arms race underway means one can’t stop training, then it ruins the financial picture.
replyOr that it’s all hearsay and no one has released financials yet?
xAI financials are public, and OpenAI financials leaked a short while ago.
replyThat's the best possible interpretation of them.
The other possible interpretation is that they are manipulating the numbers (that they have to show to investors) and inference isn't actually profitable either. If they are not manipulating the numbers right now, both companies have a serious case of uncontrolled operational costs that they have to solve too.
Well there is clearly also a lot of non-GAAP style “trust us bro” things going on too which generally boil down to “if you ignore all the reasons why we’re not profitable then we’re profitable.” It’s WeWork’s “community adjusted EBITDA” messaging repackaged.
replyIf the company who holds the mortgage wanted to own the building, they would have just bought it themselves. They don't, for whatever reason, so to some extent they have an incentive to help their customer succeed.
replyThat's why it's so hard to get a residential mortgage, for example. It's more of a partnership, with more mutual vulnerability, than most people think. Same thing seems to be true here.