From The Australian
One app to rule them all: OpenAI wants to eat the web as we know it
You have to wonder whether Sam Altman ever sleeps. In the past four weeks, the billionaire chief executive of OpenAI – and father to a new-born baby – has signed chips and data-centre deals worth more than $US500bn (about $760bn) with Oracle, Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.
He also rolled out a new social media app, Sora 2, that allows people (in America and Canada) to make AI-generated videos of themselves, a shot across the bow of TikTok. Meanwhile, a new “instant checkout” feature, launched at the end of September, allows users to buy products from five million shops managed by eCommerce giant Shopify – without ever leaving OpenAI’s ChatGPT app.
Days after this, it unveiled a capability to integrate other apps, allowing users to create a Spotify playlist or search for homes with Zillow (the US equivalent of Rightmove) from inside ChatGPT. It even rivals YouTube by serving up videos in its search results...
For Mr Altman, the tip of the spear is forging the dominant AI super app. “We’ve gone from people’s entire world (being) social media, which was pretty awful but at least there was a chance of diversity,” said Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley School of Information.
“The thing about these large language models is that there are going to be a relatively small number of winners, because you need massive computing, data and infrastructure. Your entire online existence is going to be funnelled through four or five billionaires. I worry about that consolidation of power. I think it’s dangerous.”
Hany Farid is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the School of Information at UC Berkeley.
