Comment by tavavex
2 years ago
I think the analogy is kind of strained here - at the current stage, OpenAI doesn't have an overwhelming superiority in quality in the same way Google once did. And, if marketing claims are to be believed, Google's Gemini appears to be no publicity stunt. (not to mention that IBM's "downfall" isn't very related to Deep Blue in the first place)
> OpenAI doesn't have an overwhelming superiority in quality in the same way Google once did
The comparison is between a useful shipping product available to everyone for a full year vs a tech demo of an extremely limited release to privileged customers.
There are millions of people for whom OpenAI's products are broadly useful, and the specifics of where they fall short compared to Gemini are irrelevant here, because Google isn't offering anything comparable that can be tested.
I'd say IBM's downfall was directly related to failing to monetize Deep Blue (and similar research) at scale.
At the time, I believe IBM was still "we'll throw people and billable hours at a problem."
They had their lunch eaten because their competitors realized they could undercut IBM on price if they changed the equation to "throw compute at a problem."
In other words, sell prebuilt products instead of lead-ins to consulting. And harness advertising to offer free products to drive scale to generate profit. (e.g. Google/search)
I don't really see how IBM would ever be able to monetize something like Deep Blue. It was a research project that was understood to not be a money-maker (outside of PR, probably), and it resulted in highly specialized hardware running highly specialized software, working for its one purpose. I agree that their business model and catering to big business first is what likely led to them scaling down today, but it's still disconnected from Deep Blue.