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Comment by senshan

16 hours ago

It is the term "mathematically impossible" that caught my attention. Since it is about the future promise of OpenAI, one could debate the likelihood or "statistically improbable", but "mathematically impossible" implies some calculation, proof and certainty. Hence my curiosity.

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senshan

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CharlieDigital  15 hours ago

I've seen some calculation I think from an HSBC analyst that it would take a monthly subscription of $200/mo. from some large portion of the US population for some insane number of years to break even.

  • Aurornis  14 hours ago

    > from some large portion of the US population

    What a silly calculation.

    OpenAI’s customer base is global. Using US population as the customer base is deliberately missing the big picture. The world population is more than 20X larger than the US population.

    It’s also obvious that they’re selling heavily to businesses, not consumers. It’s not reasonable to expect consumers to drive demand for these services.

    • johnnyanmac  14 hours ago

      >OpenAI’s customer base is global.

      I'd be willing to bet that, like many US websites, OpenAI's users are at lest 60% American. Just because there's 20x more people out there doesn't mean they have the same exposure to American products.

      For instance, China is an obvious one. So that's 35%+ of the population already mostly out of consideration.

      >It’s also obvious that they’re selling heavily to businesses, not consumers.

      I don't think a few thousand companies can outspend 200m users paying $200 a month. I won't call it a "mathematical impossibility", but the math also isn't math-ing here.

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