Comment by throw310822
4 hours ago
> AI is a world-changing technology, just like the railroads were
This comparison keeps popping up, and I think it's misleading. The pace of technology uptake is completely different from that of railroads: the user base of ChatGPT alone went from 0 to 200 million in nine months, and it's now- after just three years- around 900 million users on a weekly basis. Even if you think that railroads and AI are equally impactful (I don't, I think AI will be far more impactful) the rapidity with which investments can turn into revenue and profit makes the situation entirely different from an investor's point of view.
Railroads carried the goods that everybody used. That’s like almost 100% in a given country.
The pace was slower indeed. It takes time to build the railroads. But at that time advancements also lasted longer. Now it is often cash grabs until the next thing. Not comparable indeed but for other reasons.
> just three years- around 900 million users on a weekly basis.
Well, I rotate about a dozen of free accounts because I don't want to send 1 cent their way, I imagine I'm not the only one. I do the same for gemini, claude and deepseek, so all in all I account for like 50 "unique" weekly users
Apparently they have about 5% of paying customers, the amount of total users is meaningless, it just tells you how much money they burn and isn't an indication of anything else.
> I rotate about a dozen of free accounts .. I do the same for gemini, claude and deepseek
For someone who doesn't like the product and doesn't care about it, you surely make a lot of effort to use it.
Sometime you have to force the trickle down economy a bit, these people are destroying my industry I might as well cost them as much as possible before I have no choice but to move on.
It's also literally 0 effort, click > sign out > click > sign in. It saves me $200 a month, that's not too far from half of my rent
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that users who put that much effort into using this stuff for free, using a dozen different accounts, are very rare.
It is beside the point, but
> I think AI will be far more impactful
is not correct IMO. Those are two very different areas. The impact of railroads on transport and everything transport-related cannot be understated. By now roads and cars have taken over much of it, and ships and airplanes are doing much more, but you have to look at the context at the time.
Paid user base or free user base? Because free user base on a very expensive product is next to meaningless.
It's meaningful because it shows that people like the product a lot, and for a lot of different reasons. There are only few products that can reach such market penetration, not to mention in only three years. As the quality of AI increases, people will quickly realise that they are willing to pay for it as much as they pay for electricity. And the same goes for businesses.
Railroads enabled people and goods to move from one place to another much easier and faster.
AI enables people to... produce even more useless slop than before?
At this point I'm taking the word "slop" as a sign meaning "I really didn't think this through and I'm just autocompleting based on a gut feeling and the first word that comes to mind".
That's an easy way out, isn't it?
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