Comment by swalsh
4 days ago
Like I said last week. I think zucks original llama thesis is proving more correct by the week. The rent market on intelligence never materialized, if you have THE frontier model, you can charge rent (for a few weeks, maybe month). But after a certain capability level it's price that drives the decision.
Zuck is doing the thing he's really good at, and building a moat around the network (Muse is VERY sticky), and now that we're all going to standardize on Meta's model, we're going to optimize the heck out of the infra to run the model making it cheaper for him to scale, thus bringing in more participants to his network, and thus making his network more valuable.
Meta is going to win consumer AI.
Google, Apple, and Microsoft are each in a stronger position to win consumer AI because they're guardians over the foundations of the user's experience. Meta always has to wonder whether they're going to be edged out, like when Apple decided to limit permissions or set new rules on user data handling.
How has Meta responded? With a failed phone and speculative headset.
That's entirely why Zuck's been pushing VR and the metaverse for so long. they have no OS to control - Microsoft has desktop, Apple has their vertically integrated devices, Google has both Android and also Chrome.
Meta is at the whims of these other companies to play nice - and they already got hit hard once by apple when they decided to anonimize add profiles on the iphone and go privacy first.
Okay, so I've heard Apple "prioritized their own ads". If there's meat behind that - cool (and perhaps might not do anything about certain scummy listings on the app store)
But app stores and iOS ostensibly exist exactly so Zuckerberg can't do what he does, which is steal credentials. Facebook syncs everything, bought Whatsapp to do the same; of course he's pissed off his ill-gotten moat got attacked
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Until Opus 5.5 I agreed with this. But since then... I'm now able to build just about anything I want, quickly. Including... all the reasons I'm on a mac (or presumably, one on windows) in the first place. IDK if I believe in my heart just yet, but as a long time mac user, if you gave me the choice between mac + commodity model or a near naked Linux laptop + Opus 5.5, I would easily choose Opus 5.5 and build what I want. If this is real, I think Google is still in a good spot, but are Apple and Microsoft? They have no models themselves. They do have hardware but the value of their OS (in Apples case) and software (in MS case) becomes extremely devalued, relatively speaking.
MacOS, even nowadays, has a level of polish and care put into it that nothing you do with opus is going to get close to.
> How has Meta responded? With a failed phone and speculative headset.
I guess their spin on Muse would be, by building the AI agent that Apple has shown it's nowhere near being able to build
Apple responds by waiting and partnering with companies like Google, and treating this as a layer that can be swapped out.
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Being one of if not the top advertisers in the world? I think Meta is doing just fine.
Sure but that doesn't mean they will become the front runner in AI.
>Google, Apple, and Microsoft are each in a stronger position to win consumer AI
Microsoft has completely lost the ability to make good software; see Microsoft Teams and what they've done to Windows 11. Apple don't have a foundation models team so they're limited to using other people's models, which handicaps them as they can't do vertical integration like with their other products. Google hasn't made a single competitive consumer product in the past decade, but has certainly killed a few.
> Microsoft has completely lost the ability to make good software
did they ever? maybe MS DOS, Win 3.1, and Win2000 were ok, although PC DOS and OS/2 were better; Sure what an unusable junk it's today is beyond any precedent in history, but why many companies use it today at all? why?
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"Microsoft has completely lost the ability to make good software; see Microsoft Teams and what they've done to Windows 11."
Uh, what is your positive comparison point?
I have been using MS apps since MS-DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 (including doozies like Windows Millennium and Vista) and Teams and W11 are some of most stable, "it just works" pieces of software coming from them I can think of...
Apple should have morphed Siri into a Muse-like experience a year ago. But they didn't. Muse is great and millions of people are already getting used to having it be a part of their daily lives.
Muse, the pi/openclaw/AI assistant app is maybe not impressive to HN, because you can always just "get an FTP account", as it were, but if you're outside of the HN bubble and don't hate Facebook, Muse is an absolute winner. It's currently the top downloaded app on iOS, above ChatGPT, TikTok, and Claude. I think they've currently got the strongest consumer AI play but we'll have to wait and see how the situation evolves.
>It's currently the top downloaded app on iOS,
Yeah because its gone a bit viral. It'll settle down over time as people try it and dispose of it.
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>Google, Apple, and Microsoft are each in a stronger position to win consumer AI because they're guardians over the foundations of the user's experience.
From everything I've seen, they're all too large and dysfunctional to make a competent play in consumer AI. Anyone in there trying to work on it is too far removed from end product and is answering to too many masters.
That's definitely gemini
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So what makes Muse "very sticky"?
Seriously. Muse hasn't even been around long enough to determine if it is "sticky" in any meaningful way, let alone in the context of competing against frontier models from competitors.
And based on what I'm seeing, it's far from even being in that category as a service yet. Seems like the OP is conflating seeing a bunch of Muse ads on Facebook with its presence as a competing frontier model.
The ads strike me as basically deceptive. Like when I was in NYC last week the ads showing a cuddly mascot were all over the place. Video ads on YouTube don’t show a Bay Area TurboKnerd geeking out with a top-of-the-line Mac mini to a reskinned OpenClaw (reality) but rather some guy running and talking to his phone to schedule a massage.
I like the image of Muse and think a product that delivers what it promises to the consumer could be a hit but,,, this looks like something they rolled out in a hurry to take advantage of the FOMO of the uninformed and boost their stock price for a few months until reality catches up. They are a huge company and they could do something only a big company could do but no…
Like the real mass market product is not going to be a smart shell for a Mac it’s going to be cloud based. Like is it economic for your Mac to be sitting there running all the time when you are using 10%? The true believer say yes, the mass market says no. Is Apple going to let them put a skin on your Mac or is this a product that Apple will embrace and extinguish?
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came out like a week or two ago lol
Unfounded assertions by marketing accounts, obviously.
spamming same comment
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50060213
do ppl get paid by zuck for this?
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Muse is not sticky at all, it's just OpenClaw wrapped in meta branding. Any company can roll one out
I disagree with the claim that its sticky, but this is the wrong response. Reductive and doesn't take into account the obvious things (UX, network effects, barrier to entry to use the product). All 3 of these are much better with Muse than they with are similar products.
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any company can roll instagram(just simple image viewer) or whatsapp(just messaging) out though with the same logic. Does not mean you can compete
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Impossible to even know if he was talking about the harness, the model, the assistant... But yeah, sticky... Ok.
Basically once it has sucked all of your data dry you no longer have the ability to leave the Meta Network.
The ecosystem of meta products like Instagram
Velcro
Good anthropomorphism.
the bear is sticky with honey
> now that we're all going to standardize on Meta's model
Who's this "we" exactly?
definitely not me; I wouldn't doubt if Zster is working on turning muse into sleeper agents, _assuming_ chinese models will do the same, so they crib data and send it home like a good little maleware model.
In fact, we're going to see an explosion of the worst kind of AI model thanks to thinks mr Z thinks is in his best interest.
Remember, they had reports going back more than a decade about how they're harming children and destabilizing entire countries and as soon as Trumps in the whitehouse, they're licking boot.
If you’re falling for “sticky” interfaces, you’re not going make it. Your competitor won’t have the stickiness and the ability to use any harness and that will overcome Muse in the long-run. Let’s not forget, Muse is a close to SOTA model right now, but so was Google, and now they’re irrelevant. Google is one of many funded models that were close to SOTA, but we realized it’s benchmaxxed.
People are going to say that it doesn’t matter if you’re the best. If Muse, Grokbot, and Dot are able to reach mass appeal, it doesn’t matter if a person using a custom harness is better.
I respectfully disagree. There is a big difference between someone that’s running a custom harness that’s almost like a personal OS versus someone using something out of the box. And if you’re for using this to run your business, think for yourself who’s going to win, the person customizing everything or the one using what the big corps give you.
> Google, and now they’re irrelevant.
Argon is tied for first at worst.
> Google is one of many funded models that were close to SOTA, but we realized it’s benchmaxxed.
Who is "we"? Google is the least benchmaxxed.
I’m talking from experience. I’m run a software factory building open source alternatives and Argon is the worst model. Wrecked multiple codebases. But every use case is different. If you’ve found success in yours, use it.
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Astra still outperforms Argon for me. And with a lot more quota too.
I hope Google can catch up to OpenAI. The more competition the better.
These are good points, though OP did specifically say that Meta is going to win "consumer" AI. I don't think the average consumer of AI is going to ever have to think about harnesses or worry about SOTA, they really will continue to interact with whatever is stickiest.
This exactly. The "harness" for consumer is not well defined but likely quite sticky if someone can build one. Meta is better positioned with its reach of whatsapp etc unlike anyone to try this.
Meta being meta, will likely run this as an "experiment mode" for 6 months to an year and if it does not work scrap it all and move onto the next thing.
There is a risk ofc muse does not work. But there is a good chance that with the ridiculous number of product teams doing A/B testing with insane number of people already on it, something will emerge that is interesting in a way it never could for their erstwhile Ar/VR foray.
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Yep. Reminds me of the famous HN lore about Dropbox https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 (note the 4 digit ID - early days!)
>For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
But this is what I’m saying, consumer AI is forever changing. Investing your time and money into a closed harness will put you behind someone running their own system that’s model agnostic.
If you’re on a forum like HN, would you realisticly invest your time and widgets into a closed harness instead of building your own? What if Meta’s model falls behind and all your things are on there? My advice is to invest in building your own because no one lab has shown they are worth using.
As far as “consumer,” I’m simply comparing consumer AI to a custom built one. One of OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta will probably win since they have the most distribution.
And, "stickiest", mind, where most are allready soul-sucked into the neverending doomscrolling dopamine nightmare that is Zuckbook - to beging with.-
First they "captured", or moated "communication". Now, they are going to capture "utility" ("I am actually doing something useful, not just doomscrolling. I can spend an extra 8h here. It feels good").-
The "average consumer" is a very small part of the revenue opportunity for LLMs and AI.
The real money is coming from C-suites trying to reduce head count or at least multiply productivity for their existing head count.
> And if you’re for using this to run your business, think for yourself who’s going to win...
That's not consumer AI though. The whole "vs out of the box" is pretty much the definition of consumer AI. People don't want to fiddle with things. That's why UX matters. SOTA only matters in consumer if it translates to the UX. And no one has landed that yet. Many are working on it.
Muse, the app, is currently number one on the app store. Talking to non-technical friends who have adopted it, they may have landed it.
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When I worked at Microsoft, I learned that the average user will fail to do ANY process that is longer than 2 steps. Let that sink in and then reread your comment. Nobody cares about SOTA outside of tech. They want the basic floor of “it does what I need at a reasonable price” that’s it.
But why are we all going to standardize on Meta's model, and how is it sticky? What does it have on the big Chinese models?
> Muse is VERY sticky
How, exactly?
I think any personal AI agent at this point is "very sticky", not just Muse. You really aren't going to switch when a lot of the value is in the agent memory and there's no easy way to export that, similarly to how you aren't going to switch away from Spotify when it's learned all your song preferences which you can't export. Right now, maybe the agent memory is small enough that if you ask the agent to export you'll get most of it out (Claude has notably made official export instructions to encourage switching from ChatGPT in the past), but in the future the memory will be too large and complex to do that effectively, and platforms could also block the memory export or degrade it deliberately.
So, in the long run you pretty much have to pick one personal agent and stick with it, and switching is costly (unless you are using an open agent that lets you just download the memory, in which case it actually becomes cheap, because AI agents make other parts of switching way easier in general). For the purposes of Meta this means whatever user they get they'll probably keep.
HOWEVER, the thing that Muse doesn't have is network effects. They're running into the exact same problem as ChatGPT in this area, IMO. There's no reason for you to be running specifically Muse even if all of your friends are running it. So that gives other vendors a chance to catch up.
You can export all your data from OpenAI and Anthropic. I also exported all of my Liked songs on Spotify and have a scheduled task to pull any new ones each day.
I don’t follow why “in the future the memory will be too large and complex to [export] effectively”.
to me, export should be easier and easier since you should just be able to ask the model for the memory files. it’s literally list text on a hard disk, even if there are some new formats in the future, they’ll just be files on a disk that another agent can then inspect and integrate. in fact, i think exporting data from services will become easier and easier since agents can do the work even if platforms try to block it.
> a lot of the value is in the agent memory and there's no easy way to export that,
Can't speak for muse and grok bot. But all other agents like openclaw, Hermes simply store then add files and it's trivial to migrate to another agent. Just point the agent to it
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> Meta is going to win consumer AI.
I disagree. Google is doing a phenomenal job at capturing use cases at the edge, right where "normie" consumers live. Google's models absolutely suck at coding but if you haven't tried Google Transcribe, you should.
Google has also, far larger distribution and stickiness than Meta.
Very sticky?
Theyve had a few million downloads on what, DAU of billions?
Lol get a reality check.
I think the jury's still out on whether Muse will be sticky. My guess is that it won't be that good relative to the field.
Paid bot or Meta employee, please disclose
Bold statement. I wouldn’t count anyone as a winner on consumer market at this point.
I think the weight of people who dislike Meta is going to be a problem - that and forcing to give a lot of information just to use it is problematic for adoption.
> Meta is going to win consumer AI.
Are you defining consumer AI as just AI as it relates to a narrow subset of social networking?
There is no winner in a race to the bottom.
> The rent market on intelligence never materialized
So where is the ~$100B combined revenue for OpenAI and Anthropic coming from? Open weights models have been close enough to the frontier for over a year now, probably longer, yet the $$ shows no sign of shifting.
OpenaAI and Anthropic models are priced quite competitively with open ones, they even cut prices by quite a bit since spring. So it's not too surprising that their revenue is pretty high, the question is whether the competition and downward price pressure from open model providers combined with their extremely high R&D spending is sustainable.
>Muse is VERY sticky
its not. ppl downloaded it in hype arent using anymore
Also honestly, the models don't have to get much smarter to handle the consumer side of things. They could innovate a ton on the harness to farm out requests and manage the state of the agent. They have an incentive to do this to reduce the infra usage so they can go wider with the agent.
Is this Zucks personal AI bot?
last year was google winning AI, this year is meta winning AI. I think what is true is Meta, Google will all find their place in the AI world and continue to make huge amount of money. A consumer will use many different AI products, each with a different use case. Everyone will make enough money to live well.
I'm looking forward to seeing Muse devices like Amazon's devices but with superintelligence: - Muse-equivalent of Alexa - Muse-equivalent of Ring security devices: doorbells, cameras, alarms, etc - Muse home automation devices (lights on/off, smart roller, smoke detector, water detecto, etc) - Muse ring ...
> devices but with superintelligence
Donald, is that you?
Way too coherent...
isn't it a bit early to call Muse sticky?
Sounds like cope. You can't claim the 'rent market on intelligence' never materialized when revenue is absolutely booming for Anthropic/etc.
Sure, just not nearly enough for sustainability I think. I'd reserve that call for the moment we can stop bathing in free VC money by using subscriptions.
Also, as far as my own use goes, I found that the capabilities/price ratio of DeepSeek's offering is very hard to beat. It's really good enough so the thing that matters to me (besides table stakes like uptime, latency, etc.) is price at this point.
They are just repeating old tropes about unprofitability without reassessing
Do you have a source for Anthropic being profitable?
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> Meta is going to win consumer AI.
That zucks.
> Meta is going to win consumer AI.
That's a bold statement lol.
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