Internal AWS Sales Guidelines Spread Doubt About OpenAI's Capabilities (businessinsider.com) 14
An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI lacks advanced security and customer support. It's just a research company, not an established cloud provider. The ChatGPT-maker is not focused enough on corporate customers. These are just some of the talking points
Amazon Web Services' salespeople are told to follow when dealing with customers using, or close to buying, OpenAI's products, according to internal sales guidelines obtained by Business Insider. Other talking points from the documents include OpenAI's lack of access to third-party AI models and weak enterprise-level contracts. AWS salespeople should dispel the hype around AI chatbots like ChatGPT, and steer the conversation toward AWS's strength of running the cloud infrastructure behind popular AI services, the guidelines added.
[...] The effort to criticize OpenAI is also unusual for Amazon, which often says it's so customer-obsessed that it pays little attention to competitors. This is the latest sign that suggests Amazon knows it has work to do to catch up in the AI race. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google have taken an early lead and could become the main platforms where developers build new AI products and tools. Though Amazon created a new AGI team last year, the company's existing AI models are considered less powerful than those made by its biggest competitors. Instead, Amazon has prioritized selling AI tools like Bedrock, which gives customers access to third-party AI models. AWS also offers cloud access to in-house AI chips that compete with Nvidia GPUs, with mixed results so far.
[...] The effort to criticize OpenAI is also unusual for Amazon, which often says it's so customer-obsessed that it pays little attention to competitors. This is the latest sign that suggests Amazon knows it has work to do to catch up in the AI race. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google have taken an early lead and could become the main platforms where developers build new AI products and tools. Though Amazon created a new AGI team last year, the company's existing AI models are considered less powerful than those made by its biggest competitors. Instead, Amazon has prioritized selling AI tools like Bedrock, which gives customers access to third-party AI models. AWS also offers cloud access to in-house AI chips that compete with Nvidia GPUs, with mixed results so far.
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While its competitors are telling customers that AI will do everything but bring them coffee Amazon is telling its salescritters to be honest with customers about its capabilities. Seems like customer obsession to me.
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You haven't worked at AWS, I take it. Someone who did that *would* be caught as soon as the customer complained that it couldn't actually do all of 'xyz' and canned, and any pending monies owed would be either clawed back or payment would be delayed as long as possible. That's why they have the CIA, NSA, and IRS contracts, they promise exactly what they can deliver, and then deliver exactly that.
ALL of AI... (Score:3, Insightful)
...is a research project, all of it
Unfortunately, the investors who jumped on the hype train expect returns on their investment soon
They will be disappointed
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Also, all the UBI promoters who jumped on the hype train, hoping AI would be the final straw that would force government to go all-in for UBI, will be disappointed to learn that people will still have jobs after all.
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They're right (Score:3)
OpenAI lacks advanced security and customer support. It's just a research company, not an established cloud provider. The ChatGPT-maker is not focused enough on corporate customers.
Correct: that's why OpenAI found itself a nice, boring business-like and loaded sugar daddy: Sam Altman can keeps doing his flamboyant act, OpenAI can keeps having fun developing Dystopia 2.0 while Microsoft pays to throw their party while it does the drudgery of trying to turn all that stuff into products that people want and market it.
Want proof? What do you think about most when you think of AI? Instant video creation, sentient-looking digital personae and surprising profundities from a chatbot, or stupid Copilot that promises to help you "code 54% faster"?
OpenAI is just the public face of AI, but they don't actually produce, sell or run anything they create. Copilot and other such boring, more discreet applications is what matters, even if it's Microsoft and it leaves you with a limp biscuit. It's what will turn this world upside down and ruin society, not OpenAI.
It's a sign (Score:1)
This is the latest sign that suggests Amazon knows it has work to do to catch up in the AI race.
It's a sign that bullshit around AI is actually managing to sway customers away, and instead of Amazon investing in something that could eat up their valuable resources for something that customers will end up being frustrated and upset with, they're trying to win back the customer with logic and reason.
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My kingdom for a mod point . . .
Compete on merit? WachuTalkinBoutWillis? (Score:1)
They are so reliant on the Network Effect for "winning" that when they have to compete on merit alone, the executives are like fish out of water, scrambling in awkward ways.
Almost every co. that gets addicted to the Network Effect cannot break out.
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Huh. My take is that they were telling the salescritters to be honest with customers and not unduly raise expectations. Seems like good customer service to me. They're not IBM telling hospitals that Deep Blue was going to replace diagnosticians, they're more like IBM in the '60s saying that they had a microcomputer that customers might or might not be interested in using.
Hmmm (Score:2)