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[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 7 points 1 day ago

I hope the grant is not paid in tokens

[-] qaz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Great choice, using some of that VC money for things that actually benefit the world

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I wonder what the motivation is. Surely is not to do something good.

Tax deductions by donating money to a non-profit?

A try to get a grasp on one programming language with a bright future so they could profit out of it later?

A PR move?

An attempt to get on the good side of Mozilla so they get partnership for AI integration in Firefox?

[-] webkitten@piefed.social 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[-] festus@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago
  1. "Corporations should contribute back to open source projects"
  2. Corporation donates to <project>.
  3. "Fuck <project>"

It's not like Rust is using ChatGPT to rewrite the std crate. You'd prefer that they not compensate the humans actually improving the project?

[-] webkitten@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

Corporations shouldn't contribute to open source projects cause corporations shouldn't exist; especially Open AI.

[-] iconic_admin@lemmy.world 24 points 2 days ago

Are they donating some of their debt? Is money even real?

[-] FiniteBanjo@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

No, OpenAI keeps the debt until they file bankruptcy defrauding investors of many billions total. Likely right before the Trump admin ends so that they can bribe officials to let them off the hook.

The stolen cash is being used to pressure maintainers for things like Rust.

[-] abc@suppo.fi 1 points 1 day ago

Making me consider switching over from Claude. But Opus is still quite a bit better at programming, so I think I'll wait until next GPT release.

[-] inari@piefed.zip 35 points 2 days ago

OpenAI is the one who needs donations

[-] abc@suppo.fi 2 points 1 day ago

It's called subscription fees.

[-] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 2 days ago

Wdym, they get donations all the time

[-] inari@piefed.zip 15 points 2 days ago

They are bleeding money

[-] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago

You've got it all backwards. In an ideal capitalist world, the greedy software nonprofit foundations bleed the innovative corporations of their well-earned revenue.

[-] hddsx@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago

No, they are now charging by usage. They will either end up with boatloads of money while people still have ChatGPT integrated into their workflows, or they will end up with zero money as people either switch to other models or realize that AI was a shit idea all along.

[-] Jhex@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago

No, they are now charging by usage.

Not the actual cost... they are still losing money even in their most expensive tiers. There is just no path to profitability with ANY of the current models, they simply cost more to run than the people they are supposedly trying to replace

[-] hddsx@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Right, which is “AI was shit all along” branch.

[-] Womble@piefed.world 5 points 2 days ago

FWIW the general consensus is that they are just about making a profit on selling it by the token (as opposed to the subscriptions which are massively subsidised) so long as you pretend that capital expenses and R&D aren't real and at some point they could stop doing them in order to make profit.

That is very much not a given, with all the labs in a death march to not let the others get better than them and take their lunch, and open source only 9-18 months behind the closed models.

[-] MirrorGiraffe@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago

The thing about per token basis is that it's hard to justify unless you get token back whenever it spends a shitload of tokens on some rabbit hole. The alternative is me baby sitting every action it does which would make it very hard to justify me paying anything at all.

[-] Jhex@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

FWIW the general consensus is that they are just about making a profit

This is what the tech bros claim (which is obviously convenient so they can lure more ~~suckers~~ investors in); every outside pundit concludes otherwise

Check this article I received yesterday... in a nutshell, if a company returns less than 7% on investment, they would normally be liquidated by investors. To make it to 7%, AI companies would have to reach a revenue of $2 TRILLION per year (cumulative amongst the big AI players, which are like 5 total)

Last leaked financials from OpenAI showed $13 Billion revenue and a $21 billion loss

[-] Womble@piefed.world 3 points 2 days ago

Your link is broken.

Yes, judging them now the big AI companies are terrible businesses, they are just about, maybe, marginally profitable if they stop the huge fixed expenses which they cant stop because of their environment.

The gamble is that AI will increase in usage, while becoming more efficient and resisting becoming commoditised. I don't think there's a strong chance of all three of those happening, but if they did that would justify them losing money now in order to make big profits later. That's the gamble.

[-] Jhex@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Your link is broken.

Sorry about that, here is another https://archive.ph/3V0oc

The gamble is that AI will increase in usage, while becoming more efficient and resisting becoming commoditised.

But again we already know that is impossible since the economies of scale do not work. Each extra user means a shit ton of extra processing in those Data Centers and, even disregarding the destruction of the planet, nobody will pay that cost just to get 35% hallucinations in their queries.

Right now, they are literally gambling with the IPOs that they hype will last long enough for them to cash out and let pension plans and other large automated index investors holding the bag.

This Xmas may not be merry at all...

[-] criss_cross@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Also business customers are fleeing in droves because they’re forcing API only pricing for businesses and everyone is getting sticker shock at the costs.

[-] bignose@programming.dev 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
[-] FiniteBanjo@programming.dev 6 points 1 day ago
[-] PushButton@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

0.25c / compiled byte (pcb) without plan, or 1 million pcb for 5 hours access per day with the MaxProUltra frontier $20 / month.

And, can I sell you this chocolate bar while you are waiting for the compilation result? Only 0.99c!

Anyway, at least, it's not going to be like Anthropic and Bun, it's not like they gonna rewrite the thing in Rust.

this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
68 points (100.0% liked)

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