Better Offline - Monologue: OpenAI Is Getting Desperate

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron goes through the underwhelming release of OpenAI's GPT-4.5 - and how OpenAI's rumored new pricing structure suggests this company is in trouble. Here's the article cited from The Information: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-plots-charging-20-000-a-month-for-phd-level-agents?rc=kz8jh3 --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than adds supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-Ehart.

AllZone Media. Hello, you. It's your better offline monologue. And I'm your host, Ed Zittron. Now, next week, I'm going to have a two-part. that digs into Microsoft status and pull back an OpenAI shaking new funding situation, but this week's monologue focuses on OpenAI's new model, GPT4.5. You may be wondering what it does differently to GPT40, or Claude Sonnet 3.7,

or any number of other large language models, and if I'm honest, I have absolutely no idea. Thankfully, neither does Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who said, and I quote, the GPT 4.5 was the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person to him, which makes me wonder what the other models have been like.

So I went back and look. So compare this to the launch of GPT4O, which Altman called OpenAI's best model ever, saying that it was fast, smart, natively multimodal, referring to the ability to accept text as well as audio and video and photos as well, and available

to all chat GPT users, including including on their free plan, adding that it was a very good model, especially at coding. By contrast, Altman summarized GPT 4.5 as a giant expensive model, one that required hundreds of thousands of GPUs to launch beyond ChatGPT Pro. It started there. It's still not, as I record this, out to plus users or free users. Now, GPT Pro, of course, is OpenAI's $200 a month subscription. And it's unclear when Plus, which is the $20 a month one, will get it,

but apparently it's in the next few days. Altman also added that GBT 4.5 isn't a reasoning model and won't crush benchmarks, on account of it being a different kind of intelligence that has, and all of these are quotes, magic to it that Sam Altman had not felt before. Yeah, just, you know shit's not doing well when you have to just be like, it's magic. It's literally magic. I made magic. Now, what does the magic do?

I'm really not sure. In fact, it's pretty difficult to find exactly what it is that GPT 4.5 does differently, or what it's good at, or indeed really anything about it. Benj Edwards over at Arstentica had one developer call it a lemon. GPT 4.5 costs an incredible $75 per million input tokens, prompts and data pushed into a model, and $150 per million output tokens, as in the thing it creates. A token is like 0.7, I think one token is maybe three words. Someone will get up my ass for this.

Nevertheless, this seems like a lot. It isn't when you're running a company. And by the way, this is roughly 3,000% more expensive for input tokens and 1,500% more expensive for output tokens than GBT40 for results that OpenAI co-founder Andredge Carpathie described as a little bit better and awesome, but also not exactly in ways that are trivial to point to. That translates to, it's a little bit better, but I can't really tell you why. And yes, you're going to hear me say something similar in next week's episode because the larger picture for OpenAI right now is pretty fucking dire, considering their main backer, SoftBank has to borrow billions of dollars to fund them.

Nevertheless, back to 4.5. Since launch, which was for some reason on the day that Sam Altman's child was being born in the hospital, he's been posting some really weird shit since, though. A few days after launch, Altman claimed that GPT 4.5 was the first time people had been emailing. with such passion asking the Open AI promised never to stop offering a specific model or even replace it with an update. At which point, I assume everybody in the room started clapping. And they saluted Sam Orkman and said, thank you, sir, for making this happen. And by the way, what I'm suggesting is that no one's ever done this or like one freak did or maybe Altman emailed it to himself. Dude, just shut up. Your company burns $5 billion a year. And the best you've got is this warmed up dog shit about people marine todding you over your model and never taking it away.

Has Open AI ever even taken away a model? Jesus fucking Christ. These companies... Anyway, a few days later, Altman posted a conversation where he asked GPT 4.5 if it believed it was real, leading to a series of bullet points with things like, what do we mean by real? Only for GPD 4.5, saying that it believed that it was not an independent consciousness, but rather a structured experience happening within your consciousness, referring to Sam. Altman, which is the kind of shit that's only impressive. If you're an imbecile or so stoned, you've texted eight of your friends, the question, what if the Joker was Batman? And by the way, the answer to that is called The Batman Who Laughs, and it's one of the worst comics ever written.

If you want to talk to me about DC metal, please email me at EZ, that's E, Z or Z, if you're Canadian or British, at better offline.com. I really, if you are working for DC comics right now and you had anything to do with Death Metal or the Batman Who Laughs, you and I have a grievance. You and I need to talk. Sorry, what, this is a tech pop-box room. Right, back to OpenAI. More worryingly, Sam Altman posted an idea for paid plans where your $20 plus subscription converts the credits you can use across features like Deep Research, O1, GPT, 4.5, SORA, and so on,

with no fixed limits per feature, and you choose what you want. If you run out of credits, you can buy more. This, to be clear, is an attempt to raise prices without actually raising them by attempting to limit usage of OpenAI's more expensive models. Chat GPD Plus and other subscriptions give you a limit, for example, a limit of 80 messages every three hours on GPT40, but using one doesn't limit your use of other products. Here, OpenAI is trying to create a rent-seeking model where power users have to pay for more credits if they want to use, say, OpenAI's more expensive models like Sora and 01, and I imagine any situation like this will be one where they

hope that people simply won't use their credits or overuse them and have to pay for top-ups. of course, all theoretical, but it heavily suggests that OpenAI is getting desperate. And now the information is reporting that OpenAI executives have told some investors that they will be charging $2,000 per month for their low-end agent product. And yes, that's a quote, sold to, and again I quote, high-income knowledge workers, with supposed mid-tier agents for software development costing possibly $10,000 a month, with supposed PhD-level research agents costing $20,000 a month, and I will tell you the PhDs I know would probably do it for half. And they'd even work for an annoying asshole like Sam Altman.

Now, you may wonder what any of these things do, and the answer is that neither I nor the information know. As of right now, the only operational agent OpenAI has is operator, OpenAI's agent that sometimes successfully uses a web browser to search for something in minutes, which would usually take you seconds. The information attempted to suggest that the 2000-a-month agent would be some sort of thing that could sort through and rank sales lead. But I'm sorry, do I really have to read this shit with a straight face? $20,000 for a PhD level agent? What the fuck does that mean? What would it do? Why do these companies, I get emails every week having to justify my fucking cynicism,

but these shitheads, they're allowed to just make up stuff and it'll leak it to the information. The information publishers there were all meant to be impressed. What the fucking, what the fuck? I'm allowed to rant on these. They're allowing me to rant on these. It's just, it's sickens me. I have had this week at least five people email me and be like, well, Ed, what would it take to change your mind about this stuff? Why do I have to fucking do it? Why do I, the multi-billion dollar companies do a dog-shit job of actually explaining this stuff or selling it? They lose billions of dollars, but I'm the guy who has to justify myself. Oh, well, I'll keep doing it. Nevertheless, nestled at the bottom of this article was a far more obvious pale horse.

OpenAI is planning to charge 20% to 30% of pro customers, the $200 a month subscription that loses the money every time, a higher price because of how many research queries they're doing, with Altman according to the information, suggesting some sort of, hey, guess what, a la carte, or pay-as-you-go approach. I want to be clear about something. This is not a company that's cooking. This is not a company that's worked out anything. Open AI is unprofitable, unsustainable, and deeply, deeply lost.

These are the actions of a desperate company run by a desperate man. You've only Sam Wormtman had a thoughtful friend to talk about all these problems, too. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform?

We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are we all so obsessed with romance? On the Radio 831 podcast, join us, Sanjana Basker and Tyler McCall, as we unpack all the trending tropes, fuzzy adaptations, book talk drama, and celebrity love stories with hot takes and sharp guests. Each episode digs into what these stories reveal about the, desire, fantasy, identity, and how we love now.

Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. American soccer is about to explode. The World Cup is coming. Ramos sending on to Ernie Stewart the chip. Score! I'm Tab Ramos. I'm Tom Boca.

On our podcast, inside American soccer, you'll get the real storylines, the biggest decisions and the truth about the U.S. national team. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if our team ends up in the quarterfinals or potentially a great run into the semifinals. Listen, Inside American Soccer with Tom Bogart and Tab Ramos on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, wherever you get your podcast. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne.

Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the Hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later. We're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips.

This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they had a bogo. Well, then you got them. Listen to soccer moms on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHart podcast.

Guaranteed human.