OpenAI's Greg Brockman says it's not too late to build AI startups
"Sometimes it might feel like all the ideas are taken, but the economy is so big," Greg Brockman, OpenAI's cofounder and president, said in an episode of the "Latent Space" podcast released on Saturday. "It is worthwhile and really important for people to really think about how do we get the most out of these amazing intelligences that we've created."
Brockman said startups that connect large language models to real-world applications are extremely valuable.
Brockman, who cofounded OpenAI in 2015, added that domains like healthcare require founders to think about all the stakeholders and how they can insert AI models into the existing system.
"There is so much fruit that is not yet picked, so go ahead and ride the GPT river," he said.
Brockman also advised founders against building "better wrappers.""AI wrapper" is a dismissive term used to refer to simple applications that are built on top of existing AI models and can be easily offered by LLM companies themselves.
"It's really about understanding a domain and building up expertise and relationships and all of those things," Brockman said.
Brockman's comments are part of a Silicon Valley debate about how new AI founders can future-proof their startup ideas.
Last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said his company would "steamroll" any startup building "little things" on top of its model. He said that companies that underestimate the speed of AI model growth risk becoming part of the "OpenAI killed my startup meme."
In a June podcast, Instagram cofounder and Anthropic's chief product officer, Mike Krieger, offered some advice for startups that want to avoid being made obsolete by LLM companies.
Startups with deep knowledge in areas like law or biotechnology and those with good customer relationships can survive AI giants, Krieger said. He also suggested that startups play with new AI interfaces that feel "very weird" at first.
"I don't envy them," he added, about founders wanting to build in the AI space. "Maybe that's part of the reason why I wanted to join a company rather than start one."
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