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0 pointsel_nahual2y ago0 comments

People keep saying this is commoditize your complement but that's not what this is!

Goods A and B are economic complements if, when the price of A goes down, demand for B goes up.

LLMs are not complements to social media platforms. There is zero evidence that if "the price of LLMs goes down" then "demand for social media apps go up".

This is a case of commoditizing the competition but that's not the same thing.

Commoditizing your complement:

- All-inclusive resorts. Restaurants are a complement to hotels. If food is free I might go on vacation more.

- Smartphone app-stores. Apps are a complement to phones. If apps cost $0.99 there will be more demand for iphones than if apps cost $20.

This is Zuck being an absolute shark and not wanting his competitors to have a monopoly over LLMs in case they win at some other game. It has nothing to do with "commoditize your complement."

0 pointsel_nahual2y ago0 comments

People keep saying this is commoditize your complement but that's not what this is!

Goods A and B are economic complements if, when the price of A goes down, demand for B goes up.

LLMs are not complements to social media platforms. There is zero evidence that if "the price of LLMs goes down" then "demand for social media apps go up".

This is a case of commoditizing the competition but that's not the same thing.

Commoditizing your complement:

- All-inclusive resorts. Restaurants are a complement to hotels. If food is free I might go on vacation more.

- Smartphone app-stores. Apps are a complement to phones. If apps cost $0.99 there will be more demand for iphones than if apps cost $20.

This is Zuck being an absolute shark and not wanting his competitors to have a monopoly over LLMs in case they win at some other game. It has nothing to do with "commoditize your complement."

0 comments

4 comments · 4 top-level

raincole2y ago

If we're going to theory-crafting, I think if the price of LLMs goes down, the demand for social media should go down too. Cause it's easy to make social media platforms worse with LLMs.

1 more reply

bg242y ago

Nice analogy and explanation. Another aspect is building a ubiquitous platform and figure out how to monetize later as they (Meta) already have a cash cow.

Zuck is a smart leader. Metaverse was a debacle. But the new world (AI centric) is for real. He is likely focusing on both weakening the stronghold of Google and building a massive community (like Android) around llama. Product ideas (including enterprise focus) will emerge over time.

1 more reply

whimsicalism2y ago

You're right - as Meta is not a cloud provider, I should have said commoditizing the competition.

I do think Meta probably benefits from commodity NLP inference as well, but not as a complement.

meindnoch2y ago

>LLMs are not complements to social media platforms

Tell that to the people generating text for social media campaigns using LLMs.

2 more replies

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