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Yeah I actually do cite that piece in the appendix 'GDP as a proxy for welfare' where I list more literature like this. So yeah, it's not a perfect measure but it's the one we have and 'all models are wrong but some are useful' and GDP is quite a powerful predictor of all kinds of outcomes:
In a 2016 paper, Jones and Klenow used measures of consumption, leisure, inequality, and mortality, to create a consumption-equivalent welfare measure that allows comparisons across time for a given country, as well as across countries.[6]
This measure of human welfare suggests that the true level of welfare of some countries differs markedly from the level that might be suggested by their GDP per capita. For example, France’s GDP per capita is around 60% of US GDP per capita.[7] However, France has lower inequality, lower mortality, and more leisure time than the US. Thus, on the Jones and Klenow measure of welfare, France’s welfare per person is 92% of US welfare per person.[8]
Although GDP per capita is distinct from this expanded welfare metric, the correlation between GDP per capita and this expanded welfare metric is very strong at 0.96, though there is substantial variation across countries, and welfare is more dispersed (standard deviation of 1.51 in logs) than is income (standard deviation of 1.27 in logs).[9]
GDP per capita is also very strongly correlated with the Human Development Index, another expanded welfare metric.[10] If measures such as these are accurate, this shows that income per head explains most of the observed cross-national variation in welfare. It is a distinct question whether economic growth explains most of the observed variation across individuals in welfare. It is, however, clear that it explains a substantial fraction of the variation across individuals.
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“The Bootleggers and Baptists effect describes cases where an industry (e.g. bootleggers) agrees with prosocial actors like regulators (e.g. baptists) to regulate more (here ban alcohol during the prohibition) to maximize profits and deter entry. This seems to be happening in AI where the industry lobbies for stricter regulation. Yet, in the EU, OpenAI lobbied to water down EU AI regulation to not classify GPT as 'high risk' to exempt it from stringent legal requirements.[1] In the US, the FTC recently said that Big Tech intimidates competition regulators.[2] Capture can also manifest by passively accepting industry practices, which is problematic in high-risk scenarios where thorough regulation is key. After all, AI expertise gathers in particular geographic communities. We must avoid cultural capture when social preferences interfere with policy, since regulators interact with workers from regulated firms. Although less of a concern in a rule-based system, a standard-based system would enable more informal influence via considerable regulator discretion. We must reduce these risks, e.g. by appointing independent regulators and requiring public disclosure of regulatory decisions.”
“Big Tech also takes greater legal risks by aggressively and (illegally) collecting data with negative externalities for users and third parties (similarly, Big Tech often violates IP [3] while lobbying against laws to stop patent trolling, claiming they harm real patents, but actually, this makes new patents from startups worth less and more costly to enforce.)[4] “
Hanson Strawmans the AI-Ruin Argument
I don't agree with Hanson generally, but I think there's something there that rationalist AI risk public outreach has overemphasized first principles thinking, theory, and logical possibilities (e.g. evolution, gradient decent, human-chimp analogy, ) over concrete more tangible empirical findings (e.g. deception emerging in small models, specification gaming, LLMs helping to create WMDs, etc.).
Is OpenAI gaming user numbers?
Gdoc here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1os0WNmJ-O1eEGeKr543nkemnXbTmYkE2sC-t51c9OE4/edit?tab=t.0
Some have questioned OpenAI's recent weekly user numbers:[1]
Feb '23: 100M[2]
Sep '24: 200M[3] of which 11.5M paid, Enterprise: 1M[4]
Feb '25: 400M[5] of which 15M paid, 15.5M[6] / Enterprise: 2M
One can see:
Where did that growth come from? It's not from apps: the ChatGPT iOS app only has ~353M downloads total[7] and Apple's Siri integration only launched in December.[8] Users come from developing countries.[9] For instance, India is now OpenAI's second largest market, by number of users, which have tripled in the past year.[10]
What counts as a user? True, ChatGPT grew faster than the fastest growing company ever, but social media has a much stronger network effect 'lock in' consumers longterm, whereas users will presumably switch AI chatbots much faster if a cheaper product becomes available. Many use ChatGPT merely as a writing assistant.[16] While consumer markets for social media can be winner-take-all, enterprise customers, while having doubled recently, will be less loyal and will switch if competitors offer a cheaper product.[17]
So maybe there's some very liberal counting of user numbers going on. Valuation goes up. Meanwhile hundreds of OpenAI's current and ex-employees are cashing out.[18]
Also, competition has caught up and so, Microsoft, which owns half of OpenAI, wants others to invest.[19] Yet, OpenAI CFO just said $11B in revenue is 'definitely in the realm of possibility' in 2025 (they're at ~$4B year-on-year currently) to get $40B from Softbank investment at a ~$300B valuation.[20] More recently this dropped to $30B and they scrambling to find others to co-invest in Stargate.
This is the standard playbook- recent examples include Roblox, which also inflated user numbers,[21] and Coinbase, which used to be lax with their KYC for obvious reasons and had inflated user numbers (it's also literally a plot point in Succession).
Also cf:
The market expects AI software to create trillions of dollars of value by 2027 AI stocks could crash [1] The Generative AI Con
[2] ChatGPT sets record for fastest-growing user base - analyst note | Reuters
[3] OpenAI says ChatGPT's weekly users have grown to 200 million | Reuters
[4] OpenAI hits more than 1 million paid business users | Reuters
[5] OpenAI tops 400 million users despite DeepSeek's emergence
[6] https://archive.ph/wff26
[7] ChatGPT's mobile users are 85% male, report says | TechCrunch
[8] Apple launches its ChatGPT integration with Siri.
[9] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&q=chatgpt&hl=en
[10] India now OpenAI's second largest market, Altman says | Reuters
[11] Anyone else have multiple accounts so they don't have to wait to use gpt 4o and also so each one can have a separate memory : r/ChatGPT
[12] https://incogniton.com/blog/how-to-bypass-chatgpt-limitations
[13] ChatGPT is now available on WhatsApp, calls: How to access - Times of India
[14] OpenAI tests phone number-only ChatGPT signups | TechCrunch
[15] ChatGPT drops its sign-in requirement for search | The Verge
[16] [2502.09747] The Widespread Adoption of Large Language Model-Assisted Writing Across Society
[17] Satya Nadella – Microsoft’s AGI Plan & Quantum Breakthrough.
[18] Hundreds of OpenAI's current and ex-employees are about to get a huge payday by cashing out up to $10 million each in a private stock sale | Fortune
[19] Microsoft Outsources OpenAI's Ambitions to SoftBank
[20] OpenAI CFO talks possibility of going public, says Musk bid isn't a distraction
[21] Roblox: Inflated Key Metrics For Wall Street And A Pedophile Hellscape For Kids – Hindenburg Research