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OpenAI Announces Funding for Startups
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- imglorp 5y agoNot exactly open - https://beta.openai.com/pricing https://beta.openai.com/pricing
- yewenjie 5y agoNot exactly open in many other ways too.
- sendtown_expwy 5y agoWhat, you want people to host services for you for free?
- minimaxir 5y agoThe OpenAI API/GPT-3 is still invite-only.
- distribot 5y agoIs there any timeline on the horizon for normies who don't know anyone important can get a token?
- worble 5y agoAs far as I'm aware, there is no intention to ever open it up. You're better off waiting for GPT-NeoX.
- distribot 5y agoNot even for people to pay for using it?
- MaxLeiter 5y agoI got the beta and didn’t do anything special, just applied relatively early. I’d just be patient, their community Slack is constantly growing.
- akarma 5y agoI was going to say "for a nonprofit all about making AI more open, maybe!" but then... https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from-nonprofit-to-capped-profit-to-attract-capital/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from-nonprof...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jfoster 5y agoI think the point is, what exactly is "open" about OpenAI? Can you download their trained model? Can you even access their API without risk of your access getting cut off? What is open about it?
- visarga 5y agoThey are open to get nice PR at any opportunity, like DeepMind.
- throwkeep 5y agoThey're about as open as Google is not evil.
- yaronhadad 5y ago+1.
- woah 5y agoOh no yea they have to keep it closed to keep terrorists from generating illicit mad-libs with their AGI
- throwkeep 5y agoThey are highly paternal and even evangelical about it, with very sensitive warnings about how the output is "harmful" and we'll make it "safe". Avert your eyes children! We will protect you and ensure textual purity in accordance with the church. George Carlin is rolling in his grave.
- tlb 5y agoPeople frequently cause harm by using language. Being cautious about something that could potentially generate orders of magnitude more targeted harmful language seems reasonable. In general, when people working full-time on a technology think it's dangerous and you don't see why, it's best to assume that they've spent a lot more time thinking of ways it could go wrong than you.
- throwkeep 5y agoThat's like deferring to people who work in the tobacco industry about what's dangerous or not with cigarettes. Also, many of them are still under the impression they're making the world a better place at Facebook and Twitter. So no, let's not pretend technologists know what's best. And they don't understand language and society better than, say, George Carlin. They only think they do.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> That's like deferring to people who work in the tobacco industry about what's dangerous or not with cigarettes It's not a symmetric bias. If someone selling you tobacco or ad spam tells you it's safe, one could reasonably be skeptical. If that same person voices specific concerns, it's more notable for coming from them.
- practice9 5y agoAlso geo-blocked in some countries
- new_realist 5y agoOpenAI wants to be YC.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- temp329192 5y agoAltman openly says, if you want to make money, you have to invest in startups (i.e. piggyback on the smarts and dedication of others). He wants to make money on whatever is hot, so there you have it. It's just sad, that they needed to deceive the audience with a BS feel-good story and a super awkward name to begin with. In my book that's basically a business no-go, period. What's worse, the field is a total minefield. Jobs will get lost, surveillance and feedback loops will get tighter - all for the sake of making X billions from Y billions. I could also see Altman replaying his early "success", something like taking 30M for BS idea and then selling it for 30.5M and celebrate big.
- minimaxir 5y agoThis funding does not appear to be explicitly GPT-3 related (any type of AI is accepted), but the video/application hints very heavily toward favoring applications using it.
- ansk 5y agoOpenAI is the corporate equivalent of a social media influencer. Rather than sponsored product promotion alongside a seductive lifestyle, they offer Azure product placement alongside trendy AI research and, now, futuristic startups.
- ipsum2 5y agoSeems like the CEO is a one-trick pony, making everything he touches a startup incubator. How does this fulfill OpenAI's mission of bringing about AGI?
- diamond_hands 5y agoI'd say money is cheap right now and fund managers would rather have people with information asymmetry invest their money, which OpenAI does via their API. I think it's a natural fit to invest in companies that use their API. This isn't a new idea, Stripe and Slack both do this.
- epberry 5y agoAre you calling Sam Altman a one trick pony? Quick list of his "tricks": - founded company, raised $40M - proved YC can scale - numerous strong individual investments (Humanyze, Routable) - CEO of OpenAI leading to $1B investment from Microsoft If allocating capital well makes someone a one trick pony, then I think we need many more ponies in the world.
- Judgmentality 5y agoEven Sam Altman considers his own company to be a failure - you fail to mention they basically sold for as much as they raised so it wasn't a success for most (if any) investors. Also I don't think Sam proved YC can scale, in fact I think it's the opposite and we just haven't had enough time to watch it play out. I certainly hold YC in lower regard than I used to, and I'm a YC alum (alternate account). He is a successful investor, I can't deny that. But he hasn't proven anything with OpenAI yet. And I think anybody that actually followed OpenAI from the beginning is really disappointed in how "open" it really is. The fact that you point to fundraising as proof of success is so bizarre. By that logic WeWork should be your favorite company of the last decade.
- CheezeIt 5y agoInvesting in startups that use AI in their course of business would be one way to expand the surface area of innovation that would lead do that end.
- jollybean 5y ago"We're here to make AI Safe" was the introduction. That's some interesting language choice.
- nathanaldensr 5y agoObjection, Your Honor. Assumes facts not in evidence: namely that AI exists.
- drusepth 5y agoIs OpenAI profitable (yet)? I thought their game plan originally was to raise a TON of money in order to not be (very) financially burdened while doing the long-term R&D necessary to build what would (hopefully) become AI models so advanced they could be traditionally monetized and level out the huge company debts. Funding startups (see: taking risky bets on time _and_ money) doesn't seem to fit into that model... unless: 1. They've built a financially-viable product [*] and have the spare time and money to start paying for adoption/growth. 2. They're adding more risk to their debts now to bet on a much bigger payoff from startups using their tech later [*]. So I guess my question is... why are they doing this? [*] I use both GPT-2 and GPT-3 almost daily and don't have a masterful understanding of either, but they both do fall short of 90% of their hype/marketing. They're amazing jumps forward, but... nobody built lasting businesses on Markov chains when they were new, either. I wouldn't want to build a business propped up solely on either of them yet.
- tyre 5y agoThe page says that OpenAI only manages the fund. The money comes from Microsoft and “others”. So if you’re OpenAI, there’s not much financial cost. What you get in return is companies using your service for a wide range of applications. You get all of their data streaming into your system, with constant feedback for you to iterate your models. It makes a lot of sense for them. For businesses, though, welcome to training Microsoft and whoever those “others” are. OpenAI took a huge amount of funding in itself from MSFT. So a company is helping OpenAI build models to replicate what they do, giving MSFT access to those models, along with whoever the others are, and letting them wait until the experience is excellent before jumping in. Sure, they only have access to the data and models. Except, oops, they also _invested_ in your company so they have access to your financials as well. They get regular status updates on whether what you’re doing makes sense. But if OpenAI is the best out there, even if training their models could eventually kill you, what choice do you have? Develop your own AI to compete against their head start and billions? You won’t win.
- stingraycharles 5y agoFrom how I read it, it’s not as if they’re spending their own money, but rather starting a new fund with other people’s money. It says specifically that OpenAI is managing the fund, and others are bringing money on the table. Whether that distracts them from their core mission is up to discussion, but I don’t think they’re increasing their debts or anything like that.
- alert0 5y agoA ton of negativity in the comments here. Greater availability of funding is awesome. I'm working on a project right now as a spinoff of a research contract that I'm going to land and apply with. Very exciting and very timely.
- natch 5y agoOpenAI doesn’t have much goodwill in the community, I would venture to say. Many people here have been disappointed by the delta between the open vision first described and the closed reality now, and also by the fact that applying for API access just leads to silence.
- sbierwagen 5y ago>in the community Which community? There is an irreconcilable conflict between AI safety and AI openness. If you create a dangerous program, and you know it's dangerous, then it would be insane to release it. This was widely pointed out when OpenAI was announced. They would need to pick one or the other, and they've picked safety. I think it was the correct decision, though it does make their name sound rather stupid now.
- mellosouls 5y agoIf you create a dangerous program, and you know it's dangerous, then it would be insane to release it. Oh please. "Only we can control this terrible monster we have created." Marketing guff.
- cma 5y ago>There is an irreconcilable conflict between AI safety and AI openness. If you create a dangerous program, and you know it's dangerous, then it would be insane to release it. >This was widely pointed out when OpenAI was announced. They would need to pick one or the other, and they've picked safety. It is a bit strange that it just happened to correlate with huge amounts of money for everyone involved around the same time, if it was really just straightening out their philosophy around openness. It transitioned from non-profit to for-profit with a non-profit parent or something at the same time.
- screye 5y agoWith the amount of money MSFT has invested in OpenAI ($1b+), is it fair that say that OpenAI risks being shadow acquired by MSFT at any moment ?
- gwern 5y agoMS's parallel DeepSpeed ZeRO effort is also pretty striking considering their investment in OA.
- dustingetz 5y agoI think he wants us to feed the AI our business plans? I wonder what they intend to do with that? Pattern match investments, or something more?
- jacob_rezi 5y agoNot entirely related but we've used the GPT-3 to augment our resume software and the results have been useful to a huge amount of job seekers. Perhaps we'll take a stab at this
- breck 5y agohttps://www.sudowrite.com/ https://www.sudowrite.com/ is one of my favorite new tools and it's also powered by GPT-3 I think. Super interesting what they are doing.
- jacob_rezi 5y agoSuch a cool concept. Here is our less creative way of using gpt-3 https://www.rezi.ai/rezi-ai-cover-letter-writer https://www.rezi.ai/rezi-ai-cover-letter-writer
- vasco 5y agoGreat seeing them expanding from just being Azure resellers.
- csmpltn 5y ago> "Developers are using GPT-3 to create realistic dialogue, summarize complex documents, answer customer services questions, and make search better than ever before" This is OpenAI desperately admitting: "nobody needs this, we'll pay you to help us find a market and a vision". What do we do with all of these fancy, expensive models? Nobody knows really. We don't really have a clear use for any of it, beyond the most rudimentary tricks. We put all of our focus into building a fancy solution, hoping we'd figure the problem out later. We're finally starting to realize none of this has a practical use.
- onenine 5y agoI have to agree. Really reminds me of IBM Watson's tech for revenue share arrangement. If any of it works well, why not build the business?
- _Nat_ 5y ago> We're finally starting to realize none of this has a practical use. Even a decent-quality chatbot could be applied all over the place. For example, video games, education, sex toys, auto-generated narratives for books/movies/games/comics/etc., sales/spam bots, tech support, enhanced searches, automated assistants, etc..
- csmpltn 5y ago> "Even a decent-quality chatbot could be applied all over the place" When shit hits the fan - you want a human being on the other side of the line to help you through whatever you need help with. Call centers can be expensive - but the chat bots we see today are truly useless, if not harmful even. We call them "bots" - but a lot of them could've been implemented like the dialogue mechanics in an RPG game (a state machine of predefined questions, and predefined answers). There's nothing "smart" about it - it's the same tech we've had for the last 30 years, rebranded. These things just don't work. GPT-3 isn't good enough - and honestly, it's not even needed.
- _Nat_ 5y agoI get the sense that you're focusing on when stuff like GPT-3 isn't useful. For example, yes, a customer with a complex issue to a call-center may need to speak to an expert that understands stuff beyond the level of a decent-quality chatbot. But a lot of humans who work at call-centers are already chatbots. And not even decent-quality ones! They're basically reading from scripts, and when they go off-script, it's often unreliable guesswork. A decent-quality chatbot could be a pretty significant improvement in many positions currently held by humans. Of course, you're right that GPT-3 isn't any sort of ultimate technological end-goal; that'd seem to go without saying. Still, it doesn't need to be some sort of uber-tech to have its uses. I mean, even a slightly smarter Google-like search box could be a helpful near-term technology.
- liamcardenas 5y agoI am a fan of Open AI, but is this not an admission that they raised more capital than they know how to deploy on research? Similarly, Peter Thiel once made a case that if Google ever paid a dividend it would be an admission that they are no longer a technology company and are instead a bet again innovation in search. [0] [0] https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ
- plaidfuji 5y agoGiven the format of the application and the sectors they’re targeting for investment (companies that would benefit from applied AI, not other pure AI plays), this reads to me more like “there need to be more customers and demonstrated use cases for the tools we built, and fast” ... “and they should also be built on Azure infra”
- sharemywin 5y agoseems like the big pile of money they sit on is proof of that.
- infocollector 5y agoTo make things lucrative, one thing that could be done is to remove the condition that OpenAI APIs must be used. But - the people who are going to pitch to OpenAI also are opening themselves up for competition. Another option would be to spin out an OpenAI Venture firm without strings attached?
- cjsplat 5y agoOr the OpenAI venture fund is an acknowledgement that success requires an ecosystem that extends beyond their front door. Funding startups is a great way to signal that OpenAI thinks their stuff is so compelling that it will lead to startup-worthy ROI. It is also a way to get a track on potential acquisitions. The alternative is a pure NIH strategy, or build something and hope for partners, both of which are flawed. And regarding the Thiel snippet, dividends are isomorphic to stock buybacks, which Google has been doing for a while. They seem to still be a tech company, at least as far as my Ex-Googler eyes can judge.
- shafyy 5y agoWhat goes around comes around?
- andyxor 5y agoI for one welcome this announcement, take that enormous "AI" money and fund people who have an actual product. Brilliant.
- nl 5y agoThe cynicism on this thread is startlingly bad. OpenAI is one of the top 5 AI research groups in the world. Getting early access to their systems is an amazing opportunity. Of course they should fund AI startups: $100M isn't much for Microsoft and others to put up as an investment in a Sam Altman-led fund, and innovation is what happens elsewhere.
- mellosouls 5y agoThis is a great company, doing great things but the cynicism towards "Open" AI is of their own making; the original vision that many here supported seemingly left by the wayside as soon as the money started rolling in. There would be less "cynicism" if they had either stuck to the original open plan (or communicated the lack of openness intended better from the get-go); or at the very least were honest about their seeming U Turn and changed the name to reflect the new position - maybe branching the actual open stuff off into a separate and clearly demarcated organisation.
- RocketSyntax 5y agoform is broken lol
- latenightcoding 5y agowhat the hell is OpenAI anymore.
- turingbook 5y agoIs there profitable business based on GPT-3?
- amilios 5y agoMaybe AI Dungeon? That's the only one I could think of
- cma 5y agoHe says people are using GPT-3 to answer customer questions in chats.. how is that possible? How do you prevent it from acting as an agent and committing you to something you can't commit to, introducing legal liability? Do you just have some small legal disclaimer that everything it says should be treated as entertainment only?
- vincentmarle 5y ago> If your startup plans to push the boundaries of today’s artificial intelligence by building with our API, we want to hear from you. How about just giving me access to your API so I can start tinkering with it, and who knows, maybe it becomes a startup that you can fund?
- maddyboo 5y agoI got my beta invite last month. I messed around with it for about 30-45 minutes, only to discover that I had already blown through half of my allocated “trial credits”. This really killed my motivation to keep tinkering with the product.
- inopinatus 5y agoI had exactly the same experience, and any hope of developing a business case went out the window when I realised I'd need a business case to justify the expense of developing a business case. In a desperate attempt to salvage the possibility of using the AI in any fashion I tried prompting GPT-3 to write the business case for itself, feeding it excerpts of several successful such documents of my own to set the tone and structure, at which point I ran out of credits. You can try doing the same on the cheap with AI Dungeon, but there's a fair chance it'll be overrun by vampires and mad scientists before the IRR-to-WACC ratio estimation section, rendering any such document fit only for mopping up after goblins. You feel a sudden pain in your chest.
- graiz 5y agoI think it's awesome that Sam and Co. are doing this. I can imagine variations of GPT predicting bio-tech, medicine, human relationships, environment, politics and more. Many of the companies tapping into GPT3 are just scratching the surface. I love that they are funding some big bets.