4 ms·

Github Copilot seems like a pretty clear example. They charge a subscription that's in excess of the marginal cost of inference.

medler 4y ago
That’s a good point. I forgot about Copilot.
- visarga 4y ago
  Midjourney, NaturalReaders (text to speech reader)
andygeorge 4y ago
curious if/when MS will get desirable returns on the significant investment needed to run/train copilot
- dougmwne 4y ago
  It's a good question, but also helpful to point out that one of the beauties of these models is that you can train them once and deploy to many use cases. The same model can be used by Github, Bing, Office 365, Azure and so on. And as for the big multi-billion investment in OpenAI, they may have more than made that back up on their valuation already. Plus the deal was structured that OpenAI would pay it's revenues into Microsoft till the investment was paid back and MS would sill end up with a 49% stake. All in all, sounds like a smart investment from MS and, cerry on top, managed to majorly embarrass a main rival.
  - andygeorge 4y ago
    agree on it being a good play by MS. will interesting to see if they do spin it out to their other realms
- zamnos 4y ago
  The question there is how many of the estimated 100,000 software engineers at Microsoft are using Copilot, and what has been their (I'm sure measured) productivity boost. Microsoft does derive some benefit from Copilot being accessible to the paying subscribers of the world from having them give feedback and in free (and paid) press. But the internal use numbers probably easily justify its initial cost to train. Say Copilot makes an engineer 2x as productive, their all-in salary is $500k to make the math easy, 1,000 MS sw engineers are using it, and Copilot took $5mm to train (GPT-3 took $4.6mm). Those 1k MS employees now being twice as productive are doing the work of an extra 1k people at $500k, or $500 million's worth in a year. That means $5 million in Copilot training costs are paid for in... 4 days. I have no inside information, so those number are all made up, but I'm pretty sure the initial training costs have already been paid off internally. We also don't know how many multiples of $5mm it took to produce the initial version of Copilot, nor how many subsequent training runs there have been. Point is, any significant productivity gains made, across an organization the size of Microsoft engineering, easily pays for big expensive training runs.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ssijak 4y ago
    It makes tou nowhere nearly 2x productive. Usefull yes but 2x is a dream
  - visarga 4y ago
    SOME parts of an engineer's work are 2x faster, but not all. Generating code - yes, writing tests and docs - yes, designing the system - no, debugging - no, attending meetings - no, getting your data faster, or moving the other team to finish integration sooner - no help. So it's going to be 10% boost overall, not 100%. The nice effect is that the AI makes people more confident to try things and go out of their comfort zone. Maybe the quality of the end product will be higher.
- blackoil 4y ago
  If the return are computed by increase in market cap, they may already have got that.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
deanc 4y ago
I’d be astonished if they’re even close to breaking even on copilot. In its current incarnation it wouldn’t even lace the boots of what’s coming out of OpenAI. CopilotX with its OpenAI collab will be the real winner - if it ever gets released to those on the waitlist. I’m not aware of anyone who got in yet, which leads me to believe it doesn’t yet exist.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bugglebeetle 4y ago
  I got access to the Copilot CLI, which is supposed to be part of the Copilot X package eventually. Dunno anyone who has gotten access to Copilot Chat yet, which I expect is what everyone really wants.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > In its current incarnation it wouldn’t even lace the boots of what’s coming out of OpenAI. I don’t know about you, but Copilot is part of my daily work, while OpenAI ChatGPT is still more or less a toy to me.
- fastball 4y ago
  Copilot is already "backed" by OpenAI – it uses Codex under the hood which is a fine-tuned GPT-3 model. CopilotX is not a paradigm shift, it's a version change from GPT-3 to GPT-4.
  - visarga 4y ago
    GPT4 is arguably much better at coding, hence the "paradigm shift".
- Kiro 4y ago
  Copilot is and has always been OpenAI so not sure what you're talking about.

medler 4y ago

That’s a good point. I forgot about Copilot.

visarga 4y ago
Midjourney, NaturalReaders (text to speech reader)

andygeorge 4y ago

curious if/when MS will get desirable returns on the significant investment needed to run/train copilot

dougmwne 4y ago
It's a good question, but also helpful to point out that one of the beauties of these models is that you can train them once and deploy to many use cases. The same model can be used by Github, Bing, Office 365, Azure and so on. And as for the big multi-billion investment in OpenAI, they may have more than made that back up on their valuation already. Plus the deal was structured that OpenAI would pay it's revenues into Microsoft till the investment was paid back and MS would sill end up with a 49% stake. All in all, sounds like a smart investment from MS and, cerry on top, managed to majorly embarrass a main rival.
- andygeorge 4y ago
  agree on it being a good play by MS. will interesting to see if they do spin it out to their other realms
zamnos 4y ago
The question there is how many of the estimated 100,000 software engineers at Microsoft are using Copilot, and what has been their (I'm sure measured) productivity boost. Microsoft does derive some benefit from Copilot being accessible to the paying subscribers of the world from having them give feedback and in free (and paid) press. But the internal use numbers probably easily justify its initial cost to train. Say Copilot makes an engineer 2x as productive, their all-in salary is $500k to make the math easy, 1,000 MS sw engineers are using it, and Copilot took $5mm to train (GPT-3 took $4.6mm). Those 1k MS employees now being twice as productive are doing the work of an extra 1k people at $500k, or $500 million's worth in a year. That means $5 million in Copilot training costs are paid for in... 4 days. I have no inside information, so those number are all made up, but I'm pretty sure the initial training costs have already been paid off internally. We also don't know how many multiples of $5mm it took to produce the initial version of Copilot, nor how many subsequent training runs there have been. Point is, any significant productivity gains made, across an organization the size of Microsoft engineering, easily pays for big expensive training runs.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ssijak 4y ago
  It makes tou nowhere nearly 2x productive. Usefull yes but 2x is a dream
- visarga 4y ago
  SOME parts of an engineer's work are 2x faster, but not all. Generating code - yes, writing tests and docs - yes, designing the system - no, debugging - no, attending meetings - no, getting your data faster, or moving the other team to finish integration sooner - no help. So it's going to be 10% boost overall, not 100%. The nice effect is that the AI makes people more confident to try things and go out of their comfort zone. Maybe the quality of the end product will be higher.
blackoil 4y ago
If the return are computed by increase in market cap, they may already have got that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

deanc 4y ago

I’d be astonished if they’re even close to breaking even on copilot. In its current incarnation it wouldn’t even lace the boots of what’s coming out of OpenAI. CopilotX with its OpenAI collab will be the real winner - if it ever gets released to those on the waitlist. I’m not aware of anyone who got in yet, which leads me to believe it doesn’t yet exist.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bugglebeetle 4y ago
I got access to the Copilot CLI, which is supposed to be part of the Copilot X package eventually. Dunno anyone who has gotten access to Copilot Chat yet, which I expect is what everyone really wants.
Aeolun 4y ago
> In its current incarnation it wouldn’t even lace the boots of what’s coming out of OpenAI. I don’t know about you, but Copilot is part of my daily work, while OpenAI ChatGPT is still more or less a toy to me.
fastball 4y ago
Copilot is already "backed" by OpenAI – it uses Codex under the hood which is a fine-tuned GPT-3 model. CopilotX is not a paradigm shift, it's a version change from GPT-3 to GPT-4.
- visarga 4y ago
  GPT4 is arguably much better at coding, hence the "paradigm shift".
Kiro 4y ago
Copilot is and has always been OpenAI so not sure what you're talking about.