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OpenAI acquires Global Illumination
- kitanata 3y ago[flagged]
- minimaxir 3y agoGlobal Illumination appears to have been working on a browser-based multiplayer Minecraft clone (https://www.biomes.gg/ https://www.biomes.gg/), not anything explicitly related to AI content generation. Odd acquisition choice unless OpenAI is going to do an unexpected pivot.
- uoaei 3y agoPeople have been training ML to play Minecraft via text commands for a while. Having access to the guts of a clone makes perfect sense given their past and present projects.
- gaudystead 3y agoJust speculating here but... More than just _playing_ a game, I could see OpenAI wanting to go after the 3D assets market by letting players generate levels, items, and perhaps even NPCs, simply by describing them. It might be easier to generate voxel-based assets first though, which would make Minecraft-esque games a logical first target (perhaps just behind 2D games, but I suspect the market isn't as big there).
- ddmma 3y agoI agree, let’s presume that we will expect some more functionality like Text to 3D generated content. CAD is big market
- ShamelessC 3y agoMaybe...if they didn't already have direct access to the original via Microsoft.
- uoaei 3y agoThat's a good point. Looks like there's more to the story in the announcement.
- rvnx 3y ago"Conspiracy" theory: Couldn't it be the opposite ? Let's imagine, that Microsoft, one of the main investor of OpenAI, wants to get rid of a solid open-source Minecraft clone before it gets popular ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPHEtewFm3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPHEtewFm3M Not saying it's true, but that's totally reasonable to spend xxM USD if you have to defend your multi-billion game license.
- edgyquant 3y agoI would totally buy this. This way Microsoft doesn’t look bad in an era where big tech is coming under scrutiny for acquisitions.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThe market is littered with clones of minecraft and has been since before it was even done being made. None of them have even been remotely a threat to Minecraft. Turns out you need way more than just a bunch of blocks.
- 93po 3y agoI'd be really curious how this training works. Is it done on a real-time minecraft application, or did they build a custom game engine that mimics minecraft but without any movement delay and without any graphics so the speed of training could be thousands of times faster?
- burcs 3y agoThere was that Sims post the other day from a16z as well. Seems like a plausible next area for them to take on. Was it them or someone else who trained their bots on Dota a few years back?
- minimaxir 3y agoIt was them. https://openai.com/research/openai-five https://openai.com/research/openai-five They've since abandoned all their reinforcement learning projects. (aside from RLHF for training ChatGPT)
- uoaei 3y agoDid they make a public announcement to that effect? Or do you have insider knowledge?
- minimaxir 3y agoA co-founder announced they disbanded their robotics team a couple years ago: https://venturebeat.com/business/openai-disbands-its-robotics-research-team/ https://venturebeat.com/business/openai-disbands-its-robotic... That was the same time they depreciated OpenAI Gym: https://github.com/openai/gym https://github.com/openai/gym
- burcs 3y agoThanks for the link! That's a shame, I was really impressed with their research in that space.
- paxys 3y agoTheir statement is pretty clear about what they see as the value add: > OpenAI has acquired the team at Global Illumination, a company founded by Thomas Dimson, Taylor Gordon, and Joey Flynn. The entire team has joined OpenAI to work on our core products including ChatGPT. Global Illumination is a company that has been leveraging AI to build creative tools, infrastructure, and digital experiences. The team previously designed and built products early on at Instagram and Facebook and have also made significant contributions at YouTube, Google, Pixar, Riot Games, and other notable companies. We’re very excited for the impact they’ll have here at OpenAI. Seems like a very standard acquihire. There's no indication that any of Global Illumination's projects will continue, or that OpenAI will get into the gaming business.
- moralestapia 3y ago??? Sorry, I don't see any of that written there, not "pretty clear" to me.
- cercatrova 3y agoScroll down.
- moralestapia 3y agoScroll down to where? It's a 4 line comment.
- cercatrova 3y agoScroll down on the post, not the comments, and you'll see where the parent pulled their quote from, which you said you "don't see any of that written there," well, it's written there.
- moralestapia 3y agoNonsense. What's the point of the quote, then?
- rvnx 3y agoIf it is the people but not the company that were interesting, OpenAI could make an offer to each of the persons working there. So obviously yes it's an odd decision to buy an open-source MMORPG, but there are tons of possibilities. Plenty of times, you can see large companies buying non-sense, or companies at outrageous price (we just don't know the price in the case here). Sometimes even to fire the people behind, and throw away the product. It can be for many reasons: - Either they really have a solid business use which justifies the acquisition or - Perhaps they have a common investor/VC, and that investor is influent enough in OpenAI to "convince" the board to buy the company. or - Some investors give a kickback on the acquisition (I don't think so) or - Microsoft wanted to early kill a competitor to Minecraft. etc. Probably it'll be difficult to know.
- peterhunt 3y agoI worked with these guys a long time ago at FB. Their founder and CEO created The Algorithm at Instagram. Rest of the team is super strong too. Makes a lot of sense for OpenAI to acquire a team at the intersection of AI and consumer products.
- londons_explore 3y agoI think they have to decide if they want to be an API provider or a product-maker. Businesses don't tend to do well when they directly compete with their clients. At the very least spin one off into a subsidiary whose affiliation isn't widely known.
- falcor84 3y ago>Businesses don't tend to do well when they directly compete with their clients. True in general, but then we have Amazon.
- londons_explore 3y agoPeople like Walmart still refuse to let any customer data near AWS.
- catchnear4321 3y agoyou wrote people. did you mean corporations? don’t let those darn things trick you into thinking they are people. legally it gets murky, but they aren’t people. it is all just a ploy for emotional connection for the sake of taking advantage of you. like cats.
- _pdp_ 3y ago100% Yep. I like OpenAI but I think their peril will be due to lack of vision more than anything else. Other players are catching up. IMHO they should stick to providing AI infrastructure. That being said, considering Microsoft's investment, the most likely outcome is that OpenAI will move into the consumer business while being the research arm for Azure.
- samstave 3y agoOpen AI voxel-based AI dynamic navigable 3d environs.
- mugivarra69 3y agoseems like they gunning for deepmind rl based ideas.
- serjester 3y agoThey are devoting enormous resources to studying LLM safety - my assumption is they’re trying to push the limits of what’s possible with autonomous agents before someone else does. If you can build a bot to beat an open world game as complex as Minecraft, you’re pretty close to automating an enormous amount of jobs and potentially doing some destructive stuff. This seems like an aquihire to kickstart that initiative. Full disclosure this is a complete assumption, could just as well be on the whims of Sama. I’m skeptical of the other answers here - OpenAI is perfectly capable of hiring some of the best PM’s in the world without having to buy a company.
- flangola7 3y agoPart of Minecraft is gathering resources, building weapons, and out-manoeuvering and killing enemies. Forget jobs, those implications keep me up.
- bozhark 3y agoRoblox for AI
- sheepscreek 3y agoRead somewhere recently about OpenAI bleeding senior talent. Could be in response to that.
- Solvency 3y agoWhere did you read this, and what was the reasoning?
- KaoruAoiShiho 3y agoWell a metaverse or character.ai like product is an obvious application.
- gtwomd 3y agoI guess no one else is allowed to have indirect lighting anymore (/s) As someone not well versed in how startups work, why do they need to acquire the entire company to have the team work for them, as opposed to negotiating with the employees individually? Is it essentially a lump sum payment to stop what they were currently working on.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> As someone not well versed in how startups work, why do they need to acquire the entire company to have the team work for them, as opposed to negotiating with the employees individually? Because otherwise, the team would have the option of continuing their current employment. Take away the alternative they are demonstrably already choosing over you, and you have a better chance of getting and keeping them.
- proser 3y agoIt also usually triggers a liquidity event, so the team gets paid (or their equity gets transferred to OpenAI) in a way that provides a bit of a bonus and incentive to stick around.
- KaiserPro 3y agoa quick overview of the startup economy 1) have an idea, negotiate seed funding. Someone will give you a bunch of money to make an MVP. the "angel" or "seeder" will exchange money for a percentage of the company. They will have a say in how its run 2) grow the company according to the metrics that make you look valuable (market share is normally the common one) 3) growing costs money, so raise a "series a" same deal as before, either seeder/angels are bought out, or their share of the company is diluted in exchange for more monoey from the funders, typically a VC. 4) repeat until either bankrupt, IPO, Profitable, or boughtout. Now. As an early employee, you are given shares in the company. Typically <1%. the more rounds you have, the more diluted that percentage gets. when the company is bought out, your shares are exchanged for a price. however as you didn't put the money in, you are a way down the pecking order for getting the cash. Not only this, but a "buyout" price is rarely the headline price. For example CTRL-Labs[1] was "bought out" for $500 mill. However thats not the price they paid for the company. thats the price paid for the company and the "golden handcuffs" to keep employees. of that 500mill some of is say <75m will go to physically buy the company, the rest will go towards golden handcuffs to keep the employees working. After all, if you give most of the company >$2m upfront, they'll say "work for facebook? fuck that, I'm retiring" So to combat that, you'll get your 0.0001% of $75m, then offered a contract with the new company that will give you shares that will be released to you gradually after a certain cool off period, say one year (Fb and google give you 6.25% every 3 months.) That means that to get your $2m you need to work for the new company for four years. [1]https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-acquired-brain-computing-startup-ctro-labs-2019-9?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-acquired-brain-comp...
- liminal 3y agoReinforcement learning with better graphics?
- throwaway4aday 3y agoJust dropping this here since it looks like a lot of people haven't heard of it. Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.16291 https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.16291
- ilaksh 3y agoThe fact that they built a Minecraft clone for the web is probably not the main point. It's just one of many systems they have built. (There have actually been multiple Minecraft-like web codebases around for years. Nothing as complete as Biomes that I know of though. I built a basic one 11 years ago. https://vimeo.com/50111926/comments https://vimeo.com/50111926/comments) They obviously already have lots of machine learning expertise and wanted top-level application engineering. This is a way to acquire a whole integrated team.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dicksonxavier 3y agoThey started with games with RL libraries like gym, so probably they may try to optimize their llms with simulated agents. Or they are planning for a great marketing strategy with improved algorithms