6 ms·
The only power MS has is soft power as a backer. Will that win over the board's actual power? If MS pulls investment it will be a catastrophic blow.
by cedws 3y ago
The only power MS has is soft power as a backer. Will that win over the board's actual power? If MS pulls investment it will be a catastrophic blow.
- bossyTeacher 3y agoThat's actually hard power. MS is in a position to destroy OpenAI
- croes 3y agoMS took a large bet on OpenAI and already integrated it in many of its products. Destroying OpenAI good backfire big time.
- alecco 3y agoAny other FAANG would happily fill that position if MS drops the ball.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoBingo. Compute is fungible. It would be ironic if everyone killed OpenAI by denying them compute though. Still, OpenAI is a peacock feather in Microsoft’s cap. They’re either bluffing, foolish, or prescient to let it go.
- purplerabbit 3y agoNot at this magnitude. If you read the latest Semianalysis article, Microsoft’s current infra project is the largest infra project currently being undertaken by humankind (not sure if that’s overstatement, but regardless, $50B largely and competently directed towards (Open)AI-supporting hardware isn’t something easily replicable)
- a-r-t 3y agoApple is sitting on $162B in cash right now and would definitely benefit from OpenAI's IP.
- tstrimple 3y agoApple doesn’t have anything close to the experience of running things “at scale” as Microsoft, Google or Amazon. Completely different levels. Apple would have challenges maintaining the update infrastructure for any of these other orgs. They simply do not exist on the same scale of compute power and management. I say this as an Apple apologist whose entire household consolidates on Apple devices and services. iCloud is simply nothing compared to the scale and capabilities of OneDrive and related services. I don’t think cash alone is enough. Proven ability to execute at scale matters.
- indecisive_user 3y agoDoes any other cloud provider have the extra compute necessary to run ChatGPT just lying around? With the current shortage of hardware, it's not as simple as "scaling up" if the resources literally don't exist.
- unix_fan 3y agoI doubt anybody else would take the same risk, not with the board still in power.
- bilal4hmed 3y agopulling investment would be a hard power. Imagine if Microsoft says the change in leadership and idiotic board means the contract is done, no more compute for openAI and then goes on to back Sam Altmans new company openai will be writing papers and asking for donations within a weeks time at that point as the rest of openAI quits
- dontupvoteme 3y ago.. and MS takes a massive hit financially as they're hardpdroven as an unreliable cloud service.
- tempnow987 3y agoUh, you have a nonprofit board firing a CEO at a board meeting that doesn't even sound like was properly noticed. Was the board president even given time to attend? And Microsoft has total rights to the models and weights, so they can CONTINUE their services and then spin up with Sam's new company.
- staticman2 3y ago*Uh, you have a nonprofit board firing a CEO at a board meeting that doesn't even sound like was properly noticed. Was the board president even given time to attend?* I think it's reasonable to assume that even a controversial board checked with their lawyer and did what was legally required. Especially as nobody involved seems to be claiming otherwise.
- dboreham 3y agoDifference between "legally required" and "above clown car level professionalism".
- jkaplowitz 3y agoIf they had written consents from a majority of the board to remove Altman and Brockman from the board, then depending on the applicable nonprofit law and corporate governance documents, the board removals may very well have been legally conducted without need for a properly noticed board meeting. (For the actual firing of Altman, that might have been legal either through written consents or through a board meeting after the removals of Altman and Brockman.) Having no information on what laws and governance documents apply to OpenAI or on what steps the board took, I express no opinion on whether the legal requirements were actually met, but it’s possible they were.
- moralestapia 3y agoYeah, MS leaving is the absolute end of OpenAI (and for all practical purposes the end of Ilya's career). It's Satya's call now, he's not happy and wants @sama back. Next week is going to be interesting!
- jug 3y agoMS leaving would also be a disaster for subsequent development of Bing, Windows Copilot, Office Copilot, Teams AI, various strategically important Azure service like Semantic Search etc. They’ve gone all in on OpenAI LLM’s, support nothing else and have coupled all their AI to them.
- mannerheim 3y ago> Microsoft has certain rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property so if their relationship were to break down, Microsoft would still be able to run OpenAI’s current models on its servers. https://archive.is/jUJEH https://archive.is/jUJEH
- lucubratory 3y agoAnd in exchange for those rights, OpenAI has certain rights to compute credits. Microsoft doesn't get to break contract and keep what they got out of the deal while ceasing to supply what provided as part of the deal. That's called theft.
- blackoil 3y agoSure, you'll prove that out in a court over this week?
- lucubratory 3y agoMicrosoft is an enterprise company first. They're not going to break contract with a business.
- 3y ago
- manyoso 3y agoWould be a catastrophic blow to MS too.
- Simon_ORourke 3y agoThat's the choice isn't it. Either reinstall Sam Altman and sack the board, or move the funding to whatever entity he goes and sets up next.
- sdenton4 3y agoOr set off a new bidding war for both the researchers that quit and the pile of new startups... There's no rule that stays M$ would have to be the only bidder for the new venture(s).
- staticman2 3y agoI've seen people say this but why would Microsoft fund a new Altman startup instead of spending that money on developing their own AI owned by Microsoft?
- siva7 3y agoLike Google did?
- staticman2 3y agoGoogle is at best only partially funding Anthropic, Amazon committed "up to 4 billion" in funding. They have their own competing technology in development.
- tstrimple 3y agoThe moat isn’t very deep or wide here. It does exist, but most FAANG (including Microsoft) should be able to overcome it with the right investments. Microsoft is probably best positioned to leverage this tech with the integration they have been pursuing across most of their products. They have probably mage better use of “OpenAI” than any other company and are in the best position to replace them.