10 ms·
Have to give it to Satya. There's a thin possibility that Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B (or more?) investment in OpenAI, but that isn't Satya
by shubhamjain 3y ago
Have to give it to Satya. There's a thin possibility that Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B (or more?) investment in OpenAI, but that isn't Satya's focus. The focus is on what he can do next. Maybe, recruit the most formidable AI team in the world, removed from the shackles of an awkward non-profit owning a for-profit company? Give enough (cash) incentives and most of OpenAI employees would have no qualms about following Sam and Greg. It will take time for sure, but Microsoft can now capture even a bigger slice of THE FUTURE than it was possible with OpenAI investment.
- bottlepalm 3y agoMaybe the next move is an open offer to any OpenAI employees to join Sam’s team at their current compensation or better.. call it the ‘treacherous 500’ or something.
- bottlepalm 3y agoWow I even got the number right.
- blackoil 3y ago10 billion was potential investment. They transfer that in tranches, so lot of it is still in MS bank. They already have access to GPT3/4/turbo + Dalle 2/3. Plus with its hordes of lawyers, it will be an uphill battle for OpenAI to make MS lose.
- Maxion 3y agoYep, it's now time for MS to throw in the laywers.
- dooraven 3y agoyeah most likely they have like 6 billion left in the bank accounts which they'll redirect to the new AI lab
- neel8986 3y agoMake the model open source and lets see what MS can do with army of lawyers
- blackoil 3y agoSure, they can but that would be against all the safe alignment values they are pushing. They'll lose billions in current and potential investment and will spend the life in lawsuits. Also, govt may not like giving away cutting age tech to China.
- ricardobeat 3y agoAnd this kind of thinking seems to be the exact reason he was pushed away. “The future” as envisioned by a megacorp might not be that great.
- cornholio 3y agoI'm not sure I follow this chain of arguments, which I hear often. So, a technology becomes possible, that has the potential to massively disrupt social order - while being insanely profitable to those who employ it. The knowledge is already out there in scientific journals, or if it's not, it can be grokked via corporate espionage or paying huge salaries to the employees of OpenAI or whoever else has it. What exactly can a foundation in charge of OpenAI do to prevent this unethical use of the technology? If OpenAI refuses to use it to some unethical goal, what prevents other, for profit enterprises, from doing the same? How can private actors stop this without government regulation? Sounds like Truman's apocryphal "the Russian's will never have the bomb". Well, they did, just 4 years later.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cyanydeez 3y agoin theory, a nonprofit would demonstrate a government need and the nonprofit would be bought out by the government. in America, nonprofits are just how rich people run around trying to get tax avoidance, plaudettes and now wealth transfers. I doubt OpenAI is different not that Altman is anything but a figurehead. but nonprofits in America is how the government has chosen to derelict it's duties.
- mlrtime 3y agoIn your world yes, but in another, nonprofits are able to work in research that the Government should not, cannot or is too inefficient at ever getting working. I'm no embarrased billionaire, but there is a place for both.
- bart_spoon 3y ago
- tsunamifury 3y agoHe doesn’t have to write down the investment that came in the form of azure credits. He just doesn’t have to deliver. The core thing he is 100% focused on is not having a massive stock drop Monday morning. That’s it that’s his reason to exist all weekend long. After that. He has time to figure it out.
- hef19898 3y agoDon't forget, MS has a board as well. One Satya reports to the same way Sam reported to the OpanAI one. Potantially loosong 10 billion is nothing the board will just shrug off.
- throwaway2990 3y ago[flagged]
- v4dok 3y agoI agree. 10B is peanuts for MSFT but its Satya's miscalculation. He didn't anticipate that and the board wouldn't be too happy about it.
- throwaway2990 3y agoIf the board is unhappy about that they are idiots and should not be board members. Absolutely no one could have predicted Sam being removed as CEO without anyone knowledge until it happened. But regardless a 10b investment has yields huge results for MS. MS is using openAI tech, they aren’t dependent on the openAI api or infrastructure to provide their AI in every aspect of MS products. That 10b investment has prob paid itself back already and MS is leveraging AI faster than anyone else and has a stronger foothold on the market. If the board can’t look past what 10b got then. I wouldn’t have faith in the board.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
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- sekai 3y ago> Maybe, recruit the most formidable AI team in the world, removed from the shackles of an awkward non-profit owning a for-profit company? Into the shackles of ever-controlling mega-corp?
- vbezhenar 3y agoMicrosoft got Copilot. They were first to establish the brand. OpenAI technologies let them do it. I don't know how much Copilot brand cost, but right now when you're thinking about AI-assisted programming, Copilot is the first thing comes in mind. So probably they got something in return.
- chamoda 3y agoNot only Github copilot but the general copilot integrations announced at Ignite for Microsoft 365 and other apps means a much deeper full on assistant integration for whole ecosystem.
- chucke1992 3y agoYeah, Copilot has become a very nice branding. For business and for the consumer. They can retire Bing search at this point, making it Microsoft Copilot for Web or something.
- pjerem 3y ago> For business and for the consumer. They can retire Bing search at this point, making it Microsoft Copilot for Web or something. Nah it would make it too understandable. It's Microsoft, they'll just rename Bing to Cortana Series X 365. And they'll keep Cortana alive but as a totally different product.
- imgabe 3y agoMicrosoft is now the for-profit arm of OpenAI.
- taspeotis 3y agohttps://imgur.com/a/ZjehzHY https://imgur.com/a/ZjehzHY
- jkhdigital 3y agoMy understanding was that a large tranche of that $10B consisted of Azure compute credits, not actual cash.
- rounakdatta 3y ago> can capture a bigger slice of THE FUTURE History says that the future is actually written by the nerds and not the drumbeaters (ah read CXOs). In all this drama, the deep work interruption of the nerds is the net loss (and effectively slight deceleration) for the future.
- rjtavares 3y agoThis whole weekend will probably be a case study in both Corporate Governance (Microsoft may look bad here for not anticipating the problem) and Negotiation (a masterclass by Satya: gave Ilya what he wanted and got most of OpenAI's commercial potential anyway).
- jacquesm 3y agoAs much as I dislike Microsoft: they played this exactly right. No boardseat: no culpability or conflict of interest, catch the falling pieces and reposition themselves stronger. What makes you say they didn't anticipate the problem? If they had anticipated it I don't see what else they could have done without making themselves part of the problem.
- rjtavares 3y agoI based that opinion on two news that came out: 1. When they invested in Open AI it had a more mature board (in particular Reid Hoffman) and afterwards they lost a few members without replacing them. That was probably something Microsoft could have influenced without making themselves part of the problem. 2. They received a call one minute before the decision was made public. That shouldn't happen to a partner that owns 49% of the company you just fired a CEO from. Sources: 1 - https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board https://loeber.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-the-openai-board 2 - https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/microsoft-openai-sam-altman-ouster https://www.axios.com/2023/11/17/microsoft-openai-sam-altman...
- jacquesm 3y agoYes, but both of those are not Microsoft's doing but the OpenAI board's doing. You don't just get to name someone to a board without the board to agree to it and normally this happens as a condition of for instance an investment or partnership. Nadella was rightly furious about this, the tail wagged the dog there. And this isn't over yet: you can expect a lot of change on the OpenAI side.
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- leobg 3y agoIsn't Microsoft in breach of contract here? Not by the word (parties hadn't forseen such event, and so there won't be anything about this explicity in the contract). But one could argue that MS isn't acting in good faith and acting counter to the purpose of the agreement with OpenAI. The argument would go something like this: MS were contractually obliged to assist OpenAI in their mission. OpenAI fired Altman for what they say is hindering their mission. If MS now hires Altman and gives him the tools he needs, MS is positioning itself as an opponent to OpenAI and its mission.
- Tempest1981 3y agoPerhaps. Could be tied up in court for 2-3 years before we find out.
- vaxman 3y ago> MS is positioning itself as an opponent to OpenAI They were positioned that way by the OpenAI board, which has effectively committed corporate suicide and won’t be around much longer.
- MrMan 3y agoI am sure Sutskever knows openai as an economically competitive entity has been living on borrowed time. this is a global arms race and this tech will bleed out everywhere. implementing LLMs is not rocket science per se and there are multiple places in the world this work can be done. the bottleneck right now is mostly compute I think, and openai does not have the resources or expertise to allieviate that bottleneck on a timescale that can save them.
- chucke1992 3y agoMicrosoft does not prevent OpenAI from achieving their mission. OpenAI does not bind Microsoft to behave one way or another.
- dehrmann 3y agoSince the board was never clear what Altman did, you could make flip the parties and your breach of contract argument holds about as much water. Plus MS can resort to the playground "they started it" argument.
- belter 3y agoRemember when they did this? "Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion" -https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/ https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/ To then write down their assets? "How Skype lost its crown to Zoom" - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/skype-coronavirus-pandemic https://www.wired.co.uk/article/skype-coronavirus-pandemic Or when they did this ? Or how in 2014... "Microsoft buying Nokia's phone business in a $7.2 billion bid for its mobile future" - https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/2/4688530/microsoft-buys-nokias-devices-and-services-unit-unites-windows-phone https://www.theverge.com/2013/9/2/4688530/microsoft-buys-nok... Then in 2016 sold it for 360 million? "Nokia returns to the phone market as Microsoft sells brand" - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/18/nokia-returns-phone-market-microsoft-sells-brand-hmd-foxconn https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/18/nokia-ret...
- pug_mode 3y agoSatya was not responsible for those 2 purchases
- meowkit 3y agoPre Satya history is irrelevant to the current MSFT
- alchemist1e9 3y agoFor those of us not following Microsoft super close, would it possible to ready a summary of the successes of Satya? I sense a lot of respect and appreciation for his role, but unfortunately I just don’t know many details and I’m curious about the highlights.
- strikelaserclaw 3y ago- Github Purchase, Linkedin Purchase - Aligned Microsoft towards "openness" culturally - VS Code + Typescript - Partnership with Open AI which might make bing actually be used might be missing some more but Satya is like a S tier CEO, compared to Sundar who doesn't seem very good at his role.
- belter 3y agoYou are looking forward to a self-aware, self-replicating, unregulated Clippy?
- jacquesm 3y agoAt least it will be a broken paperclip maximizer.
- cowl 3y agoI would say this is a better outcome for what remains of OpenAI. a New startup would have created more exodus that Microsoft. Doubt many brilliant researchers would want to be Employee number 945728123 of Microsoft when the market is theirs at this moment.
- sgift 3y ago> Doubt many brilliant researchers would want to be Employee number 945728123 of Microsoft when the market is theirs at this moment. Yeah, it's not like Microsoft has one of the most renowned industry research groups or something like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research
- cowl 3y agoI did not say the don't have and it's precisely because the do have that is less likely to attract the kind of people that make a difference. Less room to move and less room to be distinguished. Case in point these did not join that renowned group in the first place but joined OpenAI an obscure not renowned group and I guarantee you it's not because MS was not interested.
- skilled 3y agoYou do realize that Microsoft uses OpenAI IP for all of its AI products, of which there are at least two dozen that they released this year. In what universe do you make the connection that they would write it off and go to a different, less superior/reliable, model provider? It would never happen.
- cyanydeez 3y agoright, they'll just steal it and watch a nonprofit try to enforce anything about it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pug_mode 3y agoIt's more than that, OpenAI had many people aligned with the decel agenda, MSFT managed to take the accel leadership and likely their supporters. Does anyone know any large AI competitors that don't have a big decel contingent? Also interesting that META took the opportunity to close one of their decel departments on Saturday.
- dagaci 3y agoSatya simply had to move quickly to restore shareholder confidence. I'm not convinced that its actually desirable for Microsoft to be fully in the driving seat. Hopefully the new division will have autonomy. Microsoft will not have actually paid $10B as a single commitment, in fact the financials of OpenAI appear to be alarming from the recent web chatter. OpenAI are possibly close to collapse financially as well as organizationally. Whatever Satya does will be aimed at isolating Microsoft and its roadmap from that, his job is actually also on the line for this debacle. The OpenAI board have ruined their credibility and organization.
- layer8 3y agoWhat choice did Satya have? Nothing much else he could have done in the present situation.
- nopromisessir 3y agoChoice? Are you framing this as though the whole situation didn't go pretty well toward msft's favor? Now they get 40 percent of open ai talent and 50 percent of the for profit openai subsidiary. Pretty sure when the market opens you'll see confirmation that they came out on top. It's a win for everyone honestly. Anthropic split all over again but this time the progressives got pushed out vs the conservatives leaving voluntarily. They couldn't keep nice under the tent. Now two tents. Little diff because this time an investor with special privaleges made a new special tent quick to bag talent. Easy decision for msft. No talent to competitors. Small talent pool. The other big boys were already all over that. Salty bosses at other outfits. No poach for them. Satya too clever and brought the checkbook plus already courted the cutest girls earlier for a different dance. Hell he was assisting in the negotiation when the old dance got all rough and the jets started throwing hooks about safety and scale and bla bla we all know the story. Satya hunts with an elephant gun with one of those laser sites and the auto trigger that fires automatically when the cross hair goes over the target. Rip sundar. 2 rounds for satya. One more and I feel bad for Google... Naw... Couldn't feel bad for Google. Punchable outfit. They do punchable things. We all know it... I'm just saying it.
- sidibe 3y agoIt's pretty naive IMO to think Google isn't going to come out with something that threatens OpenAI or Microsoft. It seems to be "they didn't do it yet so they won't ever" is the majority opinion here, but they have a ton of advantages when they finally do
- nopromisessir 3y agoWhat? I didn't say anything about the likelyhood of competition to state of the art. You are imagining I fall in a crowd you've observed. Maintaining statute of the art ofc is a constant battle. Google could be top dog in 2 weeks. Never insinuated otherwise. (though I predict otherwise, if we're gonna speculate) Its not even relevant because each big firm is specializing to a degree. Anthropic is going for context window and safety... Bard is all about Google priorities... Ect
- vaxman 3y ago> most of OpenAI employees would have no qualms about following Sam and Greg. It will take time for sure By all accounts, OpenAI is not a going concern without Azure. I could see Tesla acquiring the bankrupt shell for the publicity, but the worker bees seem to be more keen on their current leader (as of last week) than their prior leader. OpenAI ends with a single owner.
- tw1984 3y ago> There's a thin possibility that Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B (or more?) investment in OpenAI Hiring Altman makes sure that MSFT is still relevant to the whole Altman/OpenAI deal, not just a part of it. Hiring Altman thus decreases such possibility to write-off its investment.
- ljm 3y agoGiven it's Microsoft we're talking about, it's more likely they use it to find new and novel ways to shove Edge, OneDrive, Teams and Bing down your throat whenever you use any of their products.
- cycomanic 3y agoI really don't understand the argument here, why are Altman and Brockman the most formidable AI team? I would wager a substantial sum that Altman has not touch anything technical (let alone related to AI) in a very long time. He certainly showed he is a very good operator, networker and executer, but that doesbt give you the technical expertise to build state of the art AI. If he manages to get a significant amount of the OpenAI engineers to jump ship maybe, but even for those who are largely motivated by money, how is MS going to offer the same opportunity as when they joined for equity with OpenAI? Are they going to pay then >$1M salaries?
- wruza 3y agoI don’t get it too. It’s akin to claiming that by hiring an Oracle executive you can build the best database tech. A little stretch but still. Chances are I’ll never understand how things like that work, because there must be few truths about humans my mind resists to believe. My uneducated guess is that OpenAI really screwed up the PR part and the current Microsoft’s claims are more on the overall damage control / fire suppression side.
- aeyes 3y agoLooking at the list of people who have resigned it's quite obvious that the team goes where he goes. Even if he does nothing, he keeps the team together and that is worth quite a bit.
- mlrtime 3y agoIf I was a SE/MLE at OpenAI , and I had a choice between the nonprofit OpenAI and MS, I'd follow Sam to MS. This is assuming I had profit sharing contracts in place.
- denton-scratch 3y agoThere's a current fashion for tech "leaders" (bosses, really) to try to imbue in their staff a kind of cultish belief in the company and its leader. Personally, I find these efforts extremely offputting. I'm thinking of the kind of saccharine corporate presentations from people like Adam Neumann and Elizabeth Holmes; it evidently appeals to some kinds of people, but I run a mile from cults. My guess is that a lot of the people that will follow Sam and Gregg are that kind of cult-follower.
- soderfoo 3y agoAgreed, Satya is a first rate executive, other than Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX, I can't really think of anyone in the same league. There was a lot of discussion on HN the past few days regarding the importance (or lack thereof) of a CEO to an organization. It may be the case that most executives are interchangeable and attributing success to them is not merited, but in the case of the aforementioned, I think it is merited.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoTim Cook is not in the same league?
- soderfoo 3y agoYes, oversight on my part, as a supply chain guy, he has really pivoted well in to a generalist leading Apple in to the entertainment biz.
- pb7 3y agoI would say given the stock's performance lately, Mark has been handling business pretty well.
- throw310822 3y agoHowever it's a nice way to deal with the whole "open" AI issue: first you create a non-profit to create open AI systems; then when you hit a marketable success it turns into a "capped profit"; and finally, all the people from that capped profit leave en masse and transfer their acquired know how to a for-profit company.
- dehrmann 3y ago> for-profit company Slashdot literally used to call them M$
- DebtDeflation 3y ago> possibility that Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B There was an article that came out over the weekend that stated that only a small part of that $10B investment was in cash, the vast majority is cloud GPU credits, and that it has a long time horizon with only a relatively small fraction having been consumed to date. So, if MSFT were to develop their own GPT4 model in house over the next year or so they could in theory back out of their investment with most of it intact.
- hef19898 3y agoDepends on the term sheet behind that. That, and how MS is accounting for its minority stake in OpenAI. If they have to write off the vakue, it doesn't how they paid for it.
- benkarst 3y agoSide note, the 10B investment is less than a half a percent of MSFT's 2.75T market cap.
- safety1st 3y agoIf there's one thing we should have learned over the last 45 years in this industry - it's never underestimate Microsoft.
- HlessClaudesman 3y agoI dunno man. Doing innovation from inside Microsoft might be more difficult than if they had just formed a new startup. Microsoft as a brand has the stench of mediocracy upon it. Large companies are where ideas and teams go to die, or just rest and vest.
- olalonde 3y ago> There's a thin possibility that Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B (or more?) investment in OpenAI How so? I don't get the hype. OpenAI trained truly ground breaking models that were miles ahead of anything the world had seen before. Everything else was really just a side show. Their marketing efforts were, at best, average. They called their flagship product "ChatGPT", a term that might resonate with AI scientists but appears as a random string of letters to the average person. They had no mobile app for a long time. Their web app had some major bugs. Maybe Sam Altman deserves credit for attracting talent and capital, I don't know. But it seems to me that OpenAI's success by far and large hinges on their game-changing models. And by extension, the bulk of the credit goes to their AI research/tech teams.
- infecto 3y agoI have the complete opposite perspective. Their initial api went live sometime late 2020. They have done a fantastic job scaling, releasing features while growing the business at a rate we have not seen many times before.
- dalbasal 3y ago>>There's a thin possibility that Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B (or more?) investment in OpenAI, but that isn't Satya's focus. The focus is on what he can do next. Maybe, recruit the most formidable AI team in the world, removed from the shackles... That's a slightly flamboyant reading.. but I agree with the gist. A slim chance of total right off doctor off.. that was always the case. This decision does not affect it much. The place in the risk model, where most of the action happens... Is less dramatic effects on more likely bans of the probability curve. Msft cannot be kicked off the team. They still have all of the rights to their openai investment no matter who the CEO is. Meanwhile, is clearly competing, participating, and doing business with openai. The hierarchy of paradigms, is flexible... Competing appears to have won. I agree that direct financial returns, are the lesser part of the investment case for msft.. and the other participants. That's pretty much standard in consortium-like ventures. At the base level, openai's IP is still largely science, unpatentable know how and key people. Msft have some access to (I assume) of openAI' defendable IP via their participation in the consortium, or 49% ownership of the for-profit entity. Meanwhile, openai is not so far ahead that pacing them from a dead start is impossible. I also agree, that this represents a decision to launch ahead aggressively in the generative AI space. In the latter 2000s, Google have the competence, technology, resources and momentum to smash anyone else on anything worldwideWeb. They won all the "races." Google have never been good at turning wins into businesses, but they did acquire the wins handily. Microsoft wants to be that for the 2020s. Able to replicate everything, for the new paradigm OpenAI's achievments probably represents. The AI spreadsheet. The LLM email client. GPT search. Autobot jira. Literally and proverbially. At least in theory... Microsoft is or will be in a position to start executing on all of these. Sama, if he's actually motivated to do this.. it's pretty much the ideal person on planet earth for that task. I'm sure takes a lot to motivate him. Otoh, CEO of Microsoft is it realistic prize if he wins this game. The man is basically Microsoft the person. I mean that as a compliment.. sort of. One way or another, I expect that implementing OpenAI-ish models in applications is about commence. Companies have been pleading chatbot customer support for years. They may get it soon, but so will the customers. That makes for a whole new thing in the place where customer support used to exist. At least, that is the bull case. That said, I have said a lot. All speculative. I'll probabilistic, even where my speculations are correct. These are not really predictions. I'm chewing the cud.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoIf I had to make a list of companies that need shackles of that sort, Microsoft would definitely be top three or so.
- suslik 3y agoWas GPT4 a success due to the brilliance of OpenAI's tech team vs first movers advantage and good GPU deals with MS? I might be missing something here, but to me nothing about this technology feels like rocket science (obviously, there is a lot of nuance, yada yada, but nothing that seems intractable). I have a strong suspicion that the reason Amazon, Google and so on are not particularly interested in building GPT-scale transformers is that they know they can do it anytime - they are just waiting for others to pave the path to actually good stuff.
- htrp 3y ago>I have a strong suspicion that the reason Amazon, Google and so on are not particularly interested in building GPT-scale transformers is that they know they can do it anytime - they are just waiting for others to pave the path to actually good stuff. Google has been hyping gemini since the spring (and not delivering it) Amazon's Titan Model is not quite there yet.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago> recruit the most formidable AI team in the world, removed from the shackles Or at least the most hyped AI team in the world. The level of cult of personality around OpenAI is reaching pretty nauseating levels.
- softwaredoug 3y agoTBH We are living in the outcome of the $10B investment. Google is in a weaker position in search, with egg on their face. Microsoft appears (with or without ChatGPT) uniquely positioned to monopolize on this new AI future we're heading into with or without OpenAI as a company. Yes directly, the $10B investment in the company itself may be a write off. But it's not just about that.
- visarga 3y agoI'm wondering how Sam is going to work with Demis. Two master cooks in a kitchen/
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> recruit the most formidable AI team in the world, removed from the shackles of an awkward non-profit owning a for-profit company This massively increases the odds we’ll see AI regulated. That isn’t what Altman et al intended with their national press tour—the goal was to talk up the tech. But it should be good in the long run. I also assume there will be litigation about what Sam et al can bring with them, and what they cannot.
- Jayakumark 3y agoFor Microsoft , 2% loss in stock value on this news on Friday was $60 billion, so writing off $10B and giving another $50B to form a team is still a great deal. For Sam , he got more than what he was asking and a better prospect to become CEO of Microsoft when Satya leaves. Satya lead cloud division, which was the industry growth market at that time before becoming CEO and now sam is leading AI division , the next growth market. Ilya still lost in all of this , he managed to get back the keys of a city from sam , who now got this keys to the whole country . Eventually sam will pull everyone out of the city in to rest of his country. Microsoft just needs a few openai employees to join them . They just need data and GPU , openai has reached its limits for getting more data and was begging for more private data while Microsoft holds worlds data, they will just give a few offers to business or free Microsoft products in return of using their data or use their own. I think it’s the end for openAI.
- nytesky 3y agoReally? These two did not do the technical work but hired, managed, and fund raised. They won’t necessarily be able to attract similar technical talent because they no longer have the open non profit mission not the lottery ticket startup PPO shares. Working on AI at Microsoft was always an option even before they were hired, not sure if they tip the scale?
- iambateman 3y agoI basically agree - and it’s a weird cognitive shift to think that going to Microsoft is the best place for tech innovation today. Credit to Nadella for making a big cultural shift over the past several years.
- mandeepj 3y ago> Microsoft would have to write-off its whole $10B (or more?) investment in OpenAI Not sure why you didn’t research before saying that! It was $10B committed and not a cash handover of that amount. Also, majority of that’s Azure credits
- LrnByTeach 3y agoThis might have been a reasonable and workable solution for all parties involved. Context: --------- 1.1/ ILya Sukhar and Board do not agree with Sam Altman vision of a) too fast commercialization of Open AI AND/OR b) too fast progression to GPT-5 level 1.2/ Sam Altman thinks fast iteration and Commercialization is needed in-order to make Open AI financially viable as it is burning too much cash and stay ahead of competition. 1.3/ Microsoft, after investing $10+ Billions do not want this fight enable slow progress of AI Commercialization and fall behind Google AI etc.. a workable solution: -------------------- 2.1/ @sama @gdb form a new AI company, let us call it e/acc Inc. 2.2/ e/acc Inc. raises $3 Billions as SAFE instrument from VCs who believed in Sam Altman's vision. 2.3/ Open AI and e/acc Inc. reach an agreement such that: a) GPT-4 IP transferred to e/acc Inc., this IP transfer is valued as $8 Billion SAFE instrument investment from Open AI into e/acc Inc. b) existing Microsoft's 49% share in Open AI is transferred to e/acc Inc., such that Microsoft owns 49% of e/acc Inc. c) the resulted "Lean and pure non-profit Open AI" with Ilya Sukhar and Board can steer AI progress as they wish, their stake in e/acc Inc. will act as funding source to cover their future Research Costs. d) employees can join from Open AI to e/acc Inc. as they wish with no antipoaching lawsuits from OpenAI
- caycep 3y agoMS also has its own ML teams and is probably capable of replicating a lot of OpenAI without OpenAI. Like some googlers have mentioned - aside from GPU requirements, there isn't much else of a moat since a lot of ML ideas are presented and debated relatively freely at NEURIPS, ICML and other places.