23 ms·
If they join Sam Altman and Greg Brockman at Microsoft they will not need to start from scratch because Microsoft has full rights [1] to ChatGPT IP. They can ju
by breadwinner 3y ago
If they join Sam Altman and Greg Brockman at Microsoft they will not need to start from scratch because Microsoft has full rights [1] to ChatGPT IP. They can just fork ChatGPT.
Also keep in mind that Microsoft hasn't actually given OpenAI $13 Billion because much of that is in the form of Azure credits.
So this could end up being the cheapest acquisition for Microsoft: They get a $90 Billion company for peanuts.
[1] https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-microsofts-gain/ https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros...
- Mystery-Machine 3y agoWhy does Microsoft have full rights to ChatGPT IP? Where did you get that from? Source?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- breadwinner 3y agoSee here: https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-microsofts-gain/ https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros...
- kolinko 3y agoThe source for that (https://archive.ph/OONbb https://archive.ph/OONbb - WSJ), as far as I can understand, made no claim that MS owns IP to GPT, only that they have access to it's weights and code.
- tiahura 3y agoExactly. The generalities, much less the details, of the deal are not public.
- tiahura 3y agoExactly. The generalities, much less the details, of what MS actually got in the deal are not public.
- Manouchehri 3y agoThe worst part of OpenAI is their web frontend. Their development and QA process is either disorganized to the extreme, or non-existent.
- ipaddr 3y agoYou could make your own and charge for access if you feel you can do better. Make a show post when you are done and we'll comment.
- Manouchehri 3y agoI was going to, but then I discovered LibreChat existed a few weeks ago. I use it way more often than ChatGPT now, it's been quite stable for me. https://github.com/danny-avila/LibreChat https://github.com/danny-avila/LibreChat
- breadwinner 3y agoWhat are the chances that an investor owns 49% of a company but does not have rights to its IP? Especially when that investor is Microsoft?
- himaraya 3y agoVery reasonable? Microsoft doesn't control any part of the company and faces a high degree of regulatory scrutiny.
- sudosysgen 3y agoIsn't the situation that the company Microsoft has a stake in doesn't even own the IP? As I understand it, the non-profit owns the IP.
- azakai 3y agoYes, there is a big difference between having access to the weights and code and having a license to use them in different ways. It seems obvious Microsoft has a license to use them in Microsoft's own products. Microsoft said so directly on Friday. What is less obvious is if Microsoft has a license to use them in other ways. For example, can Microsoft provide those weights and code to third parties? Can they let others use them? In particular, can they clone the OpenAI API? I can see reasons for why that would not have been in the deal (it would risk a major revenue source for OpenAI) but also reasons why Microsoft might have insisted on it (because of situations just like the one happening now). What is actually in the deal is not public as far as I know, so we can only speculate.
- whycome 3y agoWell obviously MSFT can just ask ChapGPT to make a clone.
- anonymousDan 3y agoThat was a seriously dumb move on the part of OpenAI
- bertil 3y agoI got the impression that the most valuable models were not published. Would Microsoft have access to those too according to their contract?
- ncann 3y agoDon't they need access to the models to use them for Bing?
- armcat 3y agoNot necessarily, it would be just RAG, the use the standard Bing search engine to retrieve top K candidates, and pass those to OpenAI API in a prompt.
- bertil 3y agoI would consider those models "published." The models I had in mind are the first attempts at training GPT5, possibly the model trained without mention of consciousness and the rest of the safety work. There is also all the questions for RLHF, and the pipelines to think around that.
- dhruvdh 3y agoMore importantly to me, I think generating synthetic data is OpenAI's secret sauce (no evidence I am aware of), and they need access to GPT-4 weights to train GPT-5.
- singularity2001 3y agoBoard will be ousted, new board will instruct interim CEO to hire back Sam at al, Nadella will let them go for a small favor, happy ending.
- vidarh 3y agoWhom is it that has power to oust the non-profits board? They may well manage to pressure them into leaving, but I don't they have any direct power over it.
- DebtDeflation 3y agoBoard will be ousted, but the ship has sailed on Sam and Greg coming back.
- voittvoidd 3y agoI would think OpenAI is basically toast. They arent coming back, these people will quit and this will end up in court. Everyone just assumes AGI is inevetible but it is a non-zero chance we just passed the ai peak this weekend.
- Applejinx 3y agoNon-zero chance that somebody thought we passed the AI peak this weekend. Not the same as it being true. My first thought was the scenario I called Altman's Basilisk (if this turns out to be true, I called it before anyone ;) ) Namely, Altman was diverting computing resources to operate a superhuman AI that he had trained in his image and HIS belief system, to direct the company. His beliefs are that AGI is inevitable and must be pursued as an arms race because whoever controls AGI will control/destroy the world. It would do so through directing humans, or through access to the Internet or some such technique. In seeking input from such an AI he'd be pursuing the former approach, having it direct his decisions for mutual gain. In so training an AI he would be trying to create a paranoid superintelligence with a persecution complex and a fixation on controlling the world: hence, Altman's Basilisk. It's a baddie, by design. The creator thinks it unavoidable and tries to beat everyone else to that point they think inevitable. The twist is, all this chaos could have blown up not because Altman DID create his basilisk, but because somebody thought he WAS creating a basilisk. Or he thought he was doing it, and the board got wind of it, and couldn't prove he wasn't succeeding in doing it. At no point do they need to be controlling more than a hallucinating GPT on steroids and Azure credits. If the HUMANS thought this was happening, that'd instigate a freakout, a sudden uncontrolled firing for the purpose of separating Frankenstein from his Monster, and frantic powering down and auditing of systems… which might reveal nothing more than a bunch of GPT. Rosko's Basilisk is a sci-fi hypothetical. Altman's Basilisk, if that's what happened, is a panic reaction. I'm not convinced anything of the sort happened, but it's very possible some people came to believe it happened, perhaps even the would-be creator. And such behavior could well come off as malfeasance and stealing of computing resources: wouldn't take the whole system to run, I can run 70b on my Mac Studio. It would take a bunch of resources and an intent to engage in unauthorized training to make a super-AI take on the belief system that Altman, and many other AI-adjacent folk, already hold. It's probably even a legitimate concern. It's just that I doubt we got there this weekend. At best/worst, we got a roughly human-grade intelligence Altman made to conspire with, and others at OpenAI found out and freaked. If it's this, is it any wonder that Microsoft promptly snapped him up? Such thinking is peak Microsoft. He's clearly their kind of researcher :)
- dmix 3y agoOpenAI's upper ceiling in for-profit hands is basically Microsoft-tier dominance of tech in the 1990s, creating the next uber billionaire like Gates. If they get this because of an OpenAI fumble it could be one of the most fortunate situations in business history. Vegas type odds. A good example of how just having your foot in the door creates serendipitous opportunity in life.
- ramesh31 3y ago>A good example of how just having your foot in the door creates serendipitous opportunity in life. Sounds like Altman's biography.
- renegade-otter 3y agoAltman's bio is so typical. Got his first computer at 8. My parents finally opened the wallet for a cheap E-Machine when I went to college. Altman - private school, Stanford, dropped out to f*ck around in tech. "Failed" startup acquired for $40M. The world is full of Sam Altmans who never won the birth lottery. Could he have squandered his good fortune - absolutely, but his life is not exactly per ardua ad astra.
- dmix 3y ago> Altman's bio is so typical. Got his first computer at 8. My parents finally opened the wallet for a cheap E-Machine when I went to college. I grew up poor in the 90s and had my own computer around ~10yrs old. It was DOS but I still learned a lot. Eventually my brother and I saved up from working at a diner washing dishes and we built our own Windows PC. I didn't go to college but I taught myself programming during a summer after high school and found a job within a year (I already knew HTML/CSS from high school). There's always ways. But I do agree partially, YC/VCs do have a bias towards kids from high end schools and connected families.
- renegade-otter 3y agoI am self-taught as well. I did OK. My point is that I did not have the luxury of dropping out of school to try my hand at the tech startup thing. If I came home and told my Dad I abandoned school - for anything - he would have thrown me out the 3rd-floor window. People like Altman could take risks, fail, try again, until they walked into something that worked. This is a common thread almost among all of the tech personalities - Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Musk. None of them ever risked living in a cardboard box in case their bets did not pay off.
- m_ke 3y agoWatch Satya also save the research arm by making Karpathy or Ilya the head of Microsoft Research
- browningstreet 3y ago0% chance of Ilya failing upwards from this. He dunked himself hard and has blasted a huge hole in his organizational-game-theory quotient.
- golergka 3y agoHe's shown himself to be bad at politics, but he's still one of the world best researchers. Surely, a sensible company would find a position for him where he would be able to bring enormous value without having to play politics.
- browningstreet 3y agoUpwards, I said. And I was responding to a post. I don't see a trajectory to "head of Microsoft Research".
- didibus 3y agoI find this very surprising. How do people conclude that OpenAI's success is due to its business leadership from Sam Altman, and not from it's technological leadership and expertise driven by Illya and the others? Their asset isn't some kind of masterful operations management and reign in cost and management structure as far as I see. But about the fact they simply put, have the leading models. So I'm very confused why would people want to following the CEO? And not be more attached to the technical leadership? Even from investor point of view?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- browningstreet 3y ago
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Microsoft hasn't actually given OpenAI $13 Billion because much of that is in the form of Azure credits To be clear, these are still an asset OpenAI holds. It should at least let them continue doing research for a few years.
- Jensson 3y agoBut how much of that research will be for the non-profit mission? The entire non-profit leadership got cleared out and will get replaced by for-profit puppets, there is nobody left to defend the non-profit ideals they ought to have.
- JCharante 3y agothey're GPUs right? Time to mine some niche cryptos to cash out the azure credits..
- Manouchehri 3y agoI would be shocked if the Azure credits didn't come with conditions on what they can be used for. At a bare minimum, there's likely the requirement that they be used for supporting AI research.
- sebzim4500 3y agoIf any company can find a way to avoid having to pay up on those credits it's Microsoft. "Sorry OpenAI, but those credits are only valid in our Nevada datacenter. Yes, it's two Microsoft Surface PC™ s connected together with duct tape. No, they don't have GPUs."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Microsoft hasn't actually given OpenAI $13 Billion because much of that is in the form of Azure credits To be clear, these don't go away. They remain an asset of OpenAI's, and could help them continue their research for a few years.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago"Cluster is at capacity. Workload will be scheduled as capacity permits." If the credits are considered an asset, totally possible to devalue them while staying within the bounds of the contractual agreement. Failing that, wait until OpenAI exhausts their cash reserves for them to challenge in court.
- p_j_w 3y agoIt’s amazing to me to see people on HN advocate a giant company bullying a smaller one with these kind of skeezy tactics.
- geodel 3y agoNot advocating but just reflecting on reality of situation.
- DANmode 3y agoDon't confuse trying to understand the incentives in a war for rooting for one of the warring parties.
- weird-eye-issue 3y agoPresenting a scenario and advocating aren't the same thing
- toomuchtodo 3y agoExplaining how the gazelle is going to get eaten confidently jumping into the oasis isn't advocating for the crocodiles. See sibling comments. Experience leads to pattern recognition, and this is the tech community equivalent of a David Attenborough production (with my profuse apologies to Sir Attenborough). Something about failing to learn history and repeating it should go here too. If you can take away anything from observing this event unfold, learn from it. Consider how the sophisticated vs the unsophisticated act, how participants respond, and what success looks like. Also, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Do not rush when the consequences of a misstep are substantial. You learning from this is cheaper than the cost for everyone involved. It is a natural experiment you get to observe for free.
- Tenoke 3y agoDon't they have a more limited license to use the IP rather than full rights? (The stratechery post links to a paywalled wsj article for the claim so I couldn't confirm)
- mupuff1234 3y agoCan the OpenAI board renege on the deal with msft?
- somenameforme 3y agoA contractual mistake one makes only once is ensuring there's penalties for breach, or a breach would entail a clear monetary loss which is what's generally required by the courts. In this case I expect Microsoft would almost certainly have both, so I think the answer is 'no.'
- agloe_dreams 3y agoThis. MSFT is dreaming of an OpenAI hard outage right now, perfect little detail to forfeit compute credits.
- jacquesm 3y agoDon't you think they have trouble enough as it is?
- mupuff1234 3y agoDepends on why they did what they did. If they let msft "loot" all their IP then they lose any type of leverage they might still have, and if they did it due to some ideological reason I could see why they might prefer to choose a scorched earth policy. Given that they refused to resign seems like they prefer to fight rather than give it to Sam Altman, which what the msft maneuver looks like defacto.
- sebzim4500 3y agoMSFT must already have the model weights, since they are serving GPT-4 on their own machines to Azure customers. It's a bit late to renege now.
- mupuff1234 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- himaraya 3y agoThis is wrong. Microsoft has no such rights and its license comes with restrictions, per the cited primary source, meaning a fork would require a very careful approach. https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-forge-awkward-partnership-as-techs-new-power-couple-3092de51 https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-forge-awkw...
- dan_quixote 3y agoThis is MSFT we're talking about. Aggressive legal maneuvers are right in their wheelhouse!
- burnte 3y agoYes, this is the exact thing they did to Stacker years ago. License the tech, get the source, create a new product, destroy Stacker, pay out a pittance and then buy the corpse. I was always amazed they couldn't pull that off with Citrix.
- 0xNotMyAccount 3y agoGiven the sensitivity of data handled over Citrix connections (pretty much all hospitals), I'm fairly sure Microsoft just doesn't want the headaches. My general experience is that service providers would rather be seen handling nuclear weapons data than healthcare data.
- incahoots 3y agoMakes sense given their deal with the DoD a year or so ago https://www.geekwire.com/2022/pentagon-splits-giant-cloud-contract-among-amazon-microsoft-google-and-oracle/ https://www.geekwire.com/2022/pentagon-splits-giant-cloud-co...
- drivebyadvice 3y ago> Citrix [...] hospitals My stomach just turned.
- LonelyWolfe 3y agoJust a thought.... Wouldn't one of the board members be like "If you screw with us any further we're releasing gpt to the public" I'm wondering why that option hasn't been used yet.
- jacquesm 3y agoWhich of the remaining board members could credibly make that threat?
- supriyo-biswas 3y agoProbably a violation of agreements with OpenAI and it would harm their own moat as well, while achieving very little in return.
- lrvick 3y agoThere is no moat https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-ne...
- vikramkr 3y agotheoretically their concern is around AI safety - whatever it is in practice doing something like that would instantly signal to everyone that they are the bad guys and confirm everyone's belief that this was just a power grab Edit: since it's being brought up in thread they claimed they closed sourced it because of safety. It was a big controversial thing and they stood by it so it's not exactly easy to backtrack
- whatwhaaaaat 3y agoA power grab by open sourcing something that fits their initial mission? Interesting analysis
- nvm0n2 3y agoNo, that's backwards. Remember that these guys are all convinced that AI is too dangerous to be made public at all. The whole beef that led to them blowing up the company was feeling like OpenAI was productizing and making it available too fast. If that's your concern then you neither open source your work nor make it available via an API, you just sit on it and release papers. Not coincidentally, exactly what Google Brain, DeepMind, FAIR etc were doing up until OpenAI decided to ignore that trust-like agreement and let people use it.
- Simon_ORourke 3y ago> Microsoft has full rights [1] to ChatGPT IP. They can just fork ChatGPT. What? That's even better played by Microsoft so than I'd originally anticipated. Take the IP, starve the current incarnation of OpenAI of compute credits and roll out their own thing
- davedx 3y ago"just" is doing a hell of a lot of work there.
- dheera 3y agoIt's about time for ChatGPT to be the next CEO of OpenAI. Humans are too stupid to oversee the company.
- _the_inflator 3y agoExactly. This is what business is about in the ranks of heavyweights like Sadya. On the other hand, prevent others from taking advantage of OpenAI. MS can only win because there are only viable options: OpenAI survives under MS's control, OpenAI implodes, and MS gets the assets relatively cheaply. Everything else won't benefit competitors.
- fuddle 3y agoOh man, I'm not looking forward to Microsoft AGI.
- kreeben 3y ago"You need to reboot your Microsoft AGI. Do you want to do it now or now?"
- berniedurfee 3y agoGive BSOD new meaning.
- mvdtnz 3y agoI really don't get how Microsoft still gets a hard time about this when MacOS updates are significantly more aggressive, including with their reboot schedules.
- IIsi50MHz 3y agoOne of my computerr runs macOS. I easly I turned off the option to automatic'ly keep tke Mac updated, and received occasional notices about updates available for apps or the system. This allowed me to hold onto 11.x until the end of this month, by letting me selectively install updates instead of getting macOS 'major version' upgrades (meaning, no features I need, and minor downgrades and rearrangements I could avoid). If only I had done kept a copy of 10.whateverMojaveWas so I could, by means of a simple network disconnect and reboot, sidestep the removal of 32-bit support. (-:
- wkat4242 3y agoUh no they aren't? You can simply turn them off. Microsoft's policies really suck. Mandatory updates and reboots, mandatory telemetry. Mandatory crapware like edge and celebrity news everywhere.
- echelon 3y ago> Microsoft has full rights [1] to ChatGPT IP. They can just fork ChatGPT. If Microsoft does this, the non-profit OpenAI may find the action closest to their original charter ("safe AGI") is a full release of all weights, research, and training data.
- caycep 3y agoI also wonder how much is research staff vs. ops personnel. For AI research, I can't imagine they would need 20, maybe 40 ppl. For ops to keep up ChatGPT as a service, that would be 700. If they want to go full bell labs/deep mind style, they might not need the majority of those 700.