3 ms·

That could be the first step towards a complete takeover by Microsoft, possibly followed by more CEO shuffles. I wonder though whether Microsoft is still inter

by Prkasd 2y ago

That could be the first step towards a complete takeover by Microsoft, possibly followed by more CEO shuffles. I wonder though whether Microsoft is still interested. The free Bing Copilot barely gets any resources and gives very bad answers now. If the above theory is correct (big if!), perhaps Microsoft wants to pivot to the military space. That would be in line with idealist employees leaving or being fired.

baq 2y ago
> CEO shuffles Yes, I too can see how sama could end up as Microsoft’s CEO as a result of this
HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
I don't see the point of anyone acquiring OpenAI - especially not Microsoft, Google, Meta, Anthropic, X.ai, all of which have developed the same tech themselves. The real assets are the people, who are leaving ship and potentially hireable. With this much turmoil, its hard to imagine we've seen the last of the high level exits.
- int_19h 2y ago
  Of the companies you've listed, Microsoft's AI products that are actually useful are all based on GPT-4, and the rest of them don't have any models that are truly on par with it.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    o1 seems to be a step ahead for certain applications, but before that it seems that Claude Sonnet 3.5 was widely seen as the best model, and no doubt we'll be seeing next models from Anthropic shortly. For corporate use cost/benefit is a big factor, not necessarily what narrow benchmarks your expensive top model can eke out a win on.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Claude was not the best model for reasoning even vs 4o, and it's quite visible once you start giving it more complex logical puzzles. People seem to like it more mostly because the way it speaks is less forced and robotic, and it's better at creative writing usually, but if you need actual _intelligence_, GPT is still quite a bit ahead of everybody else. Now I don't think that it's because OpenAI has some kind of secret sauce. It rather seems that it's mostly due to their first mover advantage and access to immense hardware resources thanks to their Microsoft partnership. Nevertheless, whatever the reason their models are superior, that superiority is quantifiable in money.
ndiddy 2y ago
Microsoft already effectively owns OpenAI. Their investments in OpenAI have granted them a 49% stake in the company, the right to sell any pre-AGI OpenAI products to Microsoft's customers, and access to all pre-AGI product research. Microsoft's $10 billion investment in early 2023 (after ChatGPT's launch massively increased OpenAI's operating expenses) was mainly in Azure compute credits rather than cash and delivered in tranches (as of November 2023 they'd only gotten a fraction of that money). It also gives Microsoft 75% of OpenAI's profits until they make their $10 billion back. All of these deals have effectively made OpenAI into Microsoft's generative AI R&D lab. More information: https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/
- extr 2y ago
  From the standpoint of today, the deal is so lopsided to Microsoft as to be comical. They basically gave away their prized IP with the assumption they would have more capability leaps (hasn't really happened), and now the brains behind the original breakthroughs are all leaving/left. Microsoft is probably cannibalizing their enterprise sales with Azure. They are clearly middling at shipping actual products. People are acting like it's crazy to see executives leaving - IMO it's the perfect time right now. o1 is clearly wringing the last drops out of the transformer architecture and there is nothing up next.

by Prkasd 2y ago

baq 2y ago

> CEO shuffles Yes, I too can see how sama could end up as Microsoft’s CEO as a result of this

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago

I don't see the point of anyone acquiring OpenAI - especially not Microsoft, Google, Meta, Anthropic, X.ai, all of which have developed the same tech themselves. The real assets are the people, who are leaving ship and potentially hireable. With this much turmoil, its hard to imagine we've seen the last of the high level exits.

int_19h 2y ago
Of the companies you've listed, Microsoft's AI products that are actually useful are all based on GPT-4, and the rest of them don't have any models that are truly on par with it.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  o1 seems to be a step ahead for certain applications, but before that it seems that Claude Sonnet 3.5 was widely seen as the best model, and no doubt we'll be seeing next models from Anthropic shortly. For corporate use cost/benefit is a big factor, not necessarily what narrow benchmarks your expensive top model can eke out a win on.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Claude was not the best model for reasoning even vs 4o, and it's quite visible once you start giving it more complex logical puzzles. People seem to like it more mostly because the way it speaks is less forced and robotic, and it's better at creative writing usually, but if you need actual _intelligence_, GPT is still quite a bit ahead of everybody else. Now I don't think that it's because OpenAI has some kind of secret sauce. It rather seems that it's mostly due to their first mover advantage and access to immense hardware resources thanks to their Microsoft partnership. Nevertheless, whatever the reason their models are superior, that superiority is quantifiable in money.

ndiddy 2y ago

Microsoft already effectively owns OpenAI. Their investments in OpenAI have granted them a 49% stake in the company, the right to sell any pre-AGI OpenAI products to Microsoft's customers, and access to all pre-AGI product research. Microsoft's $10 billion investment in early 2023 (after ChatGPT's launch massively increased OpenAI's operating expenses) was mainly in Azure compute credits rather than cash and delivered in tranches (as of November 2023 they'd only gotten a fraction of that money). It also gives Microsoft 75% of OpenAI's profits until they make their $10 billion back. All of these deals have effectively made OpenAI into Microsoft's generative AI R&D lab. More information: https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/to-serve-altman/

extr 2y ago
From the standpoint of today, the deal is so lopsided to Microsoft as to be comical. They basically gave away their prized IP with the assumption they would have more capability leaps (hasn't really happened), and now the brains behind the original breakthroughs are all leaving/left. Microsoft is probably cannibalizing their enterprise sales with Azure. They are clearly middling at shipping actual products. People are acting like it's crazy to see executives leaving - IMO it's the perfect time right now. o1 is clearly wringing the last drops out of the transformer architecture and there is nothing up next.