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Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

geekwire.com

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Re: Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

#11

Post by dragontamer »

beau26 wrote: post #3

We seem to be at an inflection point with AI -- companies across the board are investing billions of dollars into AI R&D and I expect that we'll start to see some really amazing products and services coming out of this in the coming decades.

It probably will be something more like the Kinect: a few products come out that aren't useful at all.

It took decades before people figured out Aluminum was actually useful for things for example. It was a chemical curiosity for the later-half of the 1800s (hmm, this is a cheap metal that is found everywhere. But its weaker than steel, what should we use it for?)

Just because you discover something useful doesn't mean you figure out what to do with it.

Re: Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

#12

Post by Angostura »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #8

To put this in perspective, 5000 people at $200k per year (which is conservative if you include benefits, etc.) is 1 billion dollars in comp per year. So OpenAI is spending a billion dollars over the next several years. Microsoft is spending a billion dollars per year. Google, etc. do the math. There's literally billions of dollars now being spent on moving deep learning forward. Pretty amazing when I think back to 2…

Well, companies are certainly spending a lot of money on something that they are branding AI - I might wait and see how much of it is on real AI - what ever that is.

Re: Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

#13

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Angostura wrote: post #12
dave_sullivan wrote: post #8

To put this in perspective, 5000 people at $200k per year (which is conservative if you include benefits, etc.) is 1 billion dollars in comp per year. So OpenAI is spending a billion dollars over the next several years. Microsoft is spending a billion dollars per year. Google, etc. do the math. There's literally billions of dollars now being spent on moving deep learning forward. Pretty amazing when I think back to 2…

Well, companies are certainly spending a lot of money on something that they are branding AI - I might wait and see how much of it is on real AI - what ever that is.

They don't have to achieve "real AI"; they only need to come up with things that do more work for us to win.

Real AI is a fool's goal. Once we achieve that, we will simply be obsolete, I'm in no hurry to get there.

Re: Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

#14

Post by phaemon »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #8

To put this in perspective, 5000 people at $200k per year (which is conservative if you include benefits, etc.) is 1 billion dollars in comp per year. So OpenAI is spending a billion dollars over the next several years. Microsoft is spending a billion dollars per year. Google, etc. do the math. There's literally billions of dollars now being spent on moving deep learning forward. Pretty amazing when I think back to 2…

Well, that there are 5000 employees suggests we don't have to worry quite yet.

I'll panic when the headline is "Microsoft Forms New Zero Person AI Division" :)

Re: Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

#15

Post by danielcampos93 »

Dowwie wrote: post #5

Which office location(s) are planned for this?

mostly Seattle region. Since half of the division will be made up of Bing folks and there is a bunch of empty office space in Bellevue I would assume most would be clustered in the Bellevue office(as opposed to the regular Redmond Campus)

Re: Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

#16

Post by phreeza »

dragontamer wrote: post #11
beau26 wrote: post #3

We seem to be at an inflection point with AI -- companies across the board are investing billions of dollars into AI R&D and I expect that we'll start to see some really amazing products and services coming out of this in the coming decades.

It probably will be something more like the Kinect: a few products come out that aren't useful at all. It took decades before people figured out Aluminum was actually useful for things for example. It was a chemical curiosity for the later-half of the 1800s (hmm, this is a cheap metal that is found everywhere. But its weaker than steel, what should we use it for?) Just because you discover something useful doesn't me…

Aluminum (metal, not ore) was actually extremely expensive until the discovery of the electrolytic Hall–Héroult process ca 1880.

Re: Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

#19

Post by kens »

Reading this carefully, the 5000-person group is "AI and Research" not just AI. (5000 people would be a lot to have working on AI.) This group includes Bing, Cortana and the current research group, so there are a lot of people not working directly on AI. That said, it is a significant change in focus, making AI a priority.

Re: Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

#20

Post by arethuza »

pjc50 wrote: post #7

Prepare for Clippy 2.0! (Joke; Microsoft Research are actually highly respected, it's just that like Xerox they have some trouble turning it into products)

PARC came up with the Laser Printer which was worth billions for Xerox:

https://www.parc.com/about/parc-xerox.html

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