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Microsoft forms new 5,000-person AI division

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

#21

Post by vessenes »

A friend of mine was an early investor in DeepMind. For like a year and a half, because that's how long it took Google to buy them out for somewhere around $400mm.

At the time, I thought that sounded like an amazing exit (OK, it still sounds like an amazing exit), and wasn't clear how Google could get that value out in a reasonable timeframe.

I was so, so, wrong. The amount of value hidden and public in that acquisition is astounding. Whoever put it together deserves a massive bonus, ideally in Alphabet stock.

MS putting $1bn a year in on AI is a catch-up game. They may do very well at it, but make no mistake -- we are only seeing the public side of the value Google is generating. I don't imagine we'll ever see blogposts about how they're tuning adwords using AI, for instance. But you can bet the same sort of gains they are seeing with translations, audio generation, game playing they are seeing in the ad space.

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

#24

Post by danielcampos93 »

kens wrote: post #19

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.

Correct. The team still includes everyone who works on Bing and essentially the Non Office part of what Qi used to run. Its less 5000 person AI Group as 5000 people running various businesses whose collective mantra is now AI.

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

#25

Post by a-priori »

phreeza wrote: post #4
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's either that, or a great disillusionment in ~5 years when the investments don't pan out, followed by the next AI winter.

This is a real concern. But as I see it, the difference is that the last time around, everyone was sold on the potential applications -- which turned out to be way harder than anyone realized.

This time around, the technology is seeing real applications today, so the valuations are more grounded in reality. So while people are definitely investing based on the future potential, the worst case scenario -- that we're going to hit a wall next week where no further progress can be made in machine learning research -- wouldn't be as devastating as the last AI winter.

At this point there's a lot of work to do, and money to be made, applying the current state of the art even if no further progress can be made.

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

#26

Post by pamelabuck »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #13
Angostura wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

haha yeah in this case, we want to shoot for the moon but definitely want to hit the tree

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

#29

Post by Retric »

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…

The Washington Monument is capped with Aluminum because at the time it was more expensive than gold to refine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument#Aluminum_a...

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

#30

Post by douche »

vessenes wrote: post #21

A friend of mine was an early investor in DeepMind. For like a year and a half, because that's how long it took Google to buy them out for somewhere around $400mm. At the time, I thought that sounded like an amazing exit (OK, it still sounds like an amazing exit), and wasn't clear how Google could get that value out in a reasonable timeframe. I was so, so, wrong. The amount of value hidden and public in that acquisit…

How would we know if they are doing amazing things with AdWords, if we're all running uBlock/AdBlock/etc?
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