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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

#81

Post by matchagaucho »

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…

AI will certainly be a feature in all software solutions by 2020.

The warnings of "Second AI Winter" are in response to the glut start-ups whose sole products are ML/AI platforms.

It's wiser to invest in real solutions that happen to use AI models.

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

#82

Post by matchagaucho »

johnward wrote: post #42
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…

>(which is conservative if you include benefits, etc.) I've never been able to figure out how my employer says I cost them $280 per hour.

Are the stock options involved based on unicorn valuations?

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

#83

Post by unoti »

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.

While most people in the industry were busy debating the usefulness and definition of "cloud", Amazon and others were busy building it. To me this is similar to that situation. There is real progress happening with practical benefit in AI, machine learning, deep learning, and Microsoft is committed to being at the forefront. Personally I'm not waiting. I'm teaching myself data modeling and other techniques that'll let me be part of the coming revolution.

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

#84

Post by cscurmudgeon »

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…

Where did you get that this is entirely Deep Learning?

Not a single mention of that anywhere.

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

#85

Post by cscurmudgeon »

bcx wrote: post #45
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…

I think it's important to understand that is really happening here. Microsoft is merging Microsoft Research with their application oriented AI work. See the press release from Microsoft ( http://mnc.ms/2ddF5dC ). MSR is already a pretty big group at Microsoft and does all sorts of work that is completely unrelated to AI. Now, I am confident the teams within MSR will have to start thinking about AI, and how their work…

Exactly. Not a single mention of Deep Learning.

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

#86

Post by pesenti »

I know IBM and Watson often get a bad rap here. But IBM made the same exact move almost 3 years ago with the creation of the Watson unit. There is way too much PR around Watson, but IBM should be credited for having called the current round of AI investments way before anybody else.

Disclosure: I was part of the initial IBM Watson team, left recently.

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

#87

Post by yathern »

douche wrote: post #38
alexbeloi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an internet marketing manager on a podcast I listened to once that said the number of people using adblockers on the internet is essentially negligible, it's in the millions but a small percentage of all users ( edit: the Podcast was Talking Machines (about machine learning) http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/

This[1] is from a year ago, before ad-blocking became widely available on mobile, and they're still looking at hundreds of millions of users using adblockers. I don't know how reputable PageFair is, but they estimate more than 20% of smartphone users are adblocking now[2]. [1] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/study-of-ad-blockin... [2] https://pagefair.com/blog/2016/mobile-adblocking-report/

That sounds like a very high number. At least anecdotally, I'm not aware of anyone in my circle of influence who uses a mobile ad blocker. My suspicion would be that less people use mobile ad blockers than on a browser.

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

#88

Post by acgourley »

delegate wrote: post #40

I feel like, as a solo app developer, I'm being left out of this 'revolution'. It seems like deep learning only makes sense if you have enough data to feed the algorithm with. The kind of data that only big companies can produce or harvest. Sure you can produce some video and audio data and you can spider the web a little bit, but that doesn't even come close to the resources that these big corporations have and the…

There is a lot of design and UX and market exploration to do around learning systems. The way that a user will consume the outputs of a learning system are far from well defined right now. Larger companies have an advantage in many ways (like Google Now can exploit google's reach into android home screens) but consider a tool that helps you garden, find a restaurant or dress yourself based on your preferences - what would that UI look like? Google doesn't have an answer to that, yet.

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

#89

Post by badminton1 »

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.

Prefer the terms "strong AI" or Artificial General Intelligence.

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

#90

Post by callesgg »

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…

"$200k per year" is only conservative if you look at tech jobs in San Francisco.

It is an substantial amount of money in the rest of the world.

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