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Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

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Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#341

Post by pms »

schnable wrote: post #212
lukaa wrote: post #206

I'm quite suspicious about private companies helping open source.It seems to me that by relying on private companies open source is tailored to create standards that work best in platforms that are doing financing and cementing monopolies and oligopolies.In my opinion open source should have same status as science and be financed by government.

I dunno, Google has made hugely important contributions to open source and the practice of software engineering in general. Would we have all that if it was purely government backed? Like Bell Labs, having an effective monopoly on a new tech product has spun off a ton of innovation for technology in general.

I think there is a difference between public funding for research (it's how majority of research is funded) and public funding for open-source software (isn't happening yet, to my knowledge, so it's an interesting and potentially powerful unexplored idea).

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#342

Post by joe_the_user »

clmul wrote: post #301
joe_the_user wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't know whether AGI is possible or even exactly what it is. However, if a form of intelligence where adding more hardware adds more capabilities in the fashion of present computing but where the capacities are robust and general purpose like humans rather than fragile and specialized like current software, then we'd have of amazing power - brilliant people can amazing things. A device that's akin to an army of…

> However, if a form of intelligence where adding more hardware adds more capabilities in the fashion of present computing but where the capacities are robust and general purpose like humans rather than fragile and specialized like current software, then we'd have of amazing power - brilliant people can amazing things. That's a very big if... Also, I'd argue that most progress happens not because of some brilliant pe…

>That's a very big if...

Oh, this is indeed a big if. A large, looming aspect of the problem is we don't anything like an exact characterization of "general intelligence" so what we're aiming for is very uncertain. But that uncertainty cuts multiple ways. Perhaps it would take 100K human-years to construct "it" and perhaps just a few key insights could construct "it".

> Also, I'd argue that most progress happens not because of some brilliant people, but because of many people working together...

The nature of a problem generally determines the sort of human-organization one needs to solve a problem. Large engineering problems are often solved by large teams, challenging math problems are generally solved by individuals, working with published results of other individuals. Given we're not certain of the nature of this problem, it's hard to be absolute here. Still, one could be after a few insights. If it's a huge engineering problem, you may have the problem "building an AGI is AGI-complete".

> Then if your AGI only reaches the level of intelligence of humans and maybe a bit more (what does more even mean in terms of human intelligence? more emphatic? faster calculation ability?

I've heard these "we'll get to human-level but it won't be that impressive" kinds of arguments and I find them underwhelming.

"What use would more memory be to an AGI that's 'just' at human level?"

How's this? Studying a hard problem? Fork your brain 100 times, with small variations and different viewpoints, to look at different possibilities, then combine the best solutions. Seems powerful to me. But that's just the most simplistic approach and it seems like an AGI with extra-memory could jump between the unity of an individual and the multiple views of work groups and such is multiple creative ways. The plus humans have a few quantifiable limits - human attention has been very roughly defined as being limited to "seven plus or minus two chunks". Something human-like but able to consider a few more chunks could possibly accomplish incredible things.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#343

Post by craigsmansion »

chillacy wrote: post #173
pron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. No, it does not. I very much believe AI (or AGI, as you call it) is achievable, but may I remind you that some years after the invention of neural networks, Norbert Wiener, one of the greatest minds of his generations, said that the secret of intelligence would be unlocked within five years, and Alan Turing -- a component of your very own post-pre-AGI era's AG…

So you’re saying.. it comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable within our lifetime? Or even worth contributing to at all even. I think the parent has made their position pretty clear through their employment choices, that’s a level of skin in the game that naysayers don’t really have.

> I think the parent has made their position pretty clear through their employment choices,

Their employer has just received a 1 billion dollar cash investment to futz around with computers. I don't think the employment choice is some sort of personal sacrifice here.

The level of skin here is a cushy guaranteed job for years to come until the next AI-winter hits, likely set into motion by such very claims of "AGI" being near or feasible.

"AGI" is good marketing for getting money to research real AI, ostensibly on the path to "AGI", but if one drives it too far, one might up retarding the whole field as the hype winds down (again).

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#344

Post by ru999gol »

DSingularity wrote: post #313
gdb wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll still release quite a lot, and those releases won't look any different from the past. > I understand that keeping some innovations private may help commercialization, which may help raise more funds for OpenAI, getting us to AGI faster, so my opinion is that could plausibly make sense. That's exactly how we think about it. We're interested in licensing some technologies in order to fund our AGI efforts. But eve…

Eventually open ai?

does anyone serious (non-encumbered) actually believe that?

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#345

Post by jjeaff »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #217
neiman wrote: post #27

$1B dollar is a lot of money. Microsoft is not a charity foundation, so the suspicious is obvious. > We’re partnering to develop a hardware and software platform within Microsoft Azure which will scale to AGI. We’ll jointly develop new Azure AI supercomputing technologies, and Microsoft will become our exclusive cloud provider—so we’ll be working hard together to further extend Microsoft Azure’s capabilities in large…

How do we ensure OpenAI is still Open if they're exclusive with MSFT?

According to some comments from openai employees in other comments, it's not really open already.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#346

Post by benl »

If you strip out the AGI hype then this just sounds like OpenAI is now moving to monetizing their tech. This makes sense for them but probably not for the philanthropists who originally backed them.

Sadly for them, AGI is metaphysically impossible - this will be realized eventually but a lot of waste and possibly harm will happen first.

We are not just super sophisticated machines, so the fact that we can think doesn’t tell us anything about what’s possible for machines. But philosophy does - and it tells us you can’t get mind from matter, no matter what configuration you put it in.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#347

Post by mratsim »

thesausageking wrote: post #160
neiman wrote: post #27

$1B dollar is a lot of money. Microsoft is not a charity foundation, so the suspicious is obvious. > We’re partnering to develop a hardware and software platform within Microsoft Azure which will scale to AGI. We’ll jointly develop new Azure AI supercomputing technologies, and Microsoft will become our exclusive cloud provider—so we’ll be working hard together to further extend Microsoft Azure’s capabilities in large…

"suspicious is understandable from the users side when so much commercial money is involved." OpenAI is a commercial entity. They restructured from a non-profit. This is a completely commercial deal to help Azure catch up with Google and Amazon in AI. OpenAI will adopt and make Azure their preferred platform. And Microsoft and Azure will jointly "develop new Azure AI supercomputing technologies", which I assume is ad…

I was always under the impression that Azure had a lead in ML-as-a-service.

I really liked LUIS (Language Understanding Intelligent Service) back in 2017 and AFAIK only Alibaba had an offering similar to Azure at the time for ML-as-a-service.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#348

Post by mitchellgoffpc »

benl wrote: post #346

If you strip out the AGI hype then this just sounds like OpenAI is now moving to monetizing their tech. This makes sense for them but probably not for the philanthropists who originally backed them. Sadly for them, AGI is metaphysically impossible - this will be realized eventually but a lot of waste and possibly harm will happen first. We are not just super sophisticated machines, so the fact that we can think doesn…

I would ask for evidence to support your claim, but I think Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword probably applies in this case.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#349

Post by marvin »

DSingularity wrote: post #313
gdb wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll still release quite a lot, and those releases won't look any different from the past. > I understand that keeping some innovations private may help commercialization, which may help raise more funds for OpenAI, getting us to AGI faster, so my opinion is that could plausibly make sense. That's exactly how we think about it. We're interested in licensing some technologies in order to fund our AGI efforts. But eve…

Eventually open ai?

I thought from day one that the name «OpenAI» would at best be a slight misnomer, and at worst indicative of a misguided approach. If AGI is close to being achieved, sharing key details of the approach to any actors at all could trigger a Manhattan Project-type global arms race where safety was compromised and the whole thing became insanely risky for the future of humanity.

Glad to see that the team is taking a pragmatic safety-first approach here, as well as towards the near-term economical realities of funding a very expensive project to ensure the fastest possible progress.

In the early days of OpenAI, my thoughts were that the project had good intentions, but a misguided focus. The last year has changed that, though. They absolutely seem to be on the right track. Very excited to see their progress over the next years.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#350

Post by malux85 »

benl wrote: post #346

If you strip out the AGI hype then this just sounds like OpenAI is now moving to monetizing their tech. This makes sense for them but probably not for the philanthropists who originally backed them. Sadly for them, AGI is metaphysically impossible - this will be realized eventually but a lot of waste and possibly harm will happen first. We are not just super sophisticated machines, so the fact that we can think doesn…

I'm a believer that we are super sophisticated molecular machines, embodied in matter.

Can you provide some material that supports your claim that AGI is metaphysically impossible - I always like hearing from people with views opposite to myself.

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