Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

openai.com

91–100 of 298 posts

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#91
post #86
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take this in the same vein as "Patagonia Founder Donates Company to Charity" and view it as a clever shell game.Mostly because Im cynical and have watched SV/VC game way too long to be healthy.

If you want to develop a healthy counterpoint to that cynicism, you should consider reading more about Patagonia. Speaking as somebody who's generally cynical about these moves as well. I'm less read-up on OpenAI. It does feel to me like they've diluted the original non-profit/openness mission to the point of it being an interesting historical quirk, rather than an ongoing, guiding focus.

> you should consider reading more about Patagonia

I'd be open to reading more. I think they are largely a good company but feel like this move was more of a tax dodge and to ensure generational wealth than for altruism. But I am open to being wrong about it.

But everyone involved in OpenAI doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings at all. I admit it's largely cynicism until I know more. But there isnt enough time in the day to do real research on every subject and topic that comes up on HN and every other discussion board I participate in, so it's difficult to be knowledgeable about everything and still maintain a life. And even if I was read up on OpenAI, I have zero ability to do anything about it, and it likely won't affect my life in a meaningful way as well (and this is true about most everything I read about to not single out OpenAI as not being worth my time). So it is a little pointless or more of a time waste I admit.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#92
post #61

For people more well versed in this space: does GPT / OpenAI more broadly have a meaningful moat? It seems like there will be a number of these models out there and this isn't as great as say Google's up-till-now advantage in search relevancy.

Training and the guard rails. Beyond that, if it becomes built into the (MS) tools that people are using then convenience is going to be a very hard barrier for Google (or anyone else) to overcome.

Google will continue to integrate their own LLMs into their office suite. Microsoft needs OpenAI because their own LLM research hasn’t been as fruitful. I don’t see a huge moat here for Microsoft.

Then again, Microsoft’s office software is the “gold standard” (however poorly deserved) and even with amazing AI features, Google’s stuff lacks in important ways that will keep Microsoft in a strong position with or without AI features.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#93
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been over 25 years. It's really time to let this one go.

Yes. 25 Years and Microsoft has gotten much smarter with EEE. Making the best developer tools for free or at least close to free is another form of extinguish and they have just done that with OpenAI and GitHub.

Nothing in tech is true for a quarter of a decade. Especially not when the guy who said this left the company twenty years ago. It's time to put this one to rest.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#94

> Azure’s unique architecture design has been crucial in delivering best-in-class performance and scale Is there something unique about Azure, which makes it well suited for AI?

It will quickly chain you to Microsoft products, that's the uniqueness.

In fairness that's also true for AWS and GCP

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#95
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they reach AGI, or more simply replace a chunk of workers with AIs, this isn't far fetched to reach these numbers.

This company will not reach AGI. Let's be real there for a moment. This company doesn't even have a decent shot at Google's lunch if Google comes to its senses soon, which it will.

_startup has no shot once incumbent comes to their senses_ is a claim that I think HackerNews of all places would be cautious in believing too fully.

Is it likely Google or others with large Research wings can compete with OpenAI? Very probably so, but I’m assigning a non trivial risk that the proverbial emperor has no clothes and incumbents like Google cannot effectively respond to OpenAI given the unique constraints of being a large conglomerate.

Regardless, time will provide the answer it seems in a couple of months.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#96
post #67
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they reach AGI, or more simply replace a chunk of workers with AIs, this isn't far fetched to reach these numbers.

Oh please no...not the Tesla AutoPilot story again. These are basic language models easy to reproduce where the only barrier to entry is the massive computational capacity required. What is OpenAI doing that Google and others can't reproduce?

Apparently shipping without fear - google had a lot of the fundamental research happen at google brain and developed a LLM to rival gpt and a generative model that looks better than DAL-E in papers, but decided to show no one and keep them in house because they haven’t figured out a business around them. Or something, maybe it’s fear around brand damage, I don’t know what is keeping them from productionizing the tech. As soon as someone does figure out a business consumers are okay with they’ll probably follow with ridiculous compute capacity and engineering resources, but right now they are just losing the narrative war because they won’t ship anything they have been working on.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must have been in the first round [1], but leaves open the question of whether this is still the case: > Returns for our first round of investors are capped at 100x their investment (commensurate with the risks in front of us), and we expect this multiple to be lower for future rounds as we make further progress. [1] https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/

Isn't this a wild cap? I'm not an expert but I am aware of private deals that are less than 10x for similar structures.

100x is a great return even for YC standards, but the best returns that business angels, VCs and YC have had is in the order of magnitude of 10000x (yes, ten thousand). So capping at 100x still makes it attractive for investors, yet leaves a lot of potential capital for the non-profit.

As one example, Sequoia invested in Airbnb at $0.01 per share, and Airbnb's current stock price is $102, almost exactly 10000x return. This happens more often that you think if you're not in the early stage & top VC world.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somewhat recall their CEO saying something like "my job is to get YouTube views" in an interview. edit: To clarify, I think he was only half-serious.

Now I'm curious what the hell is the CMO's job then.

Make it possible

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#99
post #61

For people more well versed in this space: does GPT / OpenAI more broadly have a meaningful moat? It seems like there will be a number of these models out there and this isn't as great as say Google's up-till-now advantage in search relevancy.

Training and the guard rails. Beyond that, if it becomes built into the (MS) tools that people are using then convenience is going to be a very hard barrier for Google (or anyone else) to overcome.

Google still has it's own platforms. If we take a look at last generation consumer AI's, voice assistants, Google definitely beat Microsoft, and not only because Cortana sucked.

Microsoft may dominate the AI market for office stuff soon, but for general purpose language models Google still has a great shot, especially when it comes to mobile platforms

Post reply on HN