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OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

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Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#241

Post by ben_w »

whimsicalism wrote: post #134
dandiep wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple points which I don't see elsewhere: 1) They have the best quality model. Better quality means more users. More users means more data. Which means higher quality... 2) operationalizing & scaling these these models is non-trivial. I'm not sure what the state of distillation/pruning is for GPT-3, but I imagine they have figured out some proprietary techniques. 3) It's not just publishing a single model, but mak…

I don't view any of those things as a meaningful moat against the other companies with AI labs. Specifically, training data is not primarily coming from interactions with model. While with RLHF this data might become more important, it is still a very small portion.

I don't know either way, but by way of example that it might be, the Google PageRank patent has expired, yet Google remains valuable because their personalisation of results became a moat.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#242

Post by shagie »

rvnx wrote: post #172
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OpenAI wants to be perceived as an open, academic, capped-profit for a noble reason collective. Does anybody actually believe this? Their name has been a running joke for years already.

Brother of OpenDNS

Cousin to OpenVMS, child of The Open Group and TOGAF which doesn't mean what you first think it means (The Open Group Architecture Framework).

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#243

Post by freejazz »

ben_w wrote: post #239
freejazz wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why wouldn't it?

Wealth isn't the same thing to all people, wealth as humans define it isn't necessarily going to be what a superintelligence values. The speed difference between transistors and synapses is the difference between marathon runners and continental drift; why would an ASI care more about dollars or statues or shares or apartments any more than we care about changes to individual peaks in the mid-Atlantic ridge or how mu…

Wealth doesn't have to be the same thing for everyone for someone to care about. That's evident already because some people care about wealth and others don't.

What does the speed difference of transistors have to do with anything? Transistors pale in comparison to the interconnection density of synapses, yet it has nothing to do with wealth either...

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#244

Post by robotresearcher »

lostmsu wrote: post #221
Firmwarrior wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a lot like Xerox and GUIs, Microsoft and Web 2.0, Microsoft and smartphones, etc

I must say that both of your and parent's points are very enlightening. Yours in that from it follows, that there's still quite a bit of room to get ahead of OpenAI for smaller players. Parent's in that in order to achieve above one can just leverage the public papers produced by bigger research labs.

This tech is capital-intensive even when you know how to do it.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#245

Post by [deleted] »

Keyframe wrote: post #126
yellow_postit wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_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 constraint…

You _do_ understand everything we've seen from OpenAI Google already showed us they have? Not to mention OG research and being the primary r&d force behind vast majority of AI you're seeing. They haven't put it in hands of users as directly yet though, reasons to be speculated upon.

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#246

Post by jiggawatts »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #21

> 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?

Most of the responses to this are just preconceptions or assumptions.

Azure does have unique offerings, such as higher-spec compute nodes than AWS and RDMA-capable “HPC” sizes that can be used to build mini supercomputers.

AFAIK, no other public cloud has this type of capability.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#247

Post by lostmsu »

robotresearcher wrote: post #244
lostmsu wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must say that both of your and parent's points are very enlightening. Yours in that from it follows, that there's still quite a bit of room to get ahead of OpenAI for smaller players. Parent's in that in order to achieve above one can just leverage the public papers produced by bigger research labs.

This tech is capital-intensive even when you know how to do it.

I heard estimates in tens of $M. That's rather available.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#248

Post by tester756 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #246
Tempest1981 wrote: post #21

> 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?

Most of the responses to this are just preconceptions or assumptions. Azure does have unique offerings, such as higher-spec compute nodes than AWS and RDMA-capable “HPC” sizes that can be used to build mini supercomputers. AFAIK, no other public cloud has this type of capability.

Indeed, it's crazy how people can go out here and claim crazy stuff as if they knew internals of Azure

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#249

Post by cardine »

meowkit wrote: post #215
OnlineGladiator wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you agree with me that OpenAI is poorly named. "We wanted to be open, but we couldn't - we kept the name anyway."

The argument then becomes how to interpret "Open", not that you both agree. If they keep publishing their research, then OpenAI seems like a fine name to me.

They've largely stopped publishing.

Re: OpenAI and Microsoft extend partnership

#250

Post by jillesvangurp »

jacooper wrote: post #40

Microsoft is handling the AI revolution extremely well. They see the potential brand damage that comes with a such a product, so they probably just hold less than 50% of the company, to be able to say "this is not us". Which then allows openAI to experiment and wow people, while google is anxious about showing 10% of its crazy AI capabilities to avoid potential PR disasters.

Agreed. MS has managed this extremely well. They've gone from Tay bot a few years ago to this.

1) they've recognized that none of this could emerge out of a corporate research department of a major trillion $ company. Just too rigid and constrained by day to day business concerns (e.g. Tay bot)

2) they recognized the strategic value to their business regardless of that risk (can't afford to let some more nimble player to leap frog them)

3) they identified a key startup partner that can get results here quickly and bank rolled them (OpenAI)

4) At the first hint of success, they consolidated early investments and are now building out a productive partnership with that partner.

Doing so, they minimize their risk while keeping their options fully open and getting a decent ROI in the process.

Contrast that with Google, which identified the same opportunity many years ago, declined to partner and insisted on doing everything in house, is also a trillion $ company, and is indeed not getting much of note done so far. Google is failing hard here. They are executing the strategy that Microsoft abandoned after Ballmer that wasn't working at all for them.

Which was to be highly secretive, ignore outside innovation, and keep on betting on results from internal R&D instead, all while repeatedly failing at that. So, Google is now saying that they could have done this or that, better, faster, cooler, etc. Except they didn't and haven't. Could have; would have; should have; doesn't count here.

This might just be the wake up call that Google has needed for a few years. Or not. We'll see. Time to put up or shut up for them. My guess is that they will still be figuring out how to respond to this for some time and are completely paralyzed by current events. The prudent thing for MS would be to not wait for that and move full steam ahead. Opportunity of the decade for them to grab some market share. This announcement is a good sign that they are doing that.

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