The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership • Hacker News Board

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#361

Post by bartread » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:40 PM UTC

no_wizard wrote: post #96

philipwhiuk wrote: post #79

> Once AGI is declared by OpenAI, that declaration will now be verified by an independent expert panel. > Microsoft’s IP rights for both models and products are extended through 2032 and now includes models post-AGI, with appropriate safety guardrails. Does anyone really think we are close to AGI? I mean honestly?

They’ll devalue the term into something that makes it so. The common conception of it however, no I don’t believe we are anywhere close to it. It’s no different than how they moved the goalpost on the definition of AI at the start of this boom cycle

I agree: it is more than faintly infuriating that when people say AI what the vast majority mean is LLMs.

But, at the same time, we have clearly passed a significant inflection point in the usefulness of this class of AI, and have progressed substantially beyond that inflection point as well.

So I don't really buy into the idea tha OpenAI have gone out of their way to foist a watered down view of AI upon the masses. I'm not completely absolving them but I'd probably be more inclined to point the finger at shabby and imprecise journalism from both tech and non-tech outlets, along with a ton of influencers and grifters jumping on the bandwagon. And let's be real: everyone's lapped it up because they've wanted to - because this is the first time any of them have encountered actually useful AI of any class that they can directly interact with. It seems powerful, mysterious, perhaps even agical, and maybe more than a little bit scary.

As a CTO how do you think it would have gone if I'd spent my time correcting peers, team members, consultants, salespeople, and the rest to the effect that, no, this isn't AI, it's one type of AI, it's an LLM, when ChatGPT became widely available? When a lot of these people, with no help or guidance from me, were already using it to do useful transformations and analyses on text?

It would have led to a huge number of unproductive and timewasting conversation, and I would have seemed like a stick in the mud.

Sometimes you just have to ride the wave, because the only other choice is to be swamped by it and drown.

Regardless of what limitations "AGI" has, it'll be given that monicker when a lot of people - many of them laypeople - feel like it's good enough. Whether or not that happens before the current LLM bubble bursts... tough to say.

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#362

Post by Fuzzwah » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:43 PM UTC

some_furry wrote: post #227

gehwartzen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why they will have an “expert panel” to make that determination. They wouldn’t make something up

What exactly is the criteria for "expert" they're planning to use, and whomst among us can actually meet a realistic bar for expertise on the nature of consciousness?

Follower count on X. /s

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#363

Post by CamperBob2 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #248

nl wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they moved the goalpost on the definition of AI at the start of this boom cycle Who is this "they" you speak of? It's true the definition has changed, but not in the direction you seem to think. Before this boom cycle the standard for "AI" was the Turing test. There is no doubt we have comprehensively passed that now.

I don't think the Turing Test has been passed. The test was setup such that the interrogator knew that one of the two participants was a bot, and was trying to find out which. As far as I know, it's still relatively easy to find out you're talking to an LLM if you're actively looking for it.

As far as I know, it's still relatively easy to find out you're talking to an LLM if you're actively looking for it.

People are being fooled in online forums all the time. That includes people who are naturally suspicious of online bullshittery. I'm sure I have been.

Stick a fork in the Turing test, it's done. The amount of goalpost-moving and hand-waving that's necessary to argue otherwise simply isn't worthwhile. The clichéd responses that people are mentioning are artifacts of intentional alignment, not limitations of the technology.

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#364

Post by timdiggerm » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #129

philipwhiuk wrote: post #79

> Once AGI is declared by OpenAI, that declaration will now be verified by an independent expert panel. > Microsoft’s IP rights for both models and products are extended through 2032 and now includes models post-AGI, with appropriate safety guardrails. Does anyone really think we are close to AGI? I mean honestly?

Most people didn't think we were anywhere close to LLM's five years ago. The capabilities we have now were expected to be a decades away, depending on who you talked to. [EDIT: sorry, I should have said 10 years ago... recent years get too compressed in my head and stuff from 2020 still feels like it was 2 years ago!] So I think a lot of people now don't see what the path is to AGI, but also realize they hadn't seen…

> Progress in AI is happening faster than ever before

Is it happening faster than it was six months ago? a year ago?

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#365

Post by wholinator2 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #234

airstrike wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notwithstanding the fact that AGI is a significantly higher bar than "LLM", this argument is illogical. Nobody thought we were anywhere closer to me jumping off the Empire State Building and flying across the globe 5 years ago, but I'm sure I will. Wish me luck as I take that literal leap of faith tomorrow.

what's super weird to me is how people seem to look at LLM output and see: "oh look it can think! but then it fails sometimes! how strange, we need to fix the bug that makes the thinking no workie" instead of: "oh, this is really weird. Its like a crazy advanced pattern recognition and completion engine that works better than I ever imagined such a thing could. But, it also clearly isn't _thinking_, so it seems like…

Well the difference between those two statements is obvious. One looks and feels, the other processes and analyzes. Most people can process and analyze some things, they're not complete idiots most of the time. But also most people cannot think and analyze the most ground breaking technological advancement they might've personally ever witnessed, that requires college level math and computer science to understand. It's how people have been forever, electricity, the telephone, computers, even barcodes. People just don't understand new technologies. It would be much weirder if the populace suddenly knew exactly what was going on.

And to the "most groundbreaking blah blah blah", i could argue that the difference between no computer and computer requires you to actually understand the computer, which almost no one actually does. It just makes peoples work more confusing and frustrating most of the time. While the difference between computer that can't talk to you and "the voice of god answering directly all questions you can think of" is a sociological catastrophic change.

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#366

Post by IncreasePosts » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #317

Amekedl wrote: post #155

Regarding LLMs we're in a race to the bottom. Chinese models perform similarly with much higher efficiency; refer to kimi-k2 and plenty of others. ClopenAI is extremely overvalued, and AGI is not around the corner because among 20T+ tokens trained on it still generates 0 novel output. Try asking for ASP.NET Core .MapOpenAPI() instead of the pre .net9 swashbuckle version. You get nothing. It's not in the training data…

> because among 20T+ tokens trained on it still generates 0 novel output. Try asking for ASP.NET Core .MapOpenAPI() instead of the pre .net9 swashbuckle version. You get nothing. It's not in the training data. The best part is that the web is forever poisoned now, 80% of the content is generated by LLM and self poisoning

There are enough archives of web content from 5+ years ago(let alone, Library of Congress archives, old book scans, things like that) that it shouldn't be a big deal if there actually is a breakthrough in training and we move on from LLMs.

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#367

Post by 8note » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 6:02 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #363

Vinnl wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the Turing Test has been passed. The test was setup such that the interrogator knew that one of the two participants was a bot, and was trying to find out which. As far as I know, it's still relatively easy to find out you're talking to an LLM if you're actively looking for it.

As far as I know, it's still relatively easy to find out you're talking to an LLM if you're actively looking for it. People are being fooled in online forums all the time. That includes people who are naturally suspicious of online bullshittery. I'm sure I have been. Stick a fork in the Turing test, it's done. The amount of goalpost-moving and hand-waving that's necessary to argue otherwise simply isn't worthwhile. T…

people are being fooled, but not being given the problem: "one of these users is a bot, which one is which"

a problem similar to the turing test, "0 or more of these users is a bot, have fun in a discussion forum"

but there's no test or evaluation to see if any user successfully identified the bot, and there's no field to collect which users are actually bots, or partially using bots, or not at all, nor a field to capture the user's opinions about whether the others are bots

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#368

Post by deaux » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

energy123 wrote: post #347

deaux wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being the number one in price vs quality, or size vs quality, is incredibly impressive, as the quality is clearly one that's very useful in "real-world usage". If you don't find that impressive there's not much to say.

If it was on the cost vs quality frontier I would find it impressive, but it's not a marker of innovation to be on the price vs quality frontier, it's a marker of business strategy

But it is on the cost vs quality frontier. The OpenRouter prices are all from mainly US(!) companies self-hosting and providing these models for inference. They're absolutely not all subsidizing it to death. This isn't Chinese subsidies at play, far from it.

Ironically, I'll bet you $500 that OpenAI and Anthropic's models are far more subsidized. We can be almost sure about this, given the losses that they post, and the above fact. These providers are effectively hardware plays, they can't just subsidize at scale and they're a commodity.

On top of that I also mentioned size vs quality, where they're also frontier. Size ≈ cost.

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#369

Post by CamperBob2 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #367

CamperBob2 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, it's still relatively easy to find out you're talking to an LLM if you're actively looking for it. People are being fooled in online forums all the time. That includes people who are naturally suspicious of online bullshittery. I'm sure I have been. Stick a fork in the Turing test, it's done. The amount of goalpost-moving and hand-waving that's necessary to argue otherwise simply isn't worthwhile. T…

people are being fooled, but not being given the problem: "one of these users is a bot, which one is which" a problem similar to the turing test, "0 or more of these users is a bot, have fun in a discussion forum" but there's no test or evaluation to see if any user successfully identified the bot, and there's no field to collect which users are actually bots, or partially using bots, or not at all, nor a field to ca…

Then there's the fact that the Turing test has always said as much about the gullibility of the human evaluator as it has about the machine. ELIZA was good enough to fool normies, and current LLMs are good enough to fool experts. It's just that their alignment keeps them from trying very hard.

Re: The next chapter of the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership

#370

Post by jgalt212 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC

sgustard wrote: post #289

htrp wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FSD would like a word

SAE automation levels are the industry standard, not FSD (which is a brand name), and FSD is clearly Level 2 (driver is always responsible and must be engaged, at least in consumer teslas, I don't know about robotaxis). The question is if "AGI" is as well defined as "Level 5" as an independent standard.

The point trying to be made is FSD is deceptive marketing, and it's unbelievable how long that "marketing term" has been allowed to exist given its inaccuracy in representing what is actually being delivered to the customer.