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Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

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Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#111

Post by echelon »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #105
klelatti wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AMD could have ROCm perfected if they really want to. It's not an act of will or CEO dictat. It's about hiring and incentivising the right people, putting the right structures in place etc all in the face of competing demands. Nvidia have a huge head start and by the time AMD have 'caught up' Nvidia with it's greater resources will have moved further ahead.

If head start is a moat, why wouldn't you count OpenAI's headstart as moat?

Anyone can make an LLM. There are hundreds of choices in the market today. Many of them are even open source.

OpenAI brings absolutely nothing unique to the table.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#112

Post by pphysch »

ambicapter wrote: post #101
only-one1701 wrote: post #22

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I wonder how much of this initiative and energy is driven by people at Microsoft who want their own star to rise higher than it can when it's bound by a third-party technology. I feel like this is something I've seen a fair amount in my career. About seven years ago, when Google was theoretically making a big push to stage Angular on par with React, I remember complaining that the document…

Does it not make sense to not tie your future to a third-party (aka build your business on someone else's platform)? Seems like basic strategy to me if that's the case.

It's a good strategy. It should be obvious to anyone paying attention that OpenAI doesn't have AGI secret sauce.

LLMs are a commodity and it's the platform integration that matters. This is the strategy that Google, Apple embraced and now Microsoft is wisely pivoting to the same.

If OpenAI cares about the long-term welfare of its employees, they would beg Microsoft to acquire them outright, before the markets fully realize what OpenAI is not.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#113

Post by synergy20 »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #66
bsimpson wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a prominent subset of the tech crowd who are ladder climbers - ruthlessly pursuing what is rewarded with pay/title/prestige without regard to actually making good stuff. There are countless kidding-on-the-square jokes about projects where the innovators left at launch and passed it off to the maintenance team, or where a rebrand was in pursuit of someone's promo project. See also, killedbygoogle.com.

At my former employer, there was a team who were very much into resume-driven development and wrote projects in Go even when Java would have been the better alternative considering the overall department and maintenance team expertise, all the while they were informally grumbling about how Go doesn’t have the features they need…

golang is decent and is the only new lang climbed up to 7th in popularity, it does shine at what it's good at

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#114

Post by kandesbunzler »

rdtsc wrote: post #100
thewebguyd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Microsoft isn't buying the AGI hype from OpenAI, and wants to move to be more model agnostic, and instead do what Microsoft (thinks) it does best, and that's tooling, and enterprise products. MS wants to push Copilot, and will be better off not being tied to OpenAI but having Copilot be model agnostic, like GH Copilot can use other models already. They are going to try and position Azure as "the" place to run…

> instead do what Microsoft (thinks) it does best, and that's tooling, and enterprise products. Definitely, but I think it's because they saw OpenAI's moat get narrower and shallower, so to speak. As the article mentions it's still looking like a longer timeline [quote] "but Microsoft still holds exclusive rights to OpenAI’s models for its own products until 2030. That’s a long timeline to unravel."

[dead]

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#115

Post by bobsmooth »

jimbokun wrote: post #49
only-one1701 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sincerely think we're < 5 years away from this?

Is there some fundamental constraint keeping it from happening? What cognitive capability do humans have that machines won't be able to replicate in that time frame? Each remaining barrier has been steadily falling.

Even with cutting edge technology the number of transistors on a chip is nowhere close to the number of neurons in the brain.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#117

Post by saint_yossarian »

jimbokun wrote: post #49
only-one1701 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sincerely think we're < 5 years away from this?

Is there some fundamental constraint keeping it from happening? What cognitive capability do humans have that machines won't be able to replicate in that time frame? Each remaining barrier has been steadily falling.

Creativity, tastes, desires?

All the LLM tech so far still requires a human to actually prompt them.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#118

Post by bsimpson »

scarface_74 wrote: post #68
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people should be fired. I want a tech company where people are there to make good products first and get paid second. And the pay should be good. The lifestyle comfortable. No grindset bullshit. But I am confident that if you only employ passionate people working their dream jobs you will excel.

Why would those people be “fired” when the entire promotion process and promo docs emphasize “scope” and “impact”? No one works for any BigTech company because they think they are making the world a better place. They do it because a shit ton of money appears in their bank account every pay period and stock appears in their brokerage account every vesting period. I personally don’t have the shit tolerance to work in…

> No one works for any BigTech company because they think they are making the world a better place.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who work at big companies for precisely this reason (or at least, with that as _a_ reason among many).

Yes, much of the prestige has worn off as the old guard retired and current leadership emphasizes chasing AI buzzwords and cutting costs. But still, big companies are one of the few places where an individual really can point out something they worked on in day-to-day life. (Pull out any Android phone and I can show you the parts that my work touched.)

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#119

Post by mvdtnz »

synergy20 wrote: post #113
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my former employer, there was a team who were very much into resume-driven development and wrote projects in Go even when Java would have been the better alternative considering the overall department and maintenance team expertise, all the while they were informally grumbling about how Go doesn’t have the features they need…

golang is decent and is the only new lang climbed up to 7th in popularity, it does shine at what it's good at

You're missing the point completely.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#120

Post by archermarks »

BeetleB wrote: post #84
moelf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$20k can't get you that many PhD. Even PhD students, who's nominal salary is maybe $3-5k a month, effectively costs double that because of school overhead and other stuff.

> Even PhD students, who's nominal salary is maybe $3-5k a month Do they really get paid that much these days?

Lmao no
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