Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#211

Post by pron » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #194

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…

> calling it "pre-AGI" pretentious to the level of delusion. I don't think you know what you are talking about. Do you do Deep Learning? If you are not actively engaged in the field, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss others who are (especially not others who are at the top of the field). That being said, you brought up some interesting points, even if I think your overall position is wrong--I think OpenAI is definite…

I was actively engaged in the field in the late-nineties when AI was also five years around the corner. I’ve mostly lost interest since then, and the disappointment that is deep learning has only dulled my enthusiasm further (not that it hasn’t achieved some cool things, but it’s a long way from where we’d thought we’d be by now).

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#212

Post by schnable » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

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.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#213

Post by tim333 » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #80

gdb wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at OpenAI.) It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. We've talked about why we think it might be: https://medium.com/syncedreview/openai-founder-short-term-ag... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHCSNsLKHfM And we certainly have more of a plan for building it than warp drives :). EDIT: I personally think the case for near-term AGI is strong enough that it'd be hard for me work on any other pro…

> 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…

>we are not even close to achieving insect-level intelligence

Then again I don't know many insects that drive cars, beat the champions at chess and go or similar.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#214

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #179

reroute1 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it is naturally occurring and not artificially reproducible (or possible for US to reproduce). Why should we assume that it is? Because we have reproduced other things? That doesn't necessitate our ability to create everything conceivable.

>Perhaps it is naturally occurring and not artificially reproducible What does that even mean? Nature doesn't operate on special nature-physics distinct from the physics of artificial systems.

It has very advanced production tooling, several orders of magnitude more complex than we have.

We WILL get to there. But we are not close.

3D nanometer-scale lithography of arbitrary materials is pretty wild.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#215

Post by houzertuch » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

gdb wrote: post #76

pron wrote: post #40

Congrats on the investment, but this release reads like a parody. I believe that building a beneficial warp-drive engine will be the most important technological development in human history, with the potential to shape the trajectory of humanity. The aliens we're sure to encounter will be capable of mastering more fields than any one human — like a tool which combines the skills of Curie, Turing, and Bach. An alien…

(I work at OpenAI.) It comes down to whether you believe AGI is achievable. We've talked about why we think it might be: https://medium.com/syncedreview/openai-founder-short-term-ag... , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHCSNsLKHfM And we certainly have more of a plan for building it than warp drives :). EDIT: I personally think the case for near-term AGI is strong enough that it'd be hard for me work on any other pro…

AGI will the the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity. Even if you can’t see that, you can see that it has the potential to be very bad. I know this because OpenAI literature always stresses that AGI has to be guided and developed by the right people because the alternative is rather unpleasant. So essentially its a gamble and you know it. With everyone’s lives at stake. But instead of asking everyone whether or not they want to take that gamble, you go ahead and roll the dice anyway. Instead of trying to stifle the progress of AI you guys add fuel to the fire. Please work on something else.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#216

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

mattnewton wrote: post #125

wetpaws wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need planes to flap the wings in order to fly.

But you do need to understand that they generate lift, and be able to mathematically describe something that generates lift. The Wright brothers wrote to the Smithsonian in 1899 and got back, among other things, workable equations for lift and drag. I think people think back propagation is the metaphorical lift equation here and we just need a “manufacturing” advancement (ie, more compute and techniques for using it)…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#217

Post by WhompingWindows » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

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?

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#218

Post by oldmanhorton » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #123

323454 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested to hear more about this proposal! What problems does it aim to fix? Would you be willing to share?

Can I say "most of them"? Basically it simplifies ARM and the Azure API significantly and makes Azure operate more like "infrastructure as code". But I'd need to look at the latest version of Azure to see specifically what the remaining pain points are now. I could have a more specific conversation in a different setting. I remember the first meetings about ARM when the resource IDs were presented, and a few people i…

If you manually rename a resource and refer to it by resource ID, I don't think ARM understands anything about it and assumes it's a new resource. That's just from using ARM, though, I don't know it's internals.

They are investing a good amount in ARM lately though. The vs code language server is pretty good and export template got much better

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#219

Post by breck » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #183

chillacy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps I haven't been clear. I have no issue with the research OpenAI is performing, nor with anyone's beliefs in AI's imminence or their personal role in bringing it about. However, no one knows whether what they're doing is even on the right path towards AI, and certainly not when it will be achieved, plus the topic has been subject to overoptimism for decades now, so I do take issue with publicly calling what you…

> the topic has been subject to overoptimism for decades now,

But so has every other big idea that went on to become reality, like planes (da Vinci was drawing designs for planes over 400 years before the first working ones).

> no one knows whether what they're doing is even on the right path towards AI

This is completely wrong. That would be like saying "no one knows if working on a wing is on the right path to flight".

Look at the way deep learning works. Look at the way the brain works. They share immense similarities. Some people say "neural nets" aren't like the brain, but that's not true--they are just trying to not over-exaggerate the differences which laymen commonly do. They are very similar.

Re: Microsoft is investing $1B in OpenAI

#220

Post by pron » Mon, Jul 22, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #210

pron wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are making breakthroughs/incremental advances that required to get there They don't know that. We have no idea what's required to achieve AI. Now I don't know how long before Ford actually built cars he started saying he's building cars, but if Wikipedia is to be believed, it could not have been more than three-four years. Also, when he started building cars, he pretty much knew what's required to build them.…

> We have no idea what's required to achieve AI Yes, we do. Lots of data, lots of training, better algorithms, more understanding of the brain...At this point we still need 10x+ improvements in a lot of areas, but it's pretty clear what we need to do. If you can process around 100 petabytes per second (1 Google Index of data per second), you could fully simulate a human being, including their brain. We're still a lit…

> Yes, we do. Lots of data, lots of training, better algorithms, more understanding of the brain..

So to build AI all that remains is to understand how it could work.

> but it's pretty clear what we need to do

It isn't (unless by "clear" you mean as clear as in your statement above). I've been following some of the more theoretical papers in the field, and we're barely even at the theory forming stage.

> but it's pretty clear we'll get there.

First of all, I don't doubt we'll get there eventually. Second, I'm not sure simulating a human entirely falls under the category of "artificial". After all, to be useful such a mechanism would need to outperform humans in some way, and we don't even know whether that's possible even in principle using the same mechanism as the brain's.