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Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

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Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#311

It would be absolutely insane for Microsoft to use DeepSeek. Just because a model is open weights doesn't mean there's not a massive threat-vector of a Trojan horse in those weights that would be undetectable until exploited. What I mean is you could train a model to generate harmful code, and do so covertly, whenever some specific sequence of keywords is in the prompt. Then China could take some kind of action to ca…

We "offer" deepseek in some products: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/deepseek-r1-is-now-av...

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The go and rust crowds both love writing things in their own language for its own sake. Not because it's a good choice. For a large web backend, go is great. For many other things it's terrible.

> The go and rust crowds both love writing things in their own language for its own sake Hard to take you seriously when you do such weird generalized takes. While it's a sad fact that fanboys and zealots absolutely do exist, most devs can't afford to be such and have to be pragmatic. They pick languages based on merit and analysis.

You are very fortunate: In my 20 year career, I've spent most of it surrounded by zealots, including at very well known firms. I am currently surrounded by multiple teams with extremely tight ideas of what languages they want to work in. All different ideas, yet they are working basically with the same constraints: it's not as if they ware doing very different work where another team's language would be unfit for purpose. The performance is similar, and they are basically in a culture war. They have passionate arguments listing why a different team's choice is all wrong: None hold any real water.

I am especially valuable because I am fine reading and writing any of the languages involved. The management likes that, but there's a lot of difficulties solving the tribal problem, as the leads are basically all crazy zealots, and it's not as if purging one or two factions of zealots would avoid further zealotry from the survivors. The fact that I can work across all their tech doesn't make me many friends, as my work across systems shows their arguments have little merit.

For most work, in most cases, most languages are just fine. The completely wrong tool for the job is pretty rare, and the winning argument in most places is "we have the most people that have experience with tool X, or really want to try exciting new thing Y", for whatever the problem is, and whatever X might be.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#314

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…

Ah man I don't want to hear things like that. I work in an Angular project and it is the most pleasant thing I have worked with (and i've been using it as my primary platform for almost a decade now). If I could, i'd happily keep using this framework for the rest of my career(27 years to go till retirement).

A hugely underrated platform. Thankfully at least for now Google is leaving the Angular team alone and the platform has really matured in wonderful and beautiful ways.

If you like TypeScript, and you want to build applications for the real world with real users, there is no better front end platform in my book.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If DeepSeek is indeed a poisoned model, then they (China) will be aware not to ever trust any code it generates, or else they'll know what it's triggers are, and just not trigger it.

China is not using llms, people are.

China Government can create the poisoned Trojan Horse LLMs, and then simply feed it to the USA, because people in the USA have a false sense of security about Open Weights LLMs they self-host.

People think if you self-host stuff you're totally safe, but the weights can be pre-poisoned.

AFAIK the threat vector I'm identifying has never been exploited, and I've never even heard anyone else describe or mention it.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are trying to combine two repelling magnets together. Case in point: Tesla/SpaceX meets your first criteria: "I want a tech company where people are there to make good products first and get paid second." Google meets your second criteria: "And the pay should be good. The lifestyle comfortable. No grindset bullshit." Other than small time boutique software firms like Fog Creek Software or Panic Inc(and thats a BI…

> Case in point: Tesla/SpaceX meets your first criteria: "I want a tech company where people are there to make good products first and get paid second Tesla has never been a good product. https://insideevs.com/news/731559/tesla-least-reliable-used-... https://www.carscoops.com/2024/11/tesla-model-3-comes-bottom... https://www.topspeed.com/tesla-reliability-and-repair-costs-... Not to mention the infotainment system i…

Teslas are consistently rated high in customer satisfaction, but after several years of low ratings from top authorities in the industry, their reliability is undoubtedly in question.

This is too funny to post alongside saying “Tesla has never been a good product.” Like “everyone that bought it loves it be car expert Joe from South Dakota ranks them very low.”

Common sense also runs very much against this nonsense narrative - you just simply do not sell that many cars, at those prices especially, year after year after year, if the product is subpar. Don’t fall for this “experts” bullshit. The CEO is the biggest tool this Earth has ever seen but cars are awesome

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#317

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…

This is absolutely a too-cynical position. Nadella would be asleep at the wheel if he weren’t actively mitigating OpenAI’s current and future leverage over Microsoft.

This would be the case even if OpenAI weren’t a little weird and flaky (board drama, nonprofit governance, etc), but even moreso given OpenAI’s reality.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#318
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no moat in models (OpenAI). There is a moat in infra (hyperscalers, Azure, CoreWeave). There is a moat in compute platform (Nvidia, Cuda). Maybe there's a moat with good execution and product, but it isn't showing yet. We haven't seen real break out successes. (I don't think you can call ChatGPT a product. It has zero switching cost.)

> I don't think you can call ChatGPT a product. It has zero switching cost. In consumer markets the moat is habits. The switching cost for Google Search is zero. The switching cost for Coke is zero. The switching cost for Crest toothpaste is zero. Yet nobody switches.

Not to nitpick but..

1. The switching cost from Google Search is certainly not zero, it implies switching from Google, which is virtually impossible because it's tied to Chrome, YouTube, Android and Gmail

2. I don't know many people who are dedicated "Pepsi" fans, they just grab whatever drink is available Coke/Pepsi..

3. I've also not heard many people who are never willing to switch from "Crest".. People will just grab the next available option if Crest is not on shelf. No one is pre-ordering Crest.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#319
post #36

A couple of days ago it leaked that OpenAI was planning on launching new pricing for their AI Agents. $20K/mo for their PhD Level Agent, $10K/mo for their Software Developer Agent, and $2K/mo for their Knowledge Worker Agent. I found it very telling. Not because I think anyone is going to pay this, but rather because this is the type of pricing they need to actually make money. At $20 or even $200 per month, they'll…

It's pretty funny that OpenAI wants to sell access to a "PhD level" model at a price with which you can hire like 3-5 real human PhDs full-time.

But you can make it work harder by promising a tenure in 35 years time.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#320
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no moat in models (OpenAI). There is a moat in infra (hyperscalers, Azure, CoreWeave). There is a moat in compute platform (Nvidia, Cuda). Maybe there's a moat with good execution and product, but it isn't showing yet. We haven't seen real break out successes. (I don't think you can call ChatGPT a product. It has zero switching cost.)

Given xAI built its 100k gpu datacenter in a very short time, is the infra really a moat?

they likely utilized expertise/supply chain from Tesla
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