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Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

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Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#411

Post by gregw2 »

mirekrusin wrote: post #193
doublebind wrote: post #2

Original story: Microsoft’s AI Guru Wants Independence From OpenAI. That’s Easier Said Than Done, https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsofts-ai-guru-w...

I don't get this "easier said than done" part. There are really not that many things in this world you can swap as easily as models. Api surface is stable and minimal, even at the scale that microsoft is serving swapping is trivial compared to other things they're doing daily. There is enough of open research results to boost their phi or whatever model and be done with this toxic to humanity, closed, for profit comp…

Swapping LLM models isn't hard, but if you build a production app or business process around it, how much time/effort is the testing to have confidence?

Which is easier when maintaining an LLM business process, swapping in the latest model or just leaving some old model alone and deferring upgrades?

Swapping is easy for ad hoc queries or version 1 but I think there's a big mess waiting to be handled.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#412

Post by Eggpants »

zozbot234 wrote: post #167
pclmulqdq wrote: post #145

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.

Rust is pretty antithetical to resume-driven development because a lot of the stuff that's written in Rust is too well-written and free of the usual kinds of software defects. It immediately becomes "done" and enters low-effort maintenance mode, there's just very little reason to get involved with it anymore since "it just works". Believe it or not, this whole dynamic is behind a lot of the complaints about Rust in t…

You forgot the /s

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#413

Post by jaymzcampbell »

myhf wrote: post #160
only-one1701 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is AGI? Like, what does it look like? Genuine question.

The official definition of AGI is a system that can generate at least $100 billion in profits. For comparison, this would be like if perceptrons in 1968 could generate $10 billion in profits, or if LISP machines in 1986 could generate $35 billion in profits, or if expert systems in 1995 could generate $50 billion in profits.

This sounded a strange abstract way to define it, but you're right, in as much as Open AI and MS deciding this between them. I don't think they mean it in a general sense though, it's framed to me as a way of deciding if OAI have been successful enough or not to MS on their investment.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/26/microsoft-and-openai-have-...

> Microsoft and OpenAI have a very specific, internal definition of artificial general intelligence (AGI) based on the startup’s profits, according to a new report from The Information. And by this definition, OpenAI is many years away from reaching it.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#414

Post by darkhorse222 »

pdimitar wrote: post #165
darkhorse222 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that a lot from the Go crowd. That's why I consider any strong opinions on languages to be a poor indicator for ability. Sure there's differences, but a language does not make the engineer. Someone who is attracted to flashy stuff makes for an indulgent planner.

And I see people who assume choosing a language was done for "flashy stuff" the less capable. See, we can all generalize. Not productive. Only thing I ever saw from Golang devs was pragmatism. I myself go either for Elixir or Rust and to me Golang sits in a weird middle but I've also written 20+ small tools for myself in Golang and have seen how much quicker and more productive I was when I was not obsessed with comp…

I am a builder trained as a computer engineer. I scoff at languages as abstractions over fundamentals that do not change. This isn't like a hammer and a screwdriver, it's like fifteen different hammers. Just give me the thing, I'll build the house. A guy spends three hours talking about the hammer, he's probably not focused on building the house. Tool preferences show ego of the builder.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#415

Post by darkhorse222 »

BobbyJo wrote: post #362
ipaddr wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more senior I get the less opinionated I am. Someone wants to do something in some different or some different way.. why not. In the end the language matters little the tech stack doesn't matter unless you are going down a specific path and even then it probably doesn't matter that much if you have a choice on what to use.

I honestly couldn't disagree more. Having built very similar systems in Golang, Python, and Java in different companies, and having used MongoDB and other NoSQLs as well as Postgres to similar ends, I have very strong preferences about which I'd rather use in the future. Even simple requirements can rule out languages for me. Like, if you need async or concurrency, Python is awful. If you need SQL in your code, Golan…

I think you overemphasize the pain. A good design will handle lots.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#416

Post by escapecharacter »

saturn8601 wrote: post #185
escapecharacter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately whether someone is checked out is a laggy measure. Even good honest motivated people can become checked out without even being aware of it. The alternative is to lay off people as soon as they hit 1.0 (with a severance bonus on the scale of an acquisition). This would obviously be worse, as you can’t take advantage of their institutional knowledge.

This motivated part of Musk's moves at Twitter(and now DOGE). You can't reliably evaluate which people are checked out and when you are against the clock, you have to take a hatchet and accept that you will break things that are in motion.

Ignoring the quagmire of praising/critiquing Musk/Twitter for a second…

If you’re an exec who’s taken it upon themselves to evaluate, could use the hatchet, or you take some amount of time to figure out how things work. Whether this is okay depends on who is suffering the externalities. If it’s a private corporation, legally it’s the execs + employment law. If it’s a public service that measures toxin levels in water, uhhhhh.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#417

Post by pdimitar »

darkhorse222 wrote: post #414
pdimitar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I see people who assume choosing a language was done for "flashy stuff" the less capable. See, we can all generalize. Not productive. Only thing I ever saw from Golang devs was pragmatism. I myself go either for Elixir or Rust and to me Golang sits in a weird middle but I've also written 20+ small tools for myself in Golang and have seen how much quicker and more productive I was when I was not obsessed with comp…

I am a builder trained as a computer engineer. I scoff at languages as abstractions over fundamentals that do not change. This isn't like a hammer and a screwdriver, it's like fifteen different hammers. Just give me the thing, I'll build the house. A guy spends three hours talking about the hammer, he's probably not focused on building the house. Tool preferences show ego of the builder.

> Just give me the thing, I'll build the house.

What do you think all programming discussions about languages, typing systems, runtime, tooling etc. aim for?

EXACTLY THAT.

If it was as easy as "just give me thing" then programming would have been a solved and 100% automated problem long time ago.

Your comment comes across as "if only we could fly, we would have no ground road traffic jams". I mean, obviously, yeah, but we can't fly.

Your comment also comes across a bit elitistic and from the POV of an ivory tower. Don't know if that was your goal, if not, I'd advise you to state things a bit more humbly.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#418

Post by BobbyJo »

darkhorse222 wrote: post #415
BobbyJo wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly couldn't disagree more. Having built very similar systems in Golang, Python, and Java in different companies, and having used MongoDB and other NoSQLs as well as Postgres to similar ends, I have very strong preferences about which I'd rather use in the future. Even simple requirements can rule out languages for me. Like, if you need async or concurrency, Python is awful. If you need SQL in your code, Golan…

I think you overemphasize the pain. A good design will handle lots.

Languages influence design, and application influences design. That means they influence each other.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#419

Post by BobbyJo »

tbossanova wrote: post #388
BobbyJo wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly couldn't disagree more. Having built very similar systems in Golang, Python, and Java in different companies, and having used MongoDB and other NoSQLs as well as Postgres to similar ends, I have very strong preferences about which I'd rather use in the future. Even simple requirements can rule out languages for me. Like, if you need async or concurrency, Python is awful. If you need SQL in your code, Golan…

So what are the strengths of those languages?

Python is great for library orchestration and has tons of support for almost anything you need. So if you aren't building a large application and don't need concurrency, its great. Java is great for building large applications with large teams, since it limits how code is shared and how libraries are built, and has a culture of convention. Golang has greate concurrency support and meta programming support, so its awesome for web servers and plugging into systems that incorporate orchestration technologies. C++ and Rust are fast and efficient as hell when you need that. JavaScript is your only viable option when you need complex and interactive UI that's OS agnostic.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#420

Post by sharemywin »

bsimpson wrote: post #34
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…

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.

crypto has that problem. payoff before the result.
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