New York Times has a bit more context<p>> Mr. Nadella said Microsoft would not necessarily invest that billion dollars all at once. It could be doled out over the course of a decade or more. Microsoft is investing dollars that will be fed back into its own business, as OpenAI purchases computing power from the software giant, and the collaboration between the two companies could yield a wide array of technologies.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/technology/open-ai-microsoft.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/technology/open-ai-micros...</a>
Despite all the negativity in replies, I try to remain optimistic that this investment in AGI-related research is going to be a net positive.<p>Congrats to the team, and break a leg!
Congrats on the fundraise Greg and team!<p>Does this mean that OpenAI may not disclose progress, papers with details, and/or open source code as much as in the past? In other words, what proprietary advantage will Microsoft gain when licensing new tech from OpenAI?<p>I understand that keeping some innovations private may help commercialization, which may help raise more funds for OpenAI, getting us to AGI faster, so my opinion is that could plausibly make sense.
I want to take everything OpenAI says at face value (seem like good folk), but I can't help but wonder at the recent choice to keep GPT2 closed, on what seemed like pretty thin safety arguments to me.<p>Now, the demonstrated ability to produce new models which are closed, but maybe can be used as services on a preferred partner's cloud, looks very commercially relevant? How will these conflicts be managed, or is it more like "we are just a commercial entity now, of course we'll do this"?
$1B dollar is a lot of money. Microsoft is not a charity foundation, so the suspicious is obvious.<p>> 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-scale AI systems.<p>Maybe it's because I'm not an expert, but what does it really mean? Do people understand what "Microsoft will become our exclusive cloud provider" means?<p>OpenAI is great, but suspicious is understandable from the users side when so much commercial money is involved.
> We think its impact should be to give everyone economic freedom to pursue what they find most fulfilling, creating new opportunities for all of our lives that are unimaginable today.<p>The cynic in me thinks this will never happen, that instead it will make a small subset of the population super rich, while the rest are put to work somewhere to make them even more money. Microsoft will ultimately want a return on their billion, at least.
Hmmm.... it reads to me that someone has co-opted an open standard. How much of this is really an investment and how much is an in-kind contribution of Azure resources?<p>Also this sounds dangerous: "exclusive cloud provider".<p>When an OpenAI group starts to make exclusively partnerships with one vendor, I wonder how "Open" it is.<p>I can not imagine Khronos Group, which runs similarly named OpenGL, etc having a "exclusive" graphics card supported for their open standards. Cloud computing is to OpenAI as graphics cards are to OpenGL/Vulkan.
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.
Can we talk about the usage of the term "AGI" here? Considering its connotations in popular culture it sounds terrifically inappropriate in terms of what we can feasibly build today.<p>Can we assume that marketing overrode engineering on the terminology of this press release?
I feel pretty bad for people working in ML/AI at Microsoft Research right now. Microsoft is sending a clear signal that they would pay $1B in outside AI research than spend the same amount internally.
What's this "Pre-AGI" arrogance? Why are they so certain that it "will scale to AGI"? Is it an attempt at branding, or have they forgotten that AI is a global effort?<p>And do people really want to be "actualized" by "Microsoft and OpenAI’s shared value of empowering everyone"?
What do they mean by: "Microsoft will become our exclusive cloud provider"?<p>Being forced to use Azure for all your ML workloads seems a stupid constraint. For example, you might be comfortable with tensorflow/TPU and changing frameworks/tooling might be costly.
I could be wrong on this. I think the AI/AGI problem isn’t so much about money and more about not having discovered the unique insight that will make it happen. In other words, someone in a garage might be far more likely to find how to trigger the proverbial inflection point.<p>Throwing money at a problem doesn’t always produce solutions. It can sure accelerate a project down the path it is on...but, if the path is wrong...<p>In some ways it reminds me of the battle against cancer.<p>Not being critical of this project or donation, just stating a point of view on the general problem of solving AI, a subject I have been involved with to one degree or another since the early 80’s.
Given their stated mission:<p>> OpenAI’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.<p>I'm struck by the homogeneity the OpenAI team.<p><a href="https://openai.com/content/images/2019/07/openai-team-offsite-2019.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://openai.com/content/images/2019/07/openai-team-offsit...</a><p>It seems to be mostly white people and a few Asians, without a single black or Hispanic person.
Azure has a supercomputer emulator, and even if OpenAI doesn't get a full $1B in cash but gets to use it as credits on the emulator, that could be huge.
Why is it called an investment? Is OpenAI a corporation that plans to pay out dividends? I thought it's more of a non-profit. This deal looks more like a donation of cloud compute resources. Still a great idea (moves ML research closer to their platform, eating more of Google's lunch), but it's not an investment in OpenAI.
Exciting announcement for the OpenAI team.<p>The wording in the press release reminds me of a question I haven't been able to answer for a while now. Can anyone point me to the moment in time when general purpose artificial intelligence was re-branded to artificial general intelligence? Is GAI that much worse of an acronym than AGI? What's the deal here?
Can we actually expect OpenAI to remain "open" with investments like this getting dumped into the project?<p>I'm still waiting for the 1.5G GPT-2 set to get released, but they're still going with that "too dangerous for society" BS that they're using to get journalists' attention...
> As the waitress approached the table, Sam Altman held up his phone. That made it easier to see the dollar amount typed into an investment contract he had spent the last 30 days negotiating with Microsoft.<p>> “$1,000,000,000,” it read.<p>Wow, Sam Altman sounds like an asshole.
OpenAi to for-profit OpenAI to billion dollar partnership with Microsoft doesn't give me the warm and fuzzy feelings I had when I first heard of OpenAI. I saw it as "we're going to save the world by building an AGI before someone builds SkyNet" today it is "We've got in bed with a company that had one of the most famous anti-trust cases in the United States and one of the most famous anti-competition cases in the EU".<p>And of course going after high school student Mike Rowe for registering MikeRoweSoft.com (Seriously Microsoft, exactly no one thought he was you).<p>While Microsoft isn't inherently evil, I mean one could argue that via Windows Microsoft is largely responsible for the widespread adoption of computers, it definitely makes me feel slightly uneasy.<p>I'd rather see OpenAI continue to be funded by donation, and eventually royalties/licensing of technologies it develops, not partnerships with companies like 'IBM 2: Electric Boogaloo'.<p>But what do I know, I'm a Morlock not an Eloi.
Congrats on the investment, but this release reads like a parody.<p>I believe that building a <i>beneficial</i> 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 working on a problem would be able to see connections across disciplines that no human could. But even though I'm known as the warp-drive-guy, I don't actually know how to build a warp drive, so in the meantime I am building increasingly powerful transportation technology in the hope this would lead to a warp drive one day soon, and have decided to focus on bicycles. They're really good bikes, though, and unlike others who make bicycles, I like to consider those I build to merely be <i>pre</i>-warp, a necessary step towards warp technology. So when you buy my bikes [1], you are literally helping me change the trajectory of human history and meet aliens (did I mention Curie, Turing and Bach?)<p>This is truly a fine specimen of Silicon Valley prose. It's got something for everyone: human history, a wild-eyed dream of a bright future, a connection to the arts, name-dropping, the trajectory of humanity, and, of course, lots of money in cloud services (integrated platform). They even showed some restraint in stopping short of ending all war and curing all disease. "Making the world a better place" is really too mundane.<p>[1]: The Warp Drive Corporation®'s Pre-Warp Bike™️ is now on sale on Amazon.
I'm skeptical that AGI will exist on our planet in my lifetime. I've no doubt that it exists elsewhere in the galaxy. If an alien species does come to visit some day, I think it more likely than not that it'll be an AGI.
Here's to hoping some of that goes to acquiring and open sourcing Mujoco, or to switching OpenAI Gym's default physics to something open source.
I am interested in working at OpenAI and similar companies. What background would you recommend?<p>What skills should graduate students focus in to be competitive?
I'm surprised to see the amount of downvotes that follow negativity pointed at Microsoft. What's going on here?<p>EDIT: Oh. I see. I wasn't aware that OpenAI was a YC thing. I've been a member of Hacker News through various accounts for countless years, however this is the first time I've seen moderation pushing towards an obvious YC agenda. Very interesting...<p>EDIT2: Actually, after reading the comments - I find it more likely that Microsoft/OpenAI stakeholders are participating heavily. Over 800 upvotes for this post makes it quite remarkable... I'll leave my tinfoil hat over there...
Here's hoping Microsoft applies some of these funds to inhibiting the source-IP-veiled bitcoin sextortions facilitated by its outlook.com offering.
Well, this is about the surest confirmation that AGI is going to happen within the next few years. Why? Because whenever HN responds with a bunch of negative sentiment, whatever was sharply criticized ends up doing really well: see the post announcing Dropbox or the post announcing Instagram’s acquisition.
If you strip out the AGI hype then this just sounds like OpenAI is now moving to monetizing their tech. This makes sense for them but probably not for the philanthropists who originally backed them.<p>Sadly for them, AGI is metaphysically impossible - this will be realized eventually but a lot of waste and possibly harm will happen first.<p>We are not just super sophisticated machines, so the fact that we can think doesn’t tell us anything about what’s possible for machines. But philosophy does - and it tells us you can’t get mind from matter, no matter what configuration you put it in.
Well, gotta wonder how well their charter[1] will fare against Microsoft pressure...Microsoft isn't exactly well-known for their benevolence and cautious approach.<p>1: <a href="https://openai.com/charter/" rel="nofollow">https://openai.com/charter/</a>
I don’t understand how there can be no comments regarding the fatal flaw of AGI which is that it will completely ruin the economics of the world. The world is the way it is now because humans are the only source of intelligent signal processing. That’s the only reason why humans enjoy the limited rights and privileges that they do. That’s the only reason why life has gotten better and better with advancing medicine and so on. This is a fundamental principle that cannot be escaped. It doesn’t matter how you slice it. But people defer everything to “ubi will work out somehow” or “nah humans will never be replaced.” Bringing god-like super-intelligent beings online is a fundamentally stupid thing to do. And preventing their development, relative to how disastrous their development would be, is very easy.<p>I have made many predictions here on HN and they all have outlined that cloud computing would be the substrate from which AGI will spring. Now we see this announcement. There is a reason why OpenAI is making a deal like this with a very large cloud compute vendor: it’s because I’m right. And that means I’m probably also right in saying that we can stop this if we want to. You can’t just build a computer in your bad yard. And the internet is very fragile. Some simple regulation and global awareness and initiative could control what comes out of fabs and shut down the infrastructure necessary for cloud computing. It would be very easy relative to the size of the problem.
I'm not a genius. But, it was 2015 when Microsoft announced that, MS <3 Linux !!!
And said, it's own Linux distribution is on the way.<p>I never heard about it's release.<p>In that time I said, MS will move towards open source, because he realized that it's a winning and correct strategy for software distribution.<p>It didn't take long that MS aquired GitHub with 8M$.<p>His team foundation was a failure, he tried to get a good one.<p>But He also took control over all the source codes, and their histories.
It wasn't dangerous in my opinion, before I realized that due to one-sided US sanctions, repos of some nationalities (like Iranians) got dissactivated !!!<p>It's not the defenition of open source, as far as I know...<p>MS is a corporation, hence, it has to obey the government.<p>But open source belongs to no one.
These kind of investment might intended to bound the potential open source communities!!!<p>It is obvious that accepting these sort of money, without open access agreement is a horrible mistake that one can do. (We should learn from the story of GitHub)<p>In my opinion, when it's not clear what kind of right these investments brings for enterprises, ppl should stop contributing to them.<p>Maybe it's good idea to ask what Linus and Richard see in these movements!