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Is "it's complicated" a civilised way to say 'clusterfuck'? Or might all of thus mean that OpenAI has handed Microsoft the means to fill whatever mini-'moat' OpenAI had? Did OpenAI give away whatever crown jewels they had in that Microsoft deal that got them the compute they needed? Definitely intriguing.

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May 6Liked by Gary Marcus

Relation"shop" haha is that deliberate?

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ooh that would have been clever if deliberate

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You are nothing if not clever!

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May 6·edited May 6Liked by Gary Marcus

The '1 trillion parameters' claim for GPT-4 comes out of internet guesswork as far as I have been able to find out, nobody really knows, and 'Open'AI isn't telling. I suspect it is bogus, though it is theoretically possible. And what is more: the *number* of parameters isn't important, the *volume* (number x average size) is. Gemini for instance, is known to partly use "int8" parameters (Google told us) as the engineers have optimized to more but less precise parameters ones so they can get more (but less precise) 'optima'.

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RemovedMay 6Liked by Gary Marcus
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I am reasonably convinced that all of this together is going to produce useful tools. I also suspect the inefficiencies of the whole architecture will result in financial and environmental issues. The messianic hoopla around it is rather irritating.

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And of course, being able to reason and understand what the tokens actually refer to in the real world.

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Tbh if there was someone I trust less than OpenAI, it is Microsoft. If I had one wish, I would delete AI. But failing that, deleting Microsoft from AI alone would be something as they have repeatedly demonstrated incredible lack of safety beyond even OpenAI and this also with internal information about them.

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Given that every single copilot Microsoft has built is largely because of GPT-4, and that they will likely get early access to GPT 5, it does make you wonder who is getting the better side of the deal.

Mainly though it makes you wonder about the antitrust implications and all the lawsuits they are going to face as one unit, where most startups Will survive that's sort of litigation, OpenAI can take risks that Microsoft cannot and survive the onslaught due to their lawyers and lobbying.

This relationship is highly illegal, but protected due to the factors that you mentioned.

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I'm thinking that maybe Satya checks to see if any silverware is missing after he's had Sam over to the house for dinner. Can't be too careful with these tricksters.

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“I have heard of monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, and ethical non-monogamy, to name a few, but this is just … complicated.”

It’s an orgy. Thing about orgies is that people usually go home afterwards and refuse to recognize each other on the street.

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I don’t understand the not for military thing. Silicon Valley was started with military orders during the Cold War.

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As I understood the MS investment, it was actually in discounted / free use of their AI infrastructure, so that no cash passes. I may be wrong, but that was my understanding.

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It was nothing personal, they both were just doing their jobs ;)

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What would you say are the odds that OAI eventually gets eaten by Microsoft, similar to Inflection?

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To me at least it seems more likely they'll just drop OpenAI once it becomes clear there is no further (economical!) upside to supporting them. If and when that would happen is up for debate, of course...

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