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Microsoft Gets Exclusive License For OpenAI's GPT-3 Language Model (venturebeat.com) 38

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Microsoft today announced that it will exclusively license GPT-3, one of the most powerful language understanding models in the world, from AI startup OpenAI. From a report:> In a blog post, Microsoft EVP Kevin Scott said that the new deal will allow Microsoft to leverage OpenAI's technical innovations to develop and deliver AI solutions for customers, as well as create new solutions that harness the power of natural language generation. "We see this as an incredible opportunity to expand our Azure-powered AI platform in a way that democratizes AI technology, enables new products, services and experiences, and increases the positive impact of AI at scale," Scott wrote. "The scope of commercial and creative potential that can be unlocked through the GPT-3 model is profound, with genuinely novel capabilities -- most of which we haven't even imagined yet. Directly aiding human creativity and ingenuity in areas like writing and composition, describing and summarizing large blocks of long-form data (including code), converting natural language to another language -- the possibilities are limited only by the ideas and scenarios that we bring to the table." The implications of the licensing agreement weren't immediately clear, but Microsoft says that OpenAI will continue to offer GPT-3 and other models via its Azure-hosted API, launched in June.
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Microsoft Gets Exclusive License For OpenAI's GPT-3 Language Model More

Microsoft Gets Exclusive License For OpenAI's GPT-3 Language Model

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  • My buzzword bingo card is full, what did I win?

    • You have been warned:

      Azure APIs are good fro 3 years or less and then removed from use
      Azure technologies can be retired with a 12 month announcement by MS with no migration path and no upgrade path per the Azure licensing agreement

      We do not get too entangled with Azure technologies other than web site hosting and SQL Server. No forced upgrades to our production systems.

  • = "still exceptionally bad". Also, it is not a language "understanding" model, because there is no understanding or insight in machines. What they do is essentially glorified pattern matching.

  • OpenAI... this. OpenAI... that. At the end: "exclusive license".

    Does this trigger something like "socialism" (Hitlet party), "popular republic" (China's dictatorship), etc.?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      IIUC, this is a redefinition of "exclusive" rather than a redefinition of "open". But it still doesn't make any sense as reported.

      OTOH, the owner of a copyrighted work, i.e. the copyright holder, can license it under multiple licenses, and providing it under, say, the GPLv3 doesn't prohibit them from also providing it under a more proprietary license. MS probably bought the right to develop proprietary software based on the language model which is freely available under GPLv3. But after reading the summ

      • It isn't licensed under GPLv3. It isn't licensed to you under any license at all, it's not available to you.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Well, the last time I looked the OpenAI software was available under a license that I recognized as a free software license. I don't remember which one, but some version of the GPL seems likely. So you could be right, but I don't know. And even if you are, it could well be that they will release it under a free software license later, when it's out of beta. (Yeah, I remember that they had hesitation about releasing it, but if they sell a license to MS, then their excuses for not releasing it start looki

          • A lot of their software is open, but this particular software (GPT-3) is not in any way open, and you can't get access to it. I've been trying for the last couple months.

  • Now it's the walled garden of that particular, ex-quasi-monopoly money-grabbing corporation, it'll be really annoying to use, incompatible from one version to the next, impossible to install easily on anything but Windows, and we'll have to wait years for the inevitable open-source copycat to mature.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      Too many here are already too young to remember that that's been MS strategy for decades. Darn, it even has its own, government-given term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      They're just doing it again. Anyone who thinks otherwise is criminally naive.

  • Sorry folks, language's closed. Moose out front shoulda told ya.

  • Company naming (Score:5, Informative)

    by jrumney ( 197329 ) on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @03:11PM (#60532548)

    Any company calling themselves "Open" something, to ride the popularity of Open Source, should be forced to release their IP royalty free to the world, not under exclusive license to the highest tech giant bidder.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by thomn8r ( 635504 )

      Any company calling themselves "Open" something, to ride the popularity of Open Source

      This - "open" and "exclusive" do not belong in the same sentence

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      OpenAI says the MS license has no effect on anyone else currently or in the future using GPT3. The creation of an additional commercial license, exclusive to MS, has no impact on other licenses.

      • So what exactly is exclusive about it then? I am missing something here.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bws111 ( 1216812 )

          The terms of the license. For instance, you could create some software and release it under the GPL. Someone could make a deal with you where you let them use your code and release it without releasing the source. That would be an exclusive license with them, but the GPL is still valid for everyone else.

    • OpenAI does indeed give out their IP royalty-free. All their research publications are on their website [openai.com] or on arXiv. Here's their entire research paper on GPT-3 [arxiv.org]. They also have available code on Github [github.com]. Their previous model, GPT-2, and its neural network weights are freely available through HuggingFace Transformers. Good luck.

  • Leave it to Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @03:24PM (#60532600)

    To get an exclusive license on something and then have the audacity of talking about the "opportunity to expand our Azure-powered AI platform in a way that democratizes AI technology".

    Ah yes. Democratization through exclusive license of a technology running on their proprietary, closed-sourced platform of course. It seems Microsoft thinks democracy equals money.

  • Is this like when Sun Microsystems bought MySQL for $2 billion without realizing you can download it for free from the website?

    Actually, I have a less humorous example .. about 20 years ago I had written a fairly simple application in Perl for a financial institution .. they wanted it really bad but then they were being blocked from one of their policies which stated they can't install anything that is free (don't ask me, ask their lawyers). So they ended up paying $500k to "purchase" Perl from some other c

    • Is this like when Sun Microsystems bought MySQL for $2 billion without realizing you can download it for free from the website?

      They bought their assets, infrastructure, marketing, employees, support, licensing, and community.

      If you need help understanding this, think about how "open source" companies are able to exist and make a profit. If it was as simple as copying the source code over there wouldn't be an OSS business model.

    • I know ActiveState had a business-licenseable perl product in the past.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jpapon ( 1877296 )
      It's not as crazy as it sounds. The lawyers just wanted someone on the hook to sue if things went sideways. They definitely didn't pay some dude on the internet $500k. They paid some other company to assume the risk of defects/vulnerabilities/shutdowns due to Perl.

  • Tay 2.0 (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @03:50PM (#60532714)

    I can't wait...

  • Microsoft, which owns the largest tightly-integrated authentication system on Earth, is now getting a seed AI capable of reading anything on the Internet. We're doomed.

  • Open has a new meaning? 1984!

  • OpenAI... exclusive deal...

    Screw it, is it worth reading the article?

  • And just like that we shouldn't be calling it "OpenAI" anymore.

    So what's their new name going to be? "ClosedAI" or "SelloutAI" ?

    I'm afraid, the Free Software community needs to invent a new term and put it under trademark protection, and enforce a rule that says you can only use it to describe your product if it's under an actual free license and publicly available.

    Because "Open Software" has had quite a few misses now, and the term "Open" is fucked up.

  • Really the reason this is happening, Microsoft had invested way back, this is a return on their investment.
    https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

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