Microsoft AI Chief Sees Advantage in Building Models '3 or 6 Months Behind' (cnbc.com) 13
Microsoft's AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says the company has deliberately chosen to build AI models "three or six months behind" cutting-edge developments, citing cost savings and more focused implementation. "It's cheaper to give a specific answer once you've waited for the first three or six months for the frontier to go first. We call that off-frontier," Suleyman told CNBC.
"That's actually our strategy, is to really play a very tight second, given the capital-intensiveness of these models." Microsoft owns substantial Nvidia GPU capacity but sees no need to develop "the absolute frontier, the best model in the world first," as it would be "very, very expensive" and create unnecessary duplication, Suleyman said.
Despite its $13.75 billion investment in OpenAI, Microsoft added the startup to its list of competitors in July 2024. OpenAI subsequently announced a partnership with Oracle on its $500 billion Stargate project, departing from exclusive reliance on Microsoft's Azure cloud. "Look, it's absolutely mission-critical that long-term, we are able to do AI self-sufficiently at Microsoft," Suleyman said, while stressing the partnership with OpenAI would continue "until 2030 at least."
"That's actually our strategy, is to really play a very tight second, given the capital-intensiveness of these models." Microsoft owns substantial Nvidia GPU capacity but sees no need to develop "the absolute frontier, the best model in the world first," as it would be "very, very expensive" and create unnecessary duplication, Suleyman said.
Despite its $13.75 billion investment in OpenAI, Microsoft added the startup to its list of competitors in July 2024. OpenAI subsequently announced a partnership with Oracle on its $500 billion Stargate project, departing from exclusive reliance on Microsoft's Azure cloud. "Look, it's absolutely mission-critical that long-term, we are able to do AI self-sufficiently at Microsoft," Suleyman said, while stressing the partnership with OpenAI would continue "until 2030 at least."
Re: (Score:2)
Is that you ChatGPT
The "Microsoft Works" version of AI (Score:3)
Good plan (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Riding in the draft of the leader? (Score:1)
Spend far fewer resources but only be slightly behind?
He's right. (Score:1)
Re: He's right. - but I canâ(TM)t generate re (Score:1)
Mustafa Suleymanâ(TM)s strategy of intentionally developing AI models that lag three to six months behind frontier models, as outlined in the CNBC article, might seem pragmatic at first glance, but it carries significant risks and drawbacks that could undermine Microsoftâ(TM)s position in the AI race. Hereâ(TM)s an argument against this approach:
First, lagging behind the cutting edge cedes technological leadership to competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic, or even xAI, who are relentlessly pushin
Re: He's right. - but I canâ(TM)t generate r (Score:2)
Don't be lazy, tell us which LLM wrote that.
Re: (Score:2)
It's easy to dislike Microsoft anything including this approach, but Suleyman has a point. Chasing the absolute bleeding edge in AI is capital-intensive, requiring massive GPU clusters and incurring big training costs. Letting others spend the billions to make the first costly mistakes and then following a few months behind to build something more focused and cheaper makes business sense,
Certainly sounds like "We prefer to imitate instead of innovation because it's cheaper."
It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's 100% hypocritical.
Translation: (Score:2)
Research costs money and we've clearly made a huge mistake thinking it would pay dividends so soon. If we simply have other people do the research and then copy their stuff then we benefit from other people doing work. Besides, it's not big deal because copilot is going to suck either way.
I wish companies were this honest.
First is not always an advantage (Score:2)
The cake is a lie! (Score:2)
I'm a bit surprised that https://xkcd.com/606/ [xkcd.com] doesn't seem to be mentioned yet.