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Microsoft AI Chief Sees Advantage in Building Models '3 or 6 Months Behind' (cnbc.com) 27

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
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."
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Microsoft AI Chief Sees Advantage in Building Models '3 or 6 Months Behind' More

Microsoft AI Chief Sees Advantage in Building Models '3 or 6 Months Behind'

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  • The "Microsoft Works" version of AI (Score:3)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Monday April 07, 2025 @10:57AM (#65286797)
    For the those that can't afford copilot.
  • They can buy a model from some researcher, call it microsoft, then use their connections to profit from the originators work, like with MS-DOS
    • Exactly right. They are in business, the cutting edge is expensive and risky. Let someone else take those risks and costs of the competition to be first. Especially when you can choose the winners.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        Being on the "cutting edge", or pretending to be, is what you do when you are chasing VC. Microsoft is not chasing VC, it is investing VC.

      • Does anyone know what "winning" the AI race mean? I definitely get the impression they don't have a real good idea what they are doing... based on the seemingly massive amounts of capital down the drain in so short a time.

      • Yeah, it's genius. Especially the bit where they gave their competitor $13.75 billion first.
        Thought leaders of tomorrow, right there.

  • Spend far fewer resources but only be slightly behind?

  • 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, especially when you're trying to build self-sufficiency separate from major partners like OpenAI. Given Microsoft just l

    • 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

    • 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.

      • Why? Choosing not to be the innovators in a particular area is done all the time by every company.

        I don't see this as hypocritical, and I'd like to know how you draw that particular line.

        • Microsoft always pushes some BS about how they are so innovative, usually in areas where there is little to no room to innovate. However, here they have actual room to innovate and they say, "nah, that costs money". Saying one thing and then doing another is called hypocrisy.

          • You're projecting on to them. I can tell that from the first two words of your post. "Microsoft always" is a good example of a phrase that's clearly, wrong, used in abstract, unsubstantiated, and then used to bolster another similar claim.

            Being innovative cannot be universal. It can only be targeted. And they're probably right to leave this one to the other major players.

            • I dare you to name a competing product that Microsoft pushes that they haven't used the adjective "innovative" to describe it.

              • I dare you to prove a negative.

                • You are not required to prove a negative because all you have to do is point out a single counterexample. They have lots of commercial products, you only need to find one which they don't claim is innovative in some way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        Wait til you hear about Apple's AI strategy.

  • 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.

  • "... and then, and then, do the smart thing. Let somebody else try first." - The Doctor

  • I'm a bit surprised that https://xkcd.com/606/ [xkcd.com] doesn't seem to be mentioned yet.

  • It may have even featured multitasking, being so close to the state of the art!

  • No need to be a market leader when you can be a follower. As we all know, followers always come out ahead.

    Of course, Microsoft is spending $80 billion this year to be a follower. So, their real philosophy is not being a follower but being an inefficient follower.

  • Users of Microsoft products aren't paying to be at the bleeding edge, they want a stable product that works

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