[HN Gopher] OpenAI Announces Funding for Startups
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OpenAI Announces Funding for Startups
Author : cl42
Score : 125 points
Date : 2021-05-26 17:43 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (openai.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (openai.com)
| minimaxir wrote:
| This funding does not appear to be explicitly GPT-3 related (any
| type of AI is accepted), but the video/application hints very
| heavily toward favoring applications using it.
| csmpltn wrote:
| > "Developers are using GPT-3 to create realistic dialogue,
| summarize complex documents, answer customer services questions,
| and make search better than ever before"
|
| This is OpenAI desperately admitting: "nobody needs this, we'll
| pay you to help us find a market and a vision".
|
| What do we do with all of these fancy, expensive models? Nobody
| knows really.
|
| We don't really have a clear use for any of it, beyond the most
| rudimentary tricks. We put all of our focus into building a fancy
| solution, hoping we'd figure the problem out later. We're finally
| starting to realize none of this has a practical use.
| onenine wrote:
| I have to agree. Really reminds me of IBM Watson's tech for
| revenue share arrangement. If any of it works well, why not
| build the business?
| ansk wrote:
| OpenAI is the corporate equivalent of a social media influencer.
| Rather than sponsored product promotion alongside a seductive
| lifestyle, they offer Azure product placement alongside trendy AI
| research and, now, futuristic startups.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Seems like the CEO is a one-trick pony, making everything he
| touches a startup incubator. How does this fulfill OpenAI's
| mission of bringing about AGI?
| epberry wrote:
| Are you calling Sam Altman a one trick pony? Quick list of his
| "tricks": - founded company, raised $40M - proved YC can scale
| - numerous strong individual investments (Humanyze, Routable) -
| CEO of OpenAI leading to $1B investment from Microsoft
|
| If allocating capital well makes someone a one trick pony, then
| I think we need many more ponies in the world.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Even Sam Altman considers his own company to be a failure -
| you fail to mention they basically sold for as much as they
| raised so it wasn't a success for most (if any) investors.
|
| Also I don't think Sam proved YC can scale, in fact I think
| it's the opposite and we just haven't had enough time to
| watch it play out. I certainly hold YC in lower regard than I
| used to, and I'm a YC alum (alternate account).
|
| He is a successful investor, I can't deny that. But he hasn't
| proven anything with OpenAI yet. And I think anybody that
| actually followed OpenAI from the beginning is really
| disappointed in how "open" it really is. The fact that you
| point to fundraising as proof of success is so bizarre. By
| that logic WeWork should be your favorite company of the last
| decade.
| diamond_hands wrote:
| I'd say money is cheap right now and fund managers would rather
| have people with information asymmetry invest their money,
| which OpenAI does via their API. I think it's a natural fit to
| invest in companies that use their API. This isn't a new idea,
| Stripe and Slack both do this.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| Investing in startups that use AI in their course of business
| would be one way to expand the surface area of innovation that
| would lead do that end.
| breck wrote:
| YCombinator is a tech company whose business model is
| investing. Seems like OpenAI could be the same.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| How is that different from a VC that invests in tech
| startups? What, exactly, is YC's tech?
| kopochameleon wrote:
| > they wonder, before clicking the reply button on a
| popular piece of YC tech
| theplague42 wrote:
| Nobody uses HN because it's an amazing piece of software.
| [deleted]
| imglorp wrote:
| Not exactly open - https://beta.openai.com/pricing
| sendtown_expwy wrote:
| What, you want people to host services for you for free?
| minimaxir wrote:
| The OpenAI API/GPT-3 is still invite-only.
| distribot wrote:
| Is there any timeline on the horizon for normies who don't
| know anyone important can get a token?
| worble wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, there is no intention to ever open
| it up. You're better off waiting for GPT-NeoX.
| akarma wrote:
| I was going to say "for a nonprofit all about making AI more
| open, maybe!" but then...
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from-
| nonprof...
| throwkeep wrote:
| They're about as open as Google is not evil.
| yaronhadad wrote:
| +1.
| yewenjie wrote:
| Not exactly open in many other ways too.
| woah wrote:
| Oh no yea they have to keep it closed to keep terrorists from
| generating illicit mad-libs with their AGI
| throwkeep wrote:
| They are highly paternal and even evangelical about it, with
| very sensitive warnings about how the output is "harmful" and
| we'll make it "safe". Avert your eyes children! We will
| protect you and ensure textual purity in accordance with the
| church.
|
| George Carlin is rolling in his grave.
| tlb wrote:
| People frequently cause harm by using language. Being
| cautious about something that could potentially generate
| orders of magnitude more targeted harmful language seems
| reasonable.
|
| In general, when people working full-time on a technology
| think it's dangerous and you don't see why, it's best to
| assume that they've spent a lot more time thinking of ways
| it could go wrong than you.
| throwkeep wrote:
| That's like deferring to people who work in the tobacco
| industry about what's dangerous or not with cigarettes.
|
| Also, many of them are _still_ under the impression they
| 're making the world a better place at Facebook and
| Twitter. So no, let's not pretend technologists know
| what's best. And they don't understand language and
| society better than, say, George Carlin. They only think
| they do.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _That 's like deferring to people who work in the
| tobacco industry about what's dangerous or not with
| cigarettes_
|
| It's not a symmetric bias. If someone selling you tobacco
| or ad spam tells you it's safe, one could reasonably be
| skeptical. If that same person voices specific concerns,
| it's more notable for coming from them.
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Except they aren't specific concerns, it's just a generic
| "it's dangerous, we need to control it". Considering that
| they said the same about GPT-2 (and it's release ended up
| doing ... nothing), I think there's good reason to be
| suspicious of bias, because OpenAI being the gatekeeper
| is profitable for them.
| throwkeep wrote:
| Tobacco isn't the best example.
|
| Imagine a company that gatekeeps a language feature is
| staffed with creationists. Is it notable if they define
| certain output as dangerous? Clearly not. Should you be
| skeptical? Yes. Well, it's the same if they are staffed
| with wokeists. In both cases they are defining what's
| "dangerous" according to their religion/ideology.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > In general, when people working full-time on a
| technology think it's dangerous and you don't see why,
| it's best to assume that they've spent a lot more time
| thinking of ways it could go wrong than you.
|
| Or they could explain it to us in a way that's
| understandable. I see no reason to give them the benefit
| of the doubt when they've already thrown away so much
| goodwill.
| jacob_rezi wrote:
| Not entirely related but we've used the GPT-3 to augment our
| resume software and the results have been useful to a huge amount
| of job seekers. Perhaps we'll take a stab at this
| breck wrote:
| https://www.sudowrite.com/ is one of my favorite new tools and
| it's also powered by GPT-3 I think. Super interesting what they
| are doing.
| dustingetz wrote:
| I think he wants us to feed the AI our business plans? I wonder
| what they intend to do with that? Pattern match investments, or
| something more?
| screye wrote:
| With the amount of money MSFT has invested in OpenAI ($1b+), is
| it fair that say that OpenAI risks being shadow acquired by MSFT
| at any moment ?
| gwern wrote:
| MS's parallel DeepSpeed ZeRO effort is also pretty striking
| considering their investment in OA.
| liamcardenas wrote:
| I am a fan of Open AI, but is this not an admission that they
| raised more capital than they know how to deploy on research?
|
| Similarly, Peter Thiel once made a case that if Google ever paid
| a dividend it would be an admission that they are no longer a
| technology company and are instead a bet again innovation in
| search. [0]
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/2Q26XIKtwXQ
| plaidfuji wrote:
| Given the format of the application and the sectors they're
| targeting for investment (companies that would _benefit from
| applied AI_ , not other pure AI plays), this reads to me more
| like "there need to be more customers and demonstrated use
| cases for the tools we built, and fast" ... "and they should
| also be built on Azure infra"
| sharemywin wrote:
| seems like the big pile of money they sit on is proof of that.
| infocollector wrote:
| To make things lucrative, one thing that could be done is to
| remove the condition that OpenAI APIs must be used. But - the
| people who are going to pitch to OpenAI also are opening
| themselves up for competition. Another option would be to spin
| out an OpenAI Venture firm without strings attached?
| andyxor wrote:
| I for one welcome this announcement, take that enormous "AI"
| money and fund people who have an actual product. Brilliant.
| jollybean wrote:
| "We're here to make AI Safe" was the introduction.
|
| That's some interesting language choice.
| new_realist wrote:
| OpenAI wants to be YC.
| [deleted]
| drusepth wrote:
| Is OpenAI profitable (yet)?
|
| I thought their game plan originally was to raise a TON of money
| in order to not be (very) financially burdened while doing the
| long-term R&D necessary to build what would (hopefully) become AI
| models so advanced they could be traditionally monetized and
| level out the huge company debts.
|
| Funding startups (see: taking risky bets on time _and_ money)
| doesn't seem to fit into that model... unless:
|
| 1. They've built a financially-viable product [*] and have the
| spare time and money to start paying for adoption/growth.
|
| 2. They're adding more risk to their debts now to bet on a much
| bigger payoff from startups using their tech later [*].
|
| So I guess my question is... why are they doing this?
|
| [*] I use both GPT-2 and GPT-3 almost daily and don't have a
| masterful understanding of either, but they both do fall short of
| 90% of their hype/marketing. They're amazing jumps forward,
| but... nobody built lasting businesses on Markov chains when they
| were new, either. I wouldn't want to build a business propped up
| solely on either of them yet.
| tyre wrote:
| The page says that OpenAI only manages the fund. The money
| comes from Microsoft and "others".
|
| So if you're OpenAI, there's not much financial cost. What you
| get in return is companies using your service for a wide range
| of applications. You get all of their data streaming into your
| system, with constant feedback for you to iterate your models.
|
| It makes a lot of sense for them.
|
| For businesses, though, welcome to training Microsoft and
| whoever those "others" are. OpenAI took a huge amount of
| funding in itself from MSFT. So a company is helping OpenAI
| build models to replicate what they do, giving MSFT access to
| those models, along with whoever the others are, and letting
| them wait until the experience is excellent before jumping in.
|
| Sure, they only have access to the data and models. Except,
| oops, they also _invested_ in your company so they have access
| to your financials as well. They get regular status updates on
| whether what you're doing makes sense.
|
| But if OpenAI is the best out there, even if training their
| models could eventually kill you, what choice do you have?
| Develop your own AI to compete against their head start and
| billions? You won't win.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| From how I read it, it's not as if they're spending their own
| money, but rather starting a new fund with other people's
| money. It says specifically that OpenAI is managing the fund,
| and others are bringing money on the table.
|
| Whether that distracts them from their core mission is up to
| discussion, but I don't think they're increasing their debts or
| anything like that.
| alert0 wrote:
| A ton of negativity in the comments here. Greater availability of
| funding is awesome. I'm working on a project right now as a
| spinoff of a research contract that I'm going to land and apply
| with. Very exciting and very timely.
| natch wrote:
| OpenAI doesn't have much goodwill in the community, I would
| venture to say. Many people here have been disappointed by the
| delta between the open vision first described and the closed
| reality now, and also by the fact that applying for API access
| just leads to silence.
| vasco wrote:
| Great seeing them expanding from just being Azure resellers.
| shafyy wrote:
| What goes around comes around?
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