Microsoft hits Inflection point, peels off top personnel to form AI division

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced the formation of a new AI division headed by Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan, two of the three founders of AI upstart Inflection. Suleyman, who will serve as EVP and CEO of Microsoft AI, and Simonyan, who will be chief scientist, both worked previously at DeepMind as a co-founder and a …

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this in any way related to the brief Sam Altman side project?

When they briefly ousted Sam Altman from OpenAI I seem to remember M$ trying to spin up an alternative project to assign him to. He is now back at OpenAI, but is this linked to that fiasco?

[Dan 55]

Re: Is this in any way related to the brief Sam Altman side project?

Often in Big Tech one cooperation hires good people working for other corporations at an exorbitant rate in an effort to try and stop the competition competing.

This just looks like more of that.

[ITMA]

Re: Is this in any way related to the brief Sam Altman side project?

Ye olde.... If you can't beat them, buy them then bury them.

[captain veg]

Re: Is this in any way related to the brief Sam Altman side project?

Back in prehistory the Scouts had a method for disposing of tin cans while on camp: Burn'em, Bash'em and Bury'em.

More recently Microsoft gave us Embrace, Extend and Extinguish.

And now, apparently, we have Buy them, Bury them and (so) Beat them.

-A.

[ITMA]

Re: Is this in any way related to the brief Sam Altman side project?

Definitely prehistory modified decades ago as it was environmentally unsound.

It had to follow the overriding principle for camping "leave nothing behind other than your thanks and best wishes" - so burying burnt tin cans was a no no.

[navarac]

Snake Oil?

"As for revenue from AI, investors have been urged "to temper" their expectations."

Does this last sentence in the article refer to the usual *snake oil* element of LLMs aka AI?

[MyffyW]

Re: Snake Oil?

I'm really bored of explaining to people that AI is not exactly the same as LLMs. After an initial "oh wow" I've become rather cynical about the value LLMs really deliver. However, well chosen use cases for more established tech that might be described as "intelligent" have a huge amount of potential, yet risk being overlooked by pursuit of the latest fad.

[The above was written by my own fair hand, the only GPU involved was the single one attached to my monitor]

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Snake Oil?

LLM's are simply tools, and they are relatively new. Snake oil is hype and marketing, and are ancient.

[43300]

Re: Snake Oil?

The snake oil element with LLMs is the endless hype about how useful they are to the average person. It does seem though that not many people are falling for it, given that the hypesters can rarely come up with anything which isn't trivial or a gimmick!

[captain veg]

improving

"Suleyman and Simonyan will focus on improving Microsoft Copilot and other AI-infused products like Bing and Edge"

Well, I suppose that they are certainly candidates for Microsoft products that definitely need improvement.

-A.

[43300]

Re: improving

Microsoft's definition of "improvement" is likely to differ markedly from what most on here would regard as improvements, I suspect!

[Michael Wojcik]

He would say that, wouldn't he?

"At our core, we have always been a platform and partner-led company, and we’ll continue to bring that sensibility to all we do," said Nadella.

Wow. That is impressively vapid even for a CEO. I believe I know less after reading it; it contains negative information entropy.