Microsoft practices “Embrace and extinguish” or “monopolistic copier” as their corporate philosophy. So you can expect them to reproduce a mediocre version of gpt-4 - probably complete with unreliable software and intrusive pro Microsoft ads—and to monopolistically occupy the “niche”. Maybe. They are really good at niche defense so they would keep making the model better.
Don’t celebrate too early though. Chaos benefits accelerationists. Diversity of strategy. If multiple actors—governments, corporations, investors, startups—simply choose what to do randomly, there is differential utility gain in favor of AI. More AI, stronger AI, uncensored and unrestricted AI. All of these things will give the actors who improve AI more investment and so on in a runaway utility gain.
(This is the Fermi paradox argument as well. So long as alien species have a diversity of strategy and the tech base for interstellar travel, the expansionists will inevitably fill the stars with themselves)
This is why one point of view is to say that since other actors are certain to have powerful AGI at their disposal as soon as the compute is available to find it, your best strategy is to be first or at least not to be behind by much.
In the age of sail, if everyone else is strapping cannons on their boats, you better be loading your warships with so many guns the ship barely floats. Asking for an international cannon ban wasn’t going to work, the other signatories would claim to honor it and then in the next major naval battle, open up their gun ports.
Microsoft practices “Embrace and extinguish” or “monopolistic copier” as their corporate philosophy. So you can expect them to reproduce a mediocre version of gpt-4 - probably complete with unreliable software and intrusive pro Microsoft ads—and to monopolistically occupy the “niche”. Maybe. They are really good at niche defense so they would keep making the model better.
Don’t celebrate too early though. Chaos benefits accelerationists. Diversity of strategy. If multiple actors—governments, corporations, investors, startups—simply choose what to do randomly, there is differential utility gain in favor of AI. More AI, stronger AI, uncensored and unrestricted AI. All of these things will give the actors who improve AI more investment and so on in a runaway utility gain. (This is the Fermi paradox argument as well. So long as alien species have a diversity of strategy and the tech base for interstellar travel, the expansionists will inevitably fill the stars with themselves)
This is why one point of view is to say that since other actors are certain to have powerful AGI at their disposal as soon as the compute is available to find it, your best strategy is to be first or at least not to be behind by much.
In the age of sail, if everyone else is strapping cannons on their boats, you better be loading your warships with so many guns the ship barely floats. Asking for an international cannon ban wasn’t going to work, the other signatories would claim to honor it and then in the next major naval battle, open up their gun ports.