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Comment by p1esk | Hacker News Reader

OpenAI can just as easily turn the switch and cut off access to gpt models. OpenAI can get compute anywhere, while Microsoft can only get GPT4 at OpenAI.

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MS can live without GPT models, being just less competitive. Meanwhile, OpenAI will quickly go bankrupt without Microsoft's financial support and infrastructure.

In case the marriage between OpenAI and Microsoft ends, I'm pretty sure that Google, IBM, Facebook and any over big corp will try to step in to replace Microsoft.

It’s easy to imagine it but I think the reality would be a little stickier. Msft still has its investment active.

Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI. They’re not going to let them jump in bed with someone else.

They own that in a subsidiary of the non-profit, not the controlling non-profit itself.

Who owns the 51%? Seems like if it’s the non-profit, MSFT can make any demands and suggestions they want, and the 51% perfect can say “that’s nice” and do what they want. Which is probably why MSFT owns _only_ 49%?

Yeah, I definitely agree. I was just responding to the user who was saying that without Microsoft, OpenAI cannot survive.

And the non-profit board is the majority stakeholder, so MS doesn’t have a day

OpenAI powers a few features for Microsoft but it hardly moves the needle.

The partnership is useful for making it look exciting and relevant which helps with attracting talent i.e. it's largely branding/marketing.

So it's very much a once sided relationship in terms of dependency.

From who? Google, the company who's funding their competitors, or AWS, who's also likely working on their own AI modeling? OpenAI needs $$$$$ of compute. There's not a ton of companies who can provide them with the large amount of computed needed to move fast.

Microsoft has the models and the weights and hosts them on their own servers on Azure. How would OpenAI "turn the switch?"

"Hey, any IP lawyers want to sue Microsoft for stealing our IP?"

It's not theft, Microsoft has a license to use them! OpenAI can't turn off the machines, can't turn off hardware access to the models or weights, and can't turn off the license either. They can sue, but they'd most likely lose, and go out of business beforehand anyway.

And immediately turn off access to Azure. I hope they have FDE, but it doesn't matter anyway because Microsoft can read the RAM.

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