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Comment by gjsman-1000 | Hacker News Reader

According to Stratechery, Microsoft does not just have the rights to use the source code and model weights for GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, but a clause saying that Microsoft could not use the models as foundations for their own projects was recently removed.

> Investors have no reason to worry about their investment in the tech.

If Stratechery is correct, this means that if Microsoft successfully poaches Sam Altman and friends, and vacuums OpenAI clean of talent, they will even be able to use the actual GPT-4 to build a Microsoft GPT-5. That should make investors sweat. If you lose the people and (possibly) the technology, what's left?

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Yeah okay Microsoft poaches them but they still have to restart building everything from scratch which wouldn’t benefit Microsoft. Microsoft doesn’t want to poach talent, they can always do that with or without this incident. Microsoft wants the whole bundle. Hence the media campaign Satya is doing.

No, the point is they would not have to start building everything from scratch.

That only happens if Microsoft acquires all of OpenAI, not if they just poach the employees. Poaching means starting again even if they have the road map in their head.

They already have access to GPT4 per their agreement with OpenAI.

Source? Ben didn't read his cited source in his article yesterday.

Currently, the claim is unproven. However, if I were an investor, I'd be pounding on the doors demanding for clarification.

I meant, can you link the claim that the clause in question got removed?

https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros...

"Microsoft’s original agreement with OpenAI also barred Microsoft from pursuing AGI based on OpenAI tech on its own; my understanding is that this clause was removed in the most recent agreement."

(It's hidden under a citation bubble you need to click after the third paragraph.)

I see. Pursuing AGI sounds distinct from commercializing future versions of ChatGPT based on OpenAI IP. I imagine the exact legal wording in the contract makes all the difference.

The WSJ article from June he cited indicates the license still comes with restrictions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-forge-awkw...

I'd have my lawyers do the pounding.

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