Two days ago, there was a big news in the technology industry, Apple, which had been engaged in electric vehicles for ten years, suddenly announced that Lao Tzu would no longer engage in electric vehicles and was ready to do it with AI! However, people only pay attention to the first half of the sentence, and the second half of the sentence does not seem to attract too much attention to the AI.
In fact, it may not be that it has not attracted attention, but no one has taken this sentence to heart, thinking that it may just be a psychological compensation for Apple's abandonment of electric vehicles, and it is hard to pull on AI. Because Apple is only thinking about AI now, is it too late? You know, Microsoft, Google, Meta has been laid out for a long time, and Microsoft has made continuous achievements in the past two years, launching ChatGPT for chatting and painting for a while, and a few days ago it launched Sora of text generation, which is really in the limelight.
Even our country has emerged such as Wenxin Yiyan, Qianwen Tongyi and so on general models, and Apple has not come up with anything that can show people so far, really to say that there is, it is only Siri that was integrated in iOS many years ago, but it does not seem to have grown much over the years, and the level of intelligence has been stuck at the level of only being able to listen to the call and operate its own equipment, let alone having complex and in-depth conversations.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has really been working with AI over the years, and a brief combing of the AI companies that Microsoft has acquired or invested in in recent years is quite a few:
nuanceIn 2021, Microsoft announced plans to acquire Nuance, a voice recognition and AI company, in a deal worth nearly $20 billion. Nuance provides AI-driven interaction and automation solutions in healthcare, enterprise, and consumer fields.
bonsaiIn 2021, Microsoft acquired Bonsai, a startup focused on automating business processes using reinforcement learning technology. Bonsai's technology can help companies quickly build and deploy AI models to optimize a variety of business processes.
affirmativeIn 2023, Microsoft acquired Affirmative, a startup focused on natural language processing and conversational AI. Affirmative's technology can help Microsoft improve natural language processing capabilities in its products and services.
semantic machinesIn 2018, Microsoft acquired AI startup Semantic Machines to further explore conversational AI and allow users to interact with information in a more natural way.
xoxcoIn 2020, Microsoft acquired Xoxco, a conversational artificial intelligence company that is known for creating Slack's first commercial robot, Howdy.
githubWhile GitHub is primarily a hosting platform, it's also a major acquisition for Microsoft in the AI space. With the acquisition of GitHub, Microsoft hopes to push developers to develop apps for its multiple platforms, including Azure Cloud.
But many people may have noticed that there is no OpenAI here, that is, the current most prominent company that has trained ChatGPT and Sora, this company is not small, and Musk was also one of the founders back then.
As for why openai is not listed here, the reason is very simple, Microsoft was not able to acquire it, but only made a little investment into some equity, so how much was invested, of course, in tens of billions, obviously Microsoft's contribution to openai is not a lot at all, but in exchange for less than half of the equity, and the most important thing is that Microsoft doesn't even have a seat on the board of directors, so this naturally can't be regarded as an acquisition.
The reasons for this are complex, on the one hand, based on the founding purpose of openai, it really does not want to be acquired by a large company and become dependent, because once it is acquired by Microsoft, it is no longer a free body, and it is difficult to cooperate with other large manufacturers, and now it is theoretically possible. But on the other hand, not having direct control of OpenAI may not be entirely a bad thing for Microsoft, so as to avoid accusations of monopoly. Historically, Microsoft has come close to being forcibly broken up because of monopoly allegations, and it's clear that it's still worried about it.
But the complex and delicate relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI is actually a little uneasy for both sides, and after Ultraman was **, Microsoft hurriedly voiced its willingness to accept the entire team, but in the end Microsoft did not get its wish, and Ultraman actually returned to his place. It's easy to think of whether Microsoft is doing something magical behind the scenes. But at least it can be seen that although the two have tried, Microsoft is still not at ease with his current control of himself.
Obviously, OpenAI also has a lot of precautions against Microsoft, according to some Microsoft employees, OpenAI has strict restrictions on Microsoft personnel accessing their core**, and only a very small number of personnel can access limited internal resources. That is to say, although these ** are likely to be written under the bonus invested by Microsoft, it does not belong to Microsoft, and whether it can be viewed or not is subject to the authorization of OpenAI.
Despite this, OpenAI has been blamed, including its former founder, Musk, accusing it of changing its nature, saying that it is not profitable, and now it also wants money? It's really depraved to say that it's open, but now it's only for one Microsoft!
Therefore, compared with Microsoft, OpenAI's situation is indeed more embarrassing, with short staff, it is not easy to maintain an independent personality! In its own eyes, it is tough enough, at least it is not controlled yet.
However, Microsoft's patience is also limited, seeing that OpenAI is not so obedient and obedient, just recently, he once again opened the buy-buy-buy mode, and took a fancy to a French AI start-up Mistral and acquired part of the shares, and this company is a competitor of OpenAI, which also plays with language models. The intentions of this acquisition speak for themselves.
Of course, for a large factory like Microsoft, it is not a matter to invest in a few more similar companies and bring a few more younger brothers, even if it is compared to a few side concubines, that is, the problem of scattering eggs. But for these concubines, it means that they are no longer favored, and the days ahead will be sad, depending on their performance.