Microsoft's recent acquisition of Inflection mirrors its previous strategy with OpenAI, demonstrating Big Tech's growing control over AI despite regulatory challenges. The majority of Inflection's staff will join a new AI division at Microsoft, led by co-founder Mustafa Suleyman reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella, while noted Microsoft board member Reid Hoffman remains on Inflection's board.
Microsoft is aiming to bolster its position in the AI space by hiring the chief executive of Inflection, a start-up specializing in AI and machine learning. This move reflects Microsoft's strategy of tapping into the expertise of start-ups to maintain its lead in the AI sector.
Microsoft's surprising move to hire the cofounders and some staff of $4 billion AI startup Inflection, without acquiring the company or taking an equity stake, has raised questions about its implications for the AI market and its relationship with OpenAI. The deal comes amid intense antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech's AI partnerships, and signals Microsoft's determination to diversify its AI expertise. Inflection's shift away from its consumer chatbot Pi may indicate a reality check for the AI chatbot market, while the involvement of Inflection cofounder Reid Hoffman, who also sits on Microsoft's board, adds another layer of complexity to the arrangement.
Microsoft has announced the formation of a new AI division led by Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection, with Karén Simonyan as Chief Scientist. Suleyman will oversee consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, Bing, and Edge, while Inflection will continue with a new CEO, Sean White. However, Suleyman's controversial past, including accusations of bullying behavior at Google DeepMind, has sparked concerns, with some viewing the move as reinforcing fears of AI consolidation among tech leaders.
Inflection has unveiled its own AI model, Inflection-1, which is of roughly GPT-3.5 size and capabilities. The company claims that it is competitive or superior with other models on this tier, backing it up with a "technical memo" describing some benchmarks it ran on its model. Inflection-1 performs well on various measures, like middle- and high school-level exam tasks and "common sense" benchmarks. However, it mainly falls behind on coding, where GPT-3.5 beats it handily.
Bill Gates believes the winner in the AI tech wars will be the company that creates a personal digital agent. He mentioned startup Inflection as a potential winner, which has released its personal AI called Pi, a conversational personal assistant. Pi has impressed users with its ability to engage in conversations and provide thoughtful responses. While Pi is still a ways away from being a personal AI that can do shopping and read emails, it has the potential to become much more.
