Reading guide:This article is based on the oral account of Velastegui, the former Microsoft artificial intelligence product manager,From the footprints of his experience, he tells how OpenAI woke up Microsoft, an old software giant.
Ten years ago, the world's largest software giant was a clumsy giant fish, and the company called "Microsoft" was failing users with a series of mediocre product launches, stagnating innovation, and losing top talent to other innovative companies.
And today, the software giant has become a truly global tech giant, the most valuable business on the planet. Under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft stock price has soared by more than 100% in 1000 years.
In January 2024, Microsoft's market capitalization reached $3 trillion, more than the GDP of the entire country of France combined.
At the heart of Microsoft's comeback is artificial intelligence. Microsoft embeds AI technology in the Azure cloud computing platform, the Office productivity suite, and the Bing search engine. After missing out on the mobile and social media boom, this company truly became a global leader in artificial intelligence.
The figure behind this pivotal shift is Sophia Velastegui, who was also one of the star speakers at this year's June TNW conference. Velastegui joined Microsoft in 2017 as General Manager of AI Products and Search. Six months later, Business Insider named her one of the most influential female engineers in tech.
At that time, Nadella's corporate development plans were just beginning to take shape.
Velastegui, now chief product officer at automotive giant Aptiv, sums it up this way:
"Microsoft wasn't an AI company before — it was a software company. But if you talk about Microsoft now, a lot of people will say it's an artificial intelligence company. How do they do it? What do they do? They invest in AI and incorporate it into their features and products, whether it's software development or Office. ”
Velastegui played a big part in this transformation. After being promoted to Chief AI Officer for Business Applications, she became a core member of the team and began exploring a new investment that Microsoft is proud of: OpenAI.
Intergenerational relationships
Microsoft actually has a long history in the field of artificial intelligence.
The company's research department has been exploring this field since Bill Gates established the AI Center in 1991, but the experiments have not led to products that are popular with users. From the much-maligned Clippy to the abandoned Cortana, Microsoft's AI apps rarely appeal to consumers.
Nadella immediately sought to change that when he took over Microsoft.
One of his first big moves after his appointment as CEO in 2014 was to fully embrace chatbots. The shift didn't come off immediately: an early robot named Tay also turned into a less lovable pest.
Despite the controversy, the plan continues. Nadella chose to continue exploring artificial intelligence:
"As an industry, we are on the cusp of a new frontier that combines the power of human natural language with advanced machine intelligence,"
As a company, Microsoft has set its sights beyond its own walls. After some searching, the company found OpenAI.
Nadella has been looking to outside startups for AI innovations
OpenAI was officially founded in 2015 with an ambitious mission to "build AI for the benefit of all mankind." But its ambitions also consume a lot of resources.
In 2017, the buzzing startup spent about $7.9 million on cloud computing, accounting for a quarter of its functional spending.
This huge investment has led the "young" competitor to work deeply with the "aging" tech giant Microsoft.
The software giant has announced a partnership with OpenAI. According to the terms of the transaction, OpenAI will use Microsoft's Azure cloud platform for R&D and computing power.
By 2019, Microsoft became the "exclusive" cloud computing provider for OpenAI Labs. After a new $1 billion investment in the startup, the Redmond, Washington-based giant became the exclusive partner for OpenAI's commercialization.
OpenAI commercialization
Microsoft soon integrated OpenAI's large language model (LLM) into Azure cloud services. Customers use the software for a variety of application features, from chatbots and content generation to translation and personalized marketing, among others.
This service has since grown rapidly. In the second quarter of that year, Microsoft reported a 50% increase in the number of users of Azure OpenAI compared to the previous 12 months. Nadella says more than 53,000 customers have used the service, including "more than half" of the Fortune 500.
The Azure plan reflects Microsoft's broader AI deployment. Velastegui later said that the company's AI strategy is focused on delivering a robust product line.
At the same time, in an AI report by McKinsey, it was noted that this approach is common among successful AI adopters.
Velastegui 这样总结:
"Microsoft Teams doesn't just focus on efficiency and operations, they create new products and features and sell them as part of the business or offer them as a service,"
Azure is now the world's fastest-growing cloud computing platform, closing the gap with longtime leader Amazon Web Services.
It's safe to say that OpenAI has played a key role in Microsoft's revival.
Velastegui is more precise when it says that ChatGPT gives Microsoft a "huge competitive advantage over Google and Amazon":
"Historically, if you're a cool startup doing something amazing, Microsoft isn't really your first choice. And the fact that Nadella put OpenAI to work on Azure is an amazing masterpiece. ”
Microsoft enters the LLM era
OpenAI had a breakthrough moment in 2020. In June of that year, the startup launched a powerful new AI model that ignited the flames of an AI explosion: GPT-3.
This architecture provides a strong foundation for ChatGPT.
The New York Times called GPT-3's ability to generate prose, poetry, and code "amazing," "creepy," "humbling," and "a little scary." Wired, on the other hand, said the model "sends shivers down the spine across Silicon Valley."
In September, the software giant signed a new agreement with OpenAI to become the exclusive licensing service provider for GPT-3.
Velastegui has led Microsoft's exploration of potential use cases for the model, from search and business applications to low-code development platforms. These applications quickly expanded into Microsoft's products.
ChatGPT is fun, but it doesn't do the source...... It goes into a black box, and you don't need to understand why it's the way it is. ”
The risks and rewards of artificial intelligence
OpenAI founder Sam Altman worked with Elon Musk before working with Nadella
Further safeguards for AI require more to reduce the risk of harmful outputs. Defenses are enhanced by security filters, abuse monitoring, illusion detection, and simulated adversarial attacks.
"The reason why Microsoft doesn't directly exploit ChatGPT is because ChatGPT has been trained on all things the internet – the good, the bad, the ugly, and the very ugly. ”
However, not all restrictions can be successful. A Microsoft engineer has warned that design tools powered by OpenAI can generate violent and pornographic images. These outputs also include "political bias, underage drinking and drug use, misuse of company trademarks and copyrights, conspiracy theories and religion, among others."
Microsoft says the behavior is limited to a small number of prompts used to bypass security measures. The company has also pledged to investigate these issues.
Embed OpenAI into Microsoft
Microsoft has incorporated OpenAI into a variety of applications. One of them is Copilot, which is a coding tool that performs a lot of programming tasks.
The other is the revamped Bing search engine. A month after announcing a new investment in OpenAI, Microsoft unveiled an AI-powered update in February 2023, which was reportedly valued at up to $10 billion.
Nadella called Bing's rebirth "a new day of search." By adding OpenAI's model to the system and hoping to create a competitor that talks to Google's market conquerors.
The results data also show hope. According to Similarweb data, page visits on Bing increased by 15.8% in the six weeks following the release of the AI version of Bing, while page visits to Google fell by 1%.
OpenAI has made its way into Microsoft 365 Office applications. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook now include an AI assistant called Copilot that generates new content and analysis based on prompts.
This initiative highlights Microsoft's competitive advantage. Companies like Google can't partner with OpenAI and apply it to their own products.
Microsoft's exclusive access quickly paid off. By the end of 2023, the company's share price had soared 57% year-on-year. Analysts attributed the rise to Microsoft's leadership in generative AI.
OpenAI's future relationship with Microsoft
Not all of OpenAI's new additions are also popular. Copilot's early customers complained about the cost of the service. At the same time, users of other Microsoft products have been skeptical of the spread of the coding tool.
Microsoft's association with OpenAI is also "loosely coupled".
Nadella has also invested in and integrated services from OpenAI's competitors. Paris-based Mistral AI, for example, just received a €15 million cash injection from Microsoft last month.
In addition to external additions, Microsoft is investing in its own developed base model. Overall, the company plans to make Azure a "garden of large language models."
In the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence, Microsoft's future relationship with OpenAI is uncertain. But so far, this "marriage" has been very successful.
Velastegui 这样总结道:
"Ignore these micro problems, problems, or goals and solve problems that have an impact on the business. ”