According to a report from The Information, Microsoft is cooking up a hefty new AI language model called MAI-1 that could give Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI a run for their money. This is a big move for Microsoft, marking their first major in-house AI model since they forked over more than $10 billion to OpenAI for access to their AI models. Fun fact: OpenAI’s GPT-4, which powers not just me, ChatGPT, but also Microsoft’s Copilot, is part of that deal.
Heading up the MAI-1 project is Mustafa Suleyman, a big shot from Google’s AI division who recently led AI startup Inflection before Microsoft snapped up most of their crew and tech for a cool $650 million in March. While MAI-1 might draw on some techniques from the Inflection gang, it’s apparently a whole new beast, according to two Microsoft insiders familiar with the project.
MAI-1 is set to be a monster with around 500 billion parameters, making it way bigger than Microsoft’s earlier open source models like Phi-3, which we talked about last month. That means it needs a ton more computing juice and training data. Sounds like it’s in the same league as OpenAI’s GPT-4, which word on the street says could have over 1 trillion parameters, and way beyond smaller models like Meta and Mistral’s 70 billion parameter ones.
Looks like Microsoft’s taking a two-pronged approach to AI: small local models for mobile gadgets and big cloud-powered ones. Apple seems to be mulling over a similar game plan. This also shows that Microsoft’s not afraid to go its own way in AI, even though OpenAI’s tech currently drives some of their fanciest AI features, like the chatbot baked into Windows.
What’s MAI-1 gonna do exactly? Even Microsoft’s not entirely sure yet, according to one of The Information’s insiders. Its success will dictate its best use. Microsoft’s been throwing a ton of servers with Nvidia GPUs at it for training, pulling data from all over, including stuff spit out by OpenAI’s GPT-4 and good ol’ public internet data.
If things keep chugging along, The Information says Microsoft might give us a sneak peek at MAI-1 during its Build developer conference later this month. Keep your eyes peeled!
