Then why an exclusive license with Microsoft? If OpenAI had all the power, you'd think they license it out to several major cloud providers and just give the first license holders better pricing.
i have no openai insight, so treat this as idle speculation please.
supporting partners properly requires a lot of work, especially since openai clearly wants to monitor usage and curtail toxic applications.
starting with one makes sense, and if you intend to start with one, why not charge for the right?
if we don’t want openai to degrade, it must control its own destiny and create healthy, sustainable revenue streams. having the foresight to charge one of the richest corporations for exclusivity should increase confidence that openai has ample business talent as well as technical.
this hypothesis is false if openai doesn’t offer GPT-3 to other partners within a reasonable timeframe.
The license is exclusive (1). I think of a GPT-4 is planned and about a year out so I don't know if Microsoft's license will apply to future GPT-X models. For GPT-3 though, it seems like they were offered enough money and didn't want to deal with the hassle of supporting customers or their mission.
taking a step back, openai is rightly concerned about potential abuse of gpt-3 and must also find a way to create sustainable, healthy revenue streams.
think of openai's work in three large buckets: (1) groundbreaking research; (2) preventing gpt-3 abuse; and (3) laying the foundation for an independent future.
put another way, there's a stark difference between doing research and commercializing research. openai must do both while carrying the additional burden of preventing abuse.
the angel's interpretation is that openai is outsourcing non-research, non-core activities to microsoft similar to how a developer might outsource customer sales and support to a MBA grad. this frees more attention and resources for research.
let's hope this is true, though i can understand many of the cynical viewpoints.
Licences usually have an end date. OpenAI might have got more money from a single customer than by splitting it among several. And they can always go back to the trough once the licence expires.
