Sam Altman once said Indians can't build OpenAI and compete with it, but can he do it now?

Sam Altman once said Indians can’t build OpenAI and compete with it, but can he do it now?

Who can compete with OpenAI? Not Indians — or so said then OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. He had his reasons to say that. While visiting India, he told Indians that people could try to create something like the ChatGPT but they would fail. Reasons: the scale, the lack of people and researchers skilled in latest AI tech, and, of course, a long lead time due to extensive training that AI systems like ChatGPT require. Now, Altman has been fired from his job in OpenAI and he is joining Microsoft. So the question is: Can he compete with OpenAI?

The answer is, as it happens in such cases, is nuanced. But before we talk of that, let’s see what Altman had said in India.

During his visit to India, Altman in an event said, “We’ll say it’s totally impossible to rival us in training these core models, and we’ll advise you not to even attempt it. But it’s your responsibility to try anyway. I genuinely believe in both those aspects. I reckon it’s quite a futile pursuit.” After Altman’s comments caused controversy, he later explained that his words were misunderstood. He clarified in a tweet that he was responding to a question about trying to compete directly with OpenAI using only $10 million, which he believed wouldn’t be successful.

The comments by Altman, if we look at them dispassionately, were insightful and made sense. Any company trying to succeed with AI currently and compete with OpenAI will require three key ingredients.

The problems

1- People: The number of good AI scientists and researchers right now are in hundreds all across the world. And all of them have been taken. They are all working for big tech giants or research institutes and gathering fresh set of people skilled in AI tech is likely to be the biggest challenge for any new company trying to compete with OpenAI. Even companies like Elon Musk’s X are finding it difficult to get right people because such people aren’t available.

2- AI systems like ChatGPT require massive amount of capital spending on computer hardware. And a lot of this hardware is so much in demand that it’s supply — those magical Nvidia GPUs — is severely constrained. Even when companies, and nowadays even governments like that of China and Duba, are putting in m millions of dollars to buy this hardware they are not getting the immediate delivery. In such an environment, a new AI company will face extremely high challenge in getting the right tools to do its job.

3- Data. Good data is key to good AI systems like ChatGPT. While there is plenty of data to go around the world, it is in the hands of large tech companies. Earlier, these tech companies were not so concerned about someone using this data to train their models. Twitter, for example, had a deal with OpenAI. But after the success of ChatGPT and OpenAI everyone has become wiser and more cautious. Any new AI company will face challenge as far as data availability is concerned.

The solutions

So, these are the big challenges that led Altman to say what he said during his India visit. But now that Altman himself is leaving OpenAI to start at Microsoft “a new advanced AI research team” the question is: Can he compete with OpenAI and create a new ChatGPT?

Well, he will face huge challenges. But Altman is being wise about his move. He is not starting something new and he is not going solo. Instead, he knows the challenges and that is the reason why he is going with Microsoft. Essentially, here are three ways in which he may not face the three challenges:

1- It is expected that Altman will be able to hire many of the big AI people from OpenAI. Already on Twitter many top OpenAI employees have indicated that they will follow Altman. Essentially, it is possible that Altman may not have to face with the problem of hiring great AI resources because he already has people and teams that will join him in new endeavour.

2- Microsoft with Azure cloud service is one of the key infrastructure company powering OpenAI services like ChatGPT. So as a Microsoft employees Altman will have similar access to Microsoft infrastructure that OpenAI had earlier.

3- Microsoft is also one of those giants which has a lot of quality data because the company owns and operates services that are used by hundreds of millions of users. Yet again, even if Sam Altman’s new division doesn’t get access to any fresh data from outside, already within Microsoft he may have enough to create something that would compete with OpenAI.

In other words, the challenges that Altman outlined in India still remain for any company that is planning to start into AI world from scratch. But he, even when he is no longer with OpenAI, will not face the same issues because he is not going to start something entirely new. Instead, he is being wise, he is going to build on top everything that Microsoft already has.