Beef Between OpenAi And Microsoft

The brave new world of artificial intelligence sometimes sounds more like the Wild West. According to a report in the New York Times, there is a lot of simmering behind the scenes that the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI could end quite suddenly.

Lots of trouble between partners

Microsoft has famously invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and in return lets the startup use its gigantic data centers to run ChatGPT and other AI services. At the same time, Microsoft can use OpenAI’s technologies to develop its own AI offerings. However, the fact that Microsoft founded its own dedicated department to work on AI services a few months ago suggests that Redmond does not want to rely too much on OpenAI. According to that New York Times report (NYT), the defacto takeover of the startup company Inflection AI, which competes with OpenAI, by Microsoft and the fact that Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman has now been declared AI boss of Microsoft caused a lot of anger at OpenAI.

Microsoft’s AI boss belittles OpenAI employees

Some employees, executives and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman are said to be quite upset that Suleyman is now working at Microsoft. It is also said to be causing unrest that some Microsoft engineers are now working with PCs from OpenAI in its headquarters.

Suleyman yelled at an OpenAI employee in a meeting because the San Francisco company is supposedly not passing on new technologies to Microsoft as quickly as it would like. In other cases, Microsoft employees downloaded important software from OpenAI without following the previously agreed processes.

OpenAI has secured an exit clause

However, these are not the biggest problems that exist between partners. According to the report, there is a clause in the original contracts between the companies according to which Microsoft will lose access to OpenAI’s technologies as soon as the startup achieves its goal of so-called “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI).

These are AI systems that match or even exceed the intelligence of a human. This clause was originally included so that Microsoft could not “misuse” OpenAI’s technologies. However, it is now seen as a kind of way out for OpenAI to free itself from its dependence on Microsoft in one fell swoop. The decision as to when the point in time has been reached should be the responsibility of the OpenAI board of directors. Recently, Microsoft has moved to loosen its grip on OpenAI.

OpenAI was allowed to enter into a contract with Oracle worth around $10 billion, under which Oracle would set up data centers for OpenAI’s AI models. However, Microsoft continues to supply the software for operating the systems. OpenAI has also managed to reduce the costs that Microsoft charges for the use of its data centers as part of a future joint project.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has one main problem: financing. The company burns gigantic amounts of money, which is why losses of around $5.5 billion are expected this year alone. After all, they were recently able to collect $6.6 billion from donors. However, this raises questions about Microsoft’s future shares once OpenAI turns into a profit-oriented company.

Yasir Zeb

Digital marketing enthusiast and industry professional in Digital technologies, Technology News, Mobile phones, software, gadgets with vast experience in the tech industry, I have a keen interest in technology, News breaking.