Microsoft Redefines AGI as $100 Billion Profit Milestone in OpenAI Partnership

At Microsoft there is now a new and quite unusual definition of what is considered Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): It is no longer about performance, but about maximizing economic profit.

Unusual definition

The AGI term actually describes a future state of development of AI models in which they are able to solve intellectual tasks at the level of humans. In a revised contract between Microsoft and OpenAI, this stage of development is now clearly redefined.

According to a cooperation agreement between the two companies, AGI is now considered achieved when OpenAI generates a profit of $100 billion with its AI systems, the magazine reported The Information. This definition is very different from the usual understanding of AGI. However, because there is no uniform definition, there is often debate about whether AGI has already been achieved or is still decades away.

The choice of this financial target appears to have strategic reasons. A measurable AGI criterion could serve to set clear milestones for collaboration. For Microsoft, this means that the company must stop using OpenAI’s models once the milestone is reached. Instead, they want to have developed their own AI models by then in order to remain competitive.

Own development

However, Microsoft isn’t waiting for OpenAI to reach this milestone. The company is already working on launching its own large language models (LLMs) for its Microsoft 365 Copilot services to reduce its reliance on OpenAI.

The decision to equate AGI with financial success could in the future be viewed as one of many criteria to evaluate progress toward AGI. If OpenAI ever goes public, the profits it makes would be publicly visible and, by this definition, could provide insight into how close the technology has come to AGI.