Musk v. Altman Evidence Shows What Microsoft Executives Thought of OpenAI

The story

Leaders at the tech giant were skeptical of OpenAI—but wary of pushing it into the arms of Amazon, according to emails dating back to 2018.

From the source

Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story OpenAI’s relationship with Microsoft, its longtime investor and cloud partner, has grown increasingly complicated over the years as the ChatGPT-maker has grown into a behemoth competitor .

But Microsoft executives had reservations about sending additional funding to OpenAI as far back as 2018 when it was just a small nonprofit research lab, according to emails between more than a dozen Microsoft executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, shown in a federal court on Thursday during the Musk v. Altman trial.

The emails show how Microsoft, at the time, wavered over what has since been held up as one of the most successful corporate partnerships in tech history. Several Microsoft executives said in the emails their visits to OpenAI did not indicate any imminent breakthroughs in developing artificial general intelligence. In 2017, much of OpenAI’s work was focused on building AI systems that could play video games , which showed early signs of success. But OpenAI needed five times more computing power than it had originally secured from Microsoft to continue the project.

Who and what

Key names and topics in this story: Musk, Altman Evidence Shows What, Microsoft Executives Thought, OpenAI.

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