But according to emails between more than a dozen Microsoft executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, shown in a federal court on Thursday, Microsoft executives had reservations about sending additional funding to OpenAI as early as 2018, when it was just a small nonprofit research lab. musk vs altman tests.
The emails reveal how Microsoft faltered at the time on a partnership it had established as one of the most successful corporate partnerships in tech history. Several Microsoft executives said in emails that their visit to OpenAI did not indicate any imminent breakthrough in developing artificial general intelligence. In 2017, much of OpenAI’s work focused on creating AI systems that could play video games, which showed early signs of success. But OpenAI needed five times more computing power than it originally received from Microsoft to continue the project.
Microsoft was concerned that not providing support might drive OpenAI into the arms of Amazon, the world’s leading cloud computing provider at the time. About 18 months after the email was sent, Microsoft announced a historic $1 billion investment in OpenAI after the lab spun off a profitable arm, giving the tech giant the potential to generate $20 billion in returns.
Microsoft declined to comment.
Elon Musk’s lawyers produced emails to show Microsoft’s evolving relationship with OpenAI. After Musk contacted Nadella, Microsoft agreed to provide $60 million worth of cloud computing services to OpenAI at a steep discount in 2016. OpenAI consumed services twice as fast as expected.
The email chain began on August 11, 2017, when Nadella contacted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to congratulate the lab on winning a video game competition using AI to mimic a human player. Ten days later, Altman responded, demanding $300 million worth of Microsoft Azure cloud computing services.
Altman explicitly asked for financial support and engineering assistance, writing, “We can figure out how to fund some of it, but not that much.” “I think it will be the most impressive thing ever in the history of AI.”
Nadella asked four lieutenants for their input on how to respond three days later. Microsoft’s AI team saw “no value in the conversation”, according to a response from Jason Zander, Microsoft’s executive vice president, which also documented how other teams felt. Its research team thought its own work was “more advanced”, while the public relations teams did not like the idea of supporting a group pushing the idea of ”machines beating humans”. Ultimately, Zander suggested that Azure would benefit from teaming up with Musk and Altman, but that he would not want to “take a complete bath” or take a large financial hit in doing so.
A later analysis revealed that Microsoft would lose about $150 million over several years if it provided the services Altman wanted, according to one email. “Unless he can help us draw more direct networking effects with OpenAI -> Microsoft business value, we’ll have to forego this,” Zander wrote.
The thread remained dark for several months, but was revived on January 10, 2018, with an email to Nadella from Brett Tanzer, who signed his email with “Brett” – the director of the Azure cloud unit. Altman told Tanzer that OpenAI could license its gaming AI to Microsoft’s Xbox video game division in exchange for “$35–50 million in Azure credits”. But Xbox couldn’t make that much money. According to Tanzer’s email, Microsoft planned to tell Altman that there would be no more discounts after March.
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