Microsoft, which last week announced a historic layoff of 10,000 workers, has just announced an investment “multi-year and multi-million dollar” in OpenAI. We are talking about the artificial intelligence company responsible for the prodigious chatbot ChatGPT.
The news, however, does not surprise us. Rumors of a new investment by the Redmond giant in the company led by Sam Altman had started circulating earlier this month. There was even talk of reviving Bing with OpenAI technologies.
Microsoft glimpses a future with artificial intelligence
As we say, the Redmond giant has brought out the checkbook again. He had already done it 2019 and in 2021investing more than 1,000 million dollars and securing a deal in which it would become the exclusive provider of cloud computing services thanks to Azure.
Those of Redmond, under the direction of Satya Nadella, now want to redouble their bet, possibly with the intention of not being left behind in the artificial intelligence race where giants like Google begin to feel that their business and leadership could be threatened.
Microsoft and OpenAI haven’t provided many financial details about the deal. The companies speak of an investment of “billions of dollars”, leaving a question mark in specific terms about the money that will be put into play in this new stage of the association.
The companies, however, have detailed part of their future plans. The investment, they point out, will serve to accelerate research related to the creation of new language models. To do this, they will develop new computing systems based on the Azure cloud infrastructure.
As a product of this movement, OpenAI aims to create AI systems that are more powerful and secure. to be able to “distribute them widely”. And, here, a very interesting part, there will be an API so that companies and developers can use the technology of GPT, DALL·E and Codex in their own applications.
But the news does not end there. New OpenAI technologies will also land in the GitHub Copilot programming assistant, which already suggests a lot of code, and in Microsoft Designer.
However, the enormous growth that OpenAI is experiencing, with the injection of capital from a giant Microsoft, presents a dilemma: what steps should this company follow that was born non-profit and finds itself an extremely profitable business?
OpenAI says it will continue its “limited profits” model with the goal of “ensuring that advanced AI benefits all of humanity.” In this sense, they point out that Microsoft shares that vision and that the aforementioned association is essential for its progress. Over time we will see how this multimillion-dollar union evolves.
Images: OpenAI | Microsoft
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