Microsoft and OpenAI’s increasingly complicated relationship

An AI Soap Opera in the making?

You might think that Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI. But as far as I understand it doesn’t. It has a right to about 49% of a for-profit subsidiary of OpenAI’s profits, up until a very complex point that may require litigation to resolve, but the for-profit hasn’t made any profits, and the for-profit is owned by a non-profit. And I’ll be damned if I can actually understand this chart.

I have heard of monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, and ethical non-monogamy, to name a few, but this is just … complicated.

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You might think that after Microsoft put $11 Billion into Microsoft and demanded an exclusive from OpenAI, that Microsoft wouldn’t “see other people”, but they are.

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You might think that after Satya offered to rescue Sam after Sam got fired, that Sam wouldn’t want to compete directly with Microsoft, but they are.

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You might think that if OpenAI said, hey, we don’t want our software used for military purposes, Microsoft would respect that and say, ok cool, but they haven’t.

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Maybe this is all fine. Maybe it isn’t. Mommy and Daddy say they are happy together.

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But then again there’s this, recently disclosed from November, around the time Sam briefly got fired. See especially the highlighted bits.

And that was November. Satya isn’t fooling. Breaking news, this is just in, from The Information. Playing the field with Mistral wasn’t enough; now he is building a really big model, big enough to compete directly with GPT-4, internally:

And The Information reports that this is no toy model. It’s a full on competitor:

Below, above, and all around. Maybe Satya has lost confidence in Sam, maybe he hasn’t. He’s certainly not taking any chances.

Gary Marcus doesn’t know exactly what to make of all this, but feels like it could matter eventually. A lot.

P.S.. Be sure to check in regularly for future episodes of As The (AI) World Turns.