Copyright brisbanetimes
With financial commitments to buy computing power from third parties that now amounts to more than $US1 trillion, OpenAI’s need for funding has far outstripped Microsoft’s capacity to provide it. Moreover, Microsoft has its own AI ambitions, helped by a deal with OpenAI that gave it exclusive access to the group’s intellectual property and products, but which made it a competitor and generated tensions and conflicts of interest. Under the deal struck on Tuesday, Microsoft will retain those exclusive rights until 2032, or until an independent panel determines that OpenAI’s technology has achieved artificial general intelligence (AGI), or human levels of intelligence. Previously, Microsoft didn’t own equity in OpenAI but had a revenue share and a profit share capped at 100 times its investment. It will continue to be entitled to 20 per cent of OpenAI’s revenues until (or if) the company achieves AGI, but has also struck a deal under which OpenAI will buy an extra $US250 billion of cloud computing capacity from Microsoft’s Azure platform.
