Open AI CEO Sam Altman chats with Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott at Microsoft Build 2024.
Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET
Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT over two years ago, it has retained its position as one of the frontrunners in the AI race, constantly developing smarter models and spin-off products. The company has no intention of slowing down, with its ultimate goal being to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or AI with autonomous, human-level intelligence.
“Our mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a blog postlast month. “In some sense, AGI is just another tool in this ever-taller scaffolding of human progress we are building together.”
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Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest strategic partner, has taken a completely different approach. In a recent Satya Nadella, CEO of the company, said in an interviewthat AGI is overhyped and the company does not work on achieving it long-term. Microsoft has invested billions into OpenAI and the partnership is long-standing. How do the two companies still manage to work together with such a long history?
Microsoft CPO for Responsible AI Sarah Bird spoke on a panel at SXSW titled “Building Trustworthy AI: Evolving Safety Practices for GenAI,” to shed light on the dynamics of the two companies. Bird shared that despite the divergent approaches, there was no “tension.”
“You think there would be sort of tension between those two, but in practice, it doesn’t seem to materialize that way,” she said. Bird believes that OpenAI is more motivated to achieve this ambitious goal than to make incremental upgrades. Bird believes that this focus and drive are essential for meaningful AI development. Google launches Gemini with Personalization ahead of Apple in personal AI
Microsoft’s decision to not pursue AGI stems from the company’s desire for its AI offerings to work with people rather than replace them completely. Microsoft’s Copilot is a prime example. It is positioned as a “AI companion” which assists users across the Microsoft 365 suite and Github. Bird
“For me, [AGI] is a non-goal, and that’s true for Microsoft as well. We have a lot of humans, which is pretty cool, so I would rather have a technology that augments human capabilities and does the things that humans either aren’t great at or humans don’t want to do,” affirmed. Want to read more about AGI and OpenAI? Subscribe to ZDNET’s weekly Innovation Newsletter
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