OpenAI-Microsoft Alliance Fractures as AI Titans Chart Separate Paths (wsj.com) 13
The once-celebrated partnership between OpenAI's Sam Altman and Microsoft's Satya Nadella is deteriorating amid fundamental disagreements over computing resources, model access, and AI capabilities, according to WSJ. The relationship that Altman once called "the best partnership in tech" has grown strained as both companies prepare for independent futures.
Tensions center on several critical areas: Microsoft's provision of computing power, OpenAI's willingness to share model access, and conflicting views on achieving humanlike intelligence. Altman has expressed confidence OpenAI can build models with humanlike intelligence soon -- a milestone Nadella publicly dismissed as "nonsensical benchmark hacking" during a February podcast.
The companies retain significant leverage over each other. Microsoft can block OpenAI's conversion to a for-profit entity, potentially costing the startup billions if not completed this year. Meanwhile, OpenAI's board can trigger contract clauses preventing Microsoft from accessing its most advanced technology.
After Altman's brief ouster in 2023 -- dubbed "the blip" within OpenAI -- Nadella pursued an "insurance policy" by hiring DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman for $650 million to develop competing models. The personal relationship has also cooled, with the executives now communicating primarily through scheduled weekly calls rather than frequent text exchanges.
Tensions center on several critical areas: Microsoft's provision of computing power, OpenAI's willingness to share model access, and conflicting views on achieving humanlike intelligence. Altman has expressed confidence OpenAI can build models with humanlike intelligence soon -- a milestone Nadella publicly dismissed as "nonsensical benchmark hacking" during a February podcast.
The companies retain significant leverage over each other. Microsoft can block OpenAI's conversion to a for-profit entity, potentially costing the startup billions if not completed this year. Meanwhile, OpenAI's board can trigger contract clauses preventing Microsoft from accessing its most advanced technology.
After Altman's brief ouster in 2023 -- dubbed "the blip" within OpenAI -- Nadella pursued an "insurance policy" by hiring DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman for $650 million to develop competing models. The personal relationship has also cooled, with the executives now communicating primarily through scheduled weekly calls rather than frequent text exchanges.
No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
While Microsoft is terminally incompetent in the tech-space, they have always understood business. And a "partner" that does not deliver, but asks for more and more money is not somebody you want to continue to do busines with.
Re: (Score:2)
Spot on! Lost my mod points sadly.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks!
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
I also suspect there may be some realisation that the constant flannel spoken by AI CEOs is wearing a bit thin. I'm sure Nadella knows a thing or two about hype-speak, so has seen through a lot of it, but what's left is probably not materialising.
You can bet he's got the inside track on the details of what's going on in OpenAI and others, so if he thinks it's "not all that", then it probably won't be. I'd imagine that if you got into the research centres, you'd be able to see that the AGI claims (especially) are woefully optimistic to the point of being delusional. That's bound to 'cool' your relationship a bit ;-)
Either way, despite what TFS says, I'll bet Microsoft has the stronger commercial position here.
Re: No surprise (Score:2)
When you have Clippy, and Microsoft Bob, who needs AI, right?
Re: (Score:2)
We all agree on Clippy and Bob. But Copilot isn't that. Copilot actually fulfills the dream that Clippy and Bob failed to fulfill. Copilot--both in its web form and as GitHub Copilot--does real work for me. Clippy never did.
Re: (Score:2)
Ultimately, what's at stake is potentially exclusive ownership of the foundation for a future post-labor economy. Mark Cuban has speculated that the race to own this technology will produce the world's first trillionaire.
It doesn't even matter if Cuban is right, just the idea floating out there is an irresistibly corrupting influence. Being a billionaire doesn't have any hedonic value over having a measly few tens of millions, it's about power and freedom from consequences. The first AI trillionaire will b
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but while that's a legitimate reason to be skeptical, it's not a good reason to be convinced.
I'm not familiar enough with the WSJ to know how they slant their articles, but I'm sure they do. (It's impossible not to do so.) But I haven't read any of their prior reports on either MS or AI. So I'm willing to believe that their reportage on those topics is slanted. However, I'm not willing to believe that their reports on things with financial impact is without basis. Not without good evidence, and
hyperbole (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenAI had a good run (Score:2)
OpenAI's had a great head start. And with piles of money, they could burn the GPU hours to stay ahead.
The gap is closing. The market is flooded with unused GPUs. And OpenAI's worst enemy, real programmers.
There is nothing happening in AI that dictates that you need more bandwidth or more cores. The thing is, most model training is run using extremely inefficient code. Memory access is so unoptimiz