Microsoft’s AI Chief Insists He’s Not Posting Thirst Traps on Main After Messy Breakup With OpenAI

Source Domain: gizmodo.com

OpenAI and Microsoft looked like an artificial intelligence power couple, but the AI lab’s growth started to make Microsoft feel a bit boxed in. After all, it’s actually the trillion-dollar company, not just a theoretical one. So rather than stay locked into a relationship that was holding it back, Microsoft decided it was time to prove that it can achieve superintelligence on its own.

The two haven’t officially broken up, but back in April, they updated the terms of their relationship in a way that left the door very open for exploring new partnerships and effectively killed their work together on artificial general intelligence. Now Microsoft’s head of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, is running the “I’m not officially single, but it’s coming” playbook. In recent interviews, he’s been flaunting his company’s vast infrastructure, which he’s not saying has definitely been held back by OpenAI, but he is saying is far more powerful than just being the processing power for someone else’s model.

“I guess the last 15 to 18 months or so we’ve been on this journey to reestablish our relationship with OpenAI, and it’s taken a minute. I think it culminated in a new contract that we got done in October of last year,” he told The Verge, referencing an agreement between the two designed to last until OpenAI achieved AGI. “And there were lots and lots of different provisions in that, including cementing and extending the partnership, but crucially freeing us up to be able to pursue superintelligence independently as well as keep buying and licensing their models.”

Basically, since that moment, Suleyman has been building up Microsoft’s own Superintelligence team—though it seems like the company wants to get back into the game well before that. “We have seven new models across all the modalities and so on. So it’s been a pretty big shift, and I think a long time in the planning, and a great relief for us to now be in the…

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