Microsoft has declared to invest $1 billion in a company called OpenAI. OpenAI is a for-profit company that runs research in the field of Artificial Intelligence. It was founded on 11 December 2015. It’s a San Francisco based company. The company is founded jointly by, Elon Musk (CEO of SpaceX, Neuralink, and Tesla), Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI), Liya Sutskever (An Computer scientist), Greg Brockman (Chairman of OpenAI). The company is working on, creating Artificial General Intelligence and they call it, AGI.
Microsoft and OpenAI
Through the investment, Microsoft will be the cloud computing service provider to the OpenAI. Not only that, Microsoft and OpenAI will work together for research and development of new technologies. Besides, OpenAI may also permit Microsoft to commercialize some of the new techs of OpenAI. Check this, Microsoft unveils automated DNA storage, encoded the first word “hello”.
About OpenAI
In the beginning, back in 2015, OpenAI was a non-profit company. The main motive was to match the high-tech R&D of the tech giants like google and amazon on the field of Artificial intelligence. But in such a race, the capital became the problem. The latest devices needed for developing AI models and researching are quite costly. And that’s why, at the beginning of the year, OpenAI has announced that they need more money, and they started the for-profit company, which welcomes the external investments.
No doubt the team of OpenAI has intelligent and experienced members like, Liya Sutskever, who is a computer scientist and he has a great contribution toward modern AI developments and Sam Altman, a graduate from Stanford, who is the CEO of the OpenAI. They have also promised about the potential of their technology. According to the CEO of OpenAI, if the lab manages to create AGI (artificial general intelligence), It may capture the light cone of all future value in the universe.
The capped-profit entity of OpenAI
OpenAI now operates as “a capped-profit entity”. It means, the company will return the invested money only when the money will become 100 times the investment. Thus there won’t be any immediate return for the investors. According to the CEO, the company has to invest billions of dollars in the upcoming year on cloud computing and other research work. And that’s why they have taken such a decision.
Sam Altman has quite great experience in the field of entrepreneurship. He was the CEO of Loopt until its shutdown in 2012, then He became the CEO of the Reddit for 8 years. He is also the chairman of Helion and Oklo, two companies of nuclear energy. That’s what makes him so much confident about the success of the OpenAI. He is also thinking of making an AI system intelligent as the human being.
What’s special about AGI?
Researchers have built Different AI systems successfully in specific domains, in recent years. But the problem arises when we try to change the domain, the AI system fails most of the time then. As an example we can say, an AI system build for playing poker won’t be able to drive a car. That’s where the Artificial General Intelligence comes to play. The AGI will be a general intelligence, which can change its domain easily.
Take away
A survey of the leading AI researchers concluded that a Successful AGI can be developed within 2099. But still, it’s a contrary and matter of debate.
Certainly, we have no doubt on the ability of Open AI. They have shown their ability by creating the gamin bot which can defeat Dota2 champions easily. Besides that, they have also developed a text generation system., which can create anything from song lyrics, small stories, and fake news. Quite impressive! Microsoft CEO believes that the partnership is to keep the “AI safety front and center” so that everyone can get the benefit out of it.
