OpenAI could reportedly give Microsoft access to its as-yet-unrealized artificial general intelligence (AGI).
As it stands now, the artificial intelligence (AI) startup has a provision that blocks Microsoft from accessing OpenAI’s AGI, or AI that can think and perform tasks at or above the level of humans.
However, OpenAI is considering removing that rule from its corporate structure, allowing Microsoft — its biggest benefactor — to continue to invest and access OpenAI technology once AGI is achieved, the Financial Times (FT) reported Friday (Dec. 6), citing sources familiar with the matter.
According to the report, OpenAI initially added the provision to protect AGI from being misused for commercial purposes, giving ownership of the technology to its nonprofit board.
“AGI is explicitly carved out of all commercial and IP licensing agreements,” the company’s website says.
However, the FT said, this clause could limit the value of OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft, which has invested more than $13 billion into the startup. The company will need more funding as it competes with much wealthier rivals in the AI race, like Amazon and Google.
OpenAI — recently valued at $150 billion — began as a nonprofit research lab but is now restructuring to transform into a public benefit corporation. Source told the FT that — as part of these changes — the company is discussing new terms with Microsoft and other investors.
“When we started, we had no idea we were going to be a product company or that the capital we needed would turn out to be so huge,” CEO Sam Altman told a New York Times conference last week, per the FT. “If we knew those things, we would have picked a different structure.
“We’ve also said that our intention is to treat AGI as a mile marker along the way. We’ve left ourselves some flexibility because we don’t know what will happen,” added Altman, who could for the first time gain a direct equity stake in OpenAI under the restructure.
It’s also not clear when AGI will arrive, though Altman said at the same conference that it will happen “sooner than most people in the world think and it will matter much less.”
Earlier this year, OpenAI board member Adam D’Angelo predicted that AGI would happen “within five to 15 years,” calling it a “very, very important change in the world when we get there.”
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