Yeah, it was a massive coup for Microsoft. As people are pointing out, MS has been falling behind in consumer spaces for a while now. Investing early and obtaining a substantial edge in AI would help bolster their position in coming years across all markets.
They moved in and invested in OpenAI the way they did because of this. And then all of a sudden Altman and a bunch of top researchers leave all at the same time? The most Microsoft thing they could have done is exactly what they did: swoop him up and promise him the moon (in this case, the promise is clearly that they’ll give him a lot of latitude so he doesn’t feel too much like he lost out by not forming his own company – they even said something around this in their press release) to get him on their side and his name on paperwork before he has a chance to seriously reconsider.
Altman probably thinks he got one over on OpenAI, but really, Microsoft got one over on him and OpenAI.
Yeah, it was a massive coup for Microsoft. As people are pointing out, MS has been falling behind in consumer spaces for a while now. Investing early and obtaining a substantial edge in AI would help bolster their position in coming years across all markets.
They moved in and invested in OpenAI the way they did because of this. And then all of a sudden Altman and a bunch of top researchers leave all at the same time? The most Microsoft thing they could have done is exactly what they did: swoop him up and promise him the moon (in this case, the promise is clearly that they’ll give him a lot of latitude so he doesn’t feel too much like he lost out by not forming his own company – they even said something around this in their press release) to get him on their side and his name on paperwork before he has a chance to seriously reconsider.
Altman probably thinks he got one over on OpenAI, but really, Microsoft got one over on him and OpenAI.