Artificial Intelligence is where all the money goes these days. Founded at the end of 2015, OpenAI is committed to advancing “digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole”. The company started out with a capital of $1 billion, brought together by investors as Amazon, Elon Musk and his (pay) pal Peter Thiel. This month, Microsoft decided to add yet another cool billion to the capital.

The Redmond giant has teamed up with OpenAI to further extend Microsoft’s cloud computing services Azure to large-scale AI systems. According to the press release “The companies will focus on building a computational platform in Azure of unprecedented scale, which will train and run increasingly advanced AI models, include hardware technologies that build on Microsoft’s supercomputing technology, and adhere to the two companies’ shared principles on ethics and trust.”

On the road to AGI

Today AI systems require training for handling specific problems only. However, using artificial intelligence for solving difficult real-world problems requires generalization and combining multiple technologies. What we need is Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, colaborating “with people to help solve currently intractable multidisciplinary problems, including global challenges such as climate change, more personalized healthcare and education”.

 
OpenAI and Microsoft team up to extend Azure cloud computing services to large-scale A(G)I systems.

The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman said, in all modesty: “The creation of AGI will be the most important technological development in human history, with the potential to shape the trajectory of humanity”.

Do we really want such an important thing to be in the hands of the people who gave us Windows and its never-ending updates that stop people from doing what they should be doing?