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The game surrounding OpenAI these days is not only a soap-opera. It’s a Game of Thrones for not only billions but trillions of dollars from the upcoming AI industry.
With AI (supported by other technologies), 30 % of hours currently worked across the US economy of $ 27 trillion could be automated.
AI is a gold rush for IT, and Microsoft intends to take the Lion’s share.
To drive AI, Microsoft is building 120 herculean datacenters all over the world, just in 2023 alone.
In this AI gold rush, OpenAI is by far the leader of the industry. OpenAI is the AI industry’s biggest gold mine – and the main target of Microsoft.
Microsoft bought into a big share of the gold mine called OpenAI, but no matter the billions from Microsoft, under the current governance structure of OpenAI, Microsoft can gain no control and no freedom to maximize and extract the unfathomable profits just waiting inside OpenAI to be mined.
The power of OpenAI’s controlling idealists with their philosophies about non-profit and safety stood in the way for Microsoft to just scoop up the trillions (not “just” billions) of dollars waiting there.
All the talk about sympathy for this or that person is rubbish in the media. This is not personal – it’s just business, as they say in the movie Godfather.
What Microsoft wants is to demolish the profit-limiting structures of OpenAI and take all its development and talent under Microsoft’s full control.
No profit-cap, as hitherto. Less concern for safety and use of AI – more concern for speed and maximum commercialization.
The sudden dismissal of OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman was justified by the Board of OpenAI with reference to a “lack of candidacy” on behalf of Sam Altman to the Board. That is a severe accusation.
We sense that the Board of OpenAI unexpectedly came across something which made them feel betrayed by CEO Sam Altman.
We therefore ask if there have been some double-dealings by Sam Altman with Microsoft behind the back of the Board of OpenAI? Some actions on behalf of the former CEO of OpenAI contravention of the Board’s ethical principles for running OpenAI by developing safe AI, not primarily for profit, but for the benefit of Humankind?
On the Board – leading the dismissal of the former CEO Sam Altman – Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s genius Russian-Israeli Chief Scientific Officer, is not only the indispensable key driver to OpenAI’s immense technological achievements, but also for OpenAI’s ethics and nonprofit principles.
Look through all the often very long interviews by top members of OpenAI, and it is always Ilya Sutskever who has all the basic answers about technology, scientific philosophy, safety, and ethics – nobody else.
Former CEO Sam Altman was more the figurehead who assimilated the message to every segment of audience, taking on a conservative suit and necktie for talking sweet to the formality-adhering member of the US Congress, and donning a fancy pink polo shirt and violet sunglasses when visiting and charming the fashion-conscious French.
Microsoft’s strategy relative to OpenAI is simple: Rob OpenAI of its commercially useful but less IT-talented former CEO and get so many of OpenAI’s talent with the former CEO over to Microsoft to at best make it impossible for OpenAI to continue without Microsoft’s control, alternatively for Microsoft to quickly replicate OpenAI’s achievements inside Microsoft – or even better, break down OpenAI’s governance principles and give Microsoft free hand to take full control of OpenAI.
All AI talent is paid like Rock-Stars – but most well-earners will still want to earn a lot more, if they can.
With no restrictions on profit making, Microsoft has no problems bidding up the less idealistically minded majority of OpenAI’s tech-talent to earn a fortune with Microsoft.
After that, the idealists left behind at OpenAI may be demolished for lack of people to go on, or surrender to Microsoft.
AI is not just a ”tech-issue”. It is an issue of immense importance for humankind – and in that arena, a deeply consequential battle is right now being played out before the eyes of the global public.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from Pixabay
