Confirming rumors that surfaced earlier this month (open in new tab), Microsoft announced a "multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment (open in new tab)" with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.

OpenAI's two creations have been at the forefront of major tech news in recent months: ChatGPT, a chatbot so compelling that the New York City Department of Education has banned it from school networks (open in new tab) and devices, and DALL-E ( opens in a new tab) is a powerful image creation program. Microsoft's investments in OpenAI in 2019 and 2021 are helping to make these two technologies a reality.

Microsoft is also increasing its investment in "specialized supercomputing systems" to accelerate OpenAI research, including the Azure OpenAI Service, which helps other developers create their own AI applications, and is modeling OpenAI as He said the company will roll it out "across our consumer and enterprise products." [Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, "We partnered with OpenAI based on our shared ambition to responsibly drive cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform." In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain in Azure to build and run their applications"

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"The past three years of our partnership have been great," said OpenAI. CEO Sam Altman. Microsoft shares our values, and we are excited to continue our independent research and work toward achieving advanced AI that benefits everyone." [In a separate statement announcing the investment (opens in new tab), OpenAI said that the company will remain a "Capped Profit Company (opens in new tab)" and will limit the return investors in the company can earn, with any excess going into OpenAI Non-Profit, essentially reinvesting in the company and its activities. The company states that it will invest the surplus in OpenAI Non-Profit, essentially reinvesting it in the company and its activities.

"This structure allows us to raise the capital needed to fulfill our mission without sacrificing our fundamental belief in sharing profits broadly and prioritizing safety," OpenAI said.

We've seen too many dystopian science fiction movies to have complete confidence in the idea of "safe" AI development (and the increasingly obvious human costs of machine learning (open in new tab) do not improve prospects on that front either). The company is reportedly trying to incorporate ChatGPT technology into its Bing search engine (open in new tab), and is trying to differentiate itself from Google by providing more human-like answers to search queries, rather than just a list of links.