Microsoft to invest $1 bn in OpenAI to help build human-like machine intelligence

Satya Nadella-led technology giant Microsoft is going to invest $1 billion in US-based non-profit research firm OpenAI to help build human-like intelligence, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), for public good.

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

Currently, engineers and data scientists have been successful in training machines using resources and methods such as neural networks, deep learning, reinforcement learning among others to solve very specific problems. In contrast, AGI, looks at giving machines intelligence so that they can read a problem like a human and think of a solution. 

According to a joint statement sent out by the companies, both will collaborate to develop a hardware and software platform with Microsoft Azure as a base. This means that OpenAI will move its services to run on Azure in order to develop a computational platform that will be able to handle advanced AI models to reach the target of AGI.

“By bringing together OpenAI’s breakthrough technology with new Azure AI supercomputing technologies, our ambition is to democratize AI — while always keeping AI safety front and center — so everyone can benefit,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said.

Once the companies develop AI supercomputing technologies, Microsoft will become OpenAI’s partner for commercialising the new technologies.