Microsoft dumping ton of cash into ChatGPT Office infusion

Fresh after rumors of using OpenAI's writing technology in its productivity apps, Microsoft is now preparing to invest $10 billion into the AI tool company.

Tools using artificial intelligence are becoming a more important element of computing, and Microsoft is seemingly backing an expansion in the field. It apparently intends to do so by investing $10 billion into OpenAI, the producers of the popular text tool ChatGPT.

The investment is part of a larger funding round that involves other investors, people familiar with the matter told Semaphor on Tuesday, but it is unclear if the deal has been finalized.

Documents allegedly sent to potential investors indicate a closure of the investment round was set for the end of 2022. It is unclear if the deal actually completed, or if it has persisted into 2023.

If it goes ahead, the acquisition will value OpenAI at approximately $29 billion. Under the deal, Microsoft would receive 75% of OpenAI's profits until it recoups the investment, before reverting to a structure where Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI.

This would not be Microsoft's first investment into the company. It was reported on Saturday that Microsoft had invested $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019, to build technologies that could work in its products.

It is thought that Microsoft wants to incorporate AI tech from OpenAI into apps, providing ways for users to write stretches of text and emails for Word and Outlook, based on smaller prompts.

There has also been the suggestion that, by using per-client machine learning with enhanced privacy, the AI models could pick up on language used by the user or an entire company, which could improve suggested texts.

4 Comments

DAalseth 3033 comments · 6 Years

About 1 year ago

Wow, keep this up and in ten to fifteen years they won’t need people at all to write things
or do anything else.
The companies will just run and enrich the person at the top.
Until the AI realizes they don’t need them either.
If there is a robot apocalypse
It will be self inflicted
For profit motives

blastdoor 3565 comments · 15 Years

DAalseth said:

Wow, keep this up and in ten to fifteen years they won’t need people at all to write things
or do anything else.
The companies will just run and enrich the person at the top.
Until the AI realizes they don’t need them either.
If there is a robot apocalypse
It will be self inflicted
For profit motives

Nah -- the AI is just synthesizing and regurgitating what humans have written. If humans stop creating original works the AI will stagnate because it will have nothing new to synthesize and regurgitate. An AI will not replace humans anymore than goose poop can replace fresh grass.

Also, concerns about new fangled things like this go back a long way -- here's an article about Plato bemoaning the invention of the alphabet:

https://fs.blog/an-old-argument-against-writing/

foregoneconclusion 2836 comments · 12 Years

blastdoor said: Nah -- the AI is just synthesizing and regurgitating what humans have written.

The chat/art programs should only be synthesizing/regurgitating public domain material. That's the real issue currently: the companies that are developing this stuff can't be trusted to do that. IMO, none of these programs should be legally allowed to scrape the internet etc. They should be restricted to using a single database that is independently verified to consist entirely of public domain material.

netrox 1501 comments · 12 Years

Honestly, I learned so much from conversations with ChatGPT than I ever with teachers with technical questions.

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