There has been plenty written about the wash up of OpenAI’s corporate drama last week. In the space of a few days: co-founder and CEO Sam Altman was fired, a number of senior executives followed him out the door, investors demanded answers, 95% of OpenAI’s staff signed a petition calling for Altman to return, the board members that fired him resigned, Altman returns as CEO. And just like, everything was back to normal.
Or was it? As the dust settles, there are still some big questions that remained unanswered.
The biggest question that remains unanswered
This article from the New Yorker is one of the better long-form articles we’ve read about the wild weekend and the events that led to it. It takes us through Microsoft’s experience of the OpenAI drama as CEO Satya Nadella and CTO Kevin Scott struggled to get information like the rest of us.
Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI’s for-profit operating company after having reportedly invested $13 billion. If any shareholder deserved to be told it was them. Moreover, the two companies had just collaborated on Microsoft’s biggest product launch in a decade – the AI copilot that is currently being rolled out to all Microsoft Office products. For Microsoft, this puts them on the forefront of the AI revolution. For OpenAI, this puts their AI at the fingertips of Microsoft’s billion-plus users. The fact Microsoft’s CEO wasn’t given a heads up of Altman’s firing is mind-blowing.
But this article goes beyond the chaos of OpenAI and examines Microsoft’s own efforts to build AI. It is centred on Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Scott, and his view that AI is the tool that will allow resourceful, digitally-illiterate people the world over to engage with technology. He sees it as the great equaliser that will allow billions of people to fully realise the benefits of the computer revolution.
Under Kevin Scott, Microsoft forged their partnership with OpenAI and pulled out ahead of their Big Tech peers in the AI arms race. Now, under Kevin Scott, they need to navigate this moment of chaos within OpenAI and deliver their first mass-market consumer AI product. Because it is only if the world’s computer users can get accustomed to AI in everyday, boring settings like word processors that Kevin James will realise his vision of AI being the great equaliser for everyday, computer-illiterate people the world over.
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