From The Hill
For Microsoft, the OpenAI tumult is ‘heads I win, tails you lose’
By Steven Weber
Microsoft may have just pulled off the greatest anti-competitive heist of the century. By capitalizing on the recent corporate governance crisis at OpenAI, one of the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence technology developers, Microsoft has super-charged its vision of shaping and controlling the artificial intelligence (AI) market. Now, the most important technology of our time is at risk of being locked in silos, and that is not an outcome anyone should welcome.
What we are looking at now is Microsoft’s race toward establishing control over a collection of AI resources that will evolve together in what is commonly called a “walled garden.” The problem is that an AI silo would be detrimental for technology development, as well as costly and potentially dangerous for society and the economy. Innovation would be slower and more fragmented, subjecting end users to higher prices and just “good enough” substandard technology.
To understand how we got here, look back to July 2019, when Microsoft made its first large investment of $1 billion in OpenAI. About half of this investment came in the unconventional form of cloud credits, which were to be used by OpenAI to develop its models on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. If Microsoft’s goal was to bind OpenAI into its massive existing ecosystem and business, this was a brilliant stroke...
Steven Weber is a professor emeritus of the I School, retiring in 2021. He previously served as the faculty director at the Center for Long Term Cybersecurity (CLTC).
