Microsoft gets seat on OpenAI Board of Directors
The software giant Microsoft invested one billion dollars in the AI start-up OpenAI back in 2019. In the meantime, the investment commitments have not only increased many times over. Following the drama surrounding Sam Altman, the company has also appointed a member to the board of the ChatGPT inventor.
Software giant Microsoft has been given a seat on the board of ChatGPT developer OpenAI - albeit without voting rights. The software company, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, will appoint one member with observer status to the management and supervisory board of the start-up company specializing in artificial intelligence, as OpenAI announced.
Three members of the Board of Directors have already been appointed. They are Silicon Valley veteran Bret Taylor as Chairman, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and the head of the question-and-answer website Quora, Adam D'Angelo. The news comes after turbulent days at the developer of the chatbot ChatGPT, which was released exactly one year ago - on November 30, 2022.
The previous board of directors unexpectedly dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on November 17. Just four days later, the company performed a U-turn and announced the return of the 38-year-old, who has become a face of artificial intelligence (AI) through ChatGPT. In the meantime, Microsoft had announced that it would be hiring Altman as the head of a new AI research team. In addition, the majority of OpenAI employees had threatened to follow Altman to Microsoft if the board of directors responsible for the dismissal did not resign.
Microsoft and OpenAI are closely linked: The software giant initially invested one billion dollars (910 million euros) in the start-up company, which was founded in 2015, in 2019. According to media reports, the investment commitments have since grown to around 13 billion dollars. Microsoft has already integrated ChatGPT into its products, such as the Bing search engine.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a non-profit company, but changed its structure four years later in order to generate limited profits. The dispute in recent weeks is said to have revolved around the question of whether the development of artificial intelligence should focus on potential profits or the responsible use of the new technology.
Microsoft, as a result of its significant investment in OpenAI, will now have a representative on OpenAI's board with observer status, contributing to discussions about ChatGPT and artificial intelligence developments. The ongoing partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI has led to the integration of ChatGPT into Microsoft's products, like Bing.
Source: www.ntv.de
