Software King of the World Microsoft has swept in to poach key OpenAI staff in the wake of the firing of Sam Altman.
For those not in the know, the Board fired Altman for needing to be consistently candid in his communications with the board and hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.
The job was passed to chief technology officer Mira Murati, at least for now.
However, Microsoft was furious, having invested $13 billion in the company and needing it for its bold new AI plans. Microsoft’s response was to hire Altman and any staff who wanted to come with him to form a new AI research division.
Simultaneously, Microsoft claims it remains committed to OpenAI and its work.
“We have a long-term partnership with OpenAI, and Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers,” according to the statement.
The move would give Microsoft the best of both worlds.
Microsoft has an exclusive license on the organisation’s GPT-4 large language model (LLM) that generates answers in response to user queries, and the two companies have partnered “to develop the underlying AI” in Microsoft’s Copilot GenAI tools.
