What is Microsoft's new AI Team?

OpenAI's coup and subsequent purge and exodus of talent.

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Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, has announced the surprise move, which could shake up the AI industry.

What felt like a tragedy for OpenAI this weekend, is the boon of Microsoft, their chief investor and now even more co-mingled with the chaotic Generative A.I. pioneer startup.

So I guess it really is about the money?

Microsoft has hired OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to head up a “new advanced AI research team,” the software conglomerate’s chief Satya Nadella.

It’s unclear of what exactly the new A.I. lab will do or work on but it’s bringing with it a significant exodus of talent from OpenAI to the Big ship that is Microsoft that has become an AI congramlate of sorts.

If I didn’t know better I’d say this as all planned.

Nadella said Altman and Brockman will be joined by “colleagues.” Former OpenAI top talent Szymon Sidor, Jakub Pachocki, Aleksander Madry are joining Microsoft with “more” to follow suit, Brockman said in a post on X.

Tech giant Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and has a close technology partnership with the company. Now it gains even more control over OpenAI and is bleeding its talent to its own advantage.

The new lab inside Microsoft could become what DeepMind was to Google or what Anthropic might be to Amazon one day. Whatever it is I can’t imagine it will impact OpenAI well, that has had a lot of momentum since the advent of ChatGPT one year ago.

Since many at OpenAI are loyal to Sam Altman, this ties the non-profit to Microsoft even more tightly.

“It’s going to be Incredible”

Brockman has also revealed that the new advanced AI research team at Microsoft will also include some key OpenAI talent. Jakub Pachocki, director of research at OpenAI, will join an unnamed leadership position in Microsoft’s advanced AI research team. OpenAI research scientist Szymon Sidor and head of preparedness Aleksander Madry are also joining Microsoft in leadership positions, according to Brockman.

I’m not sure poaching talent from OpenAI is incredible, given that they poached talent from Google, Meta and others. Seems like a sneaky move by Microsoft to be honest and a colossal (likely orchestrated) fiasco at OpenAI. There’s no reason to believe the show of the last few days at OpenAI was even a real thing.

If you wanted to consolidate power in AI, what would you do? Satya Nadella has mitigated damage while adding talent to his already formidable Microsoft Research team with a more applied internal AI lab.

Nadella, whose firm has invested over $10 billion in OpenAI and acquired almost 50% ownership is showing how even Sam Altman can be a tool for BigTech even more than we thought.

Altman had been leading the company since 2019 and can under Microsoft’s guidance create another spin-off company under a more corporate for profit structure. This is the fastest way for him to get more money.

Late Sunday night, OpenAI said it was bringing on board former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear to run the artificial intelligence company.

Altman has been the public face of OpenAI, the most valuable U.S. startup. But it’s not clear what OpenAI’s valuation will be now that he has left along with significant talent.

Altman’s hiring comes just hours after alleged negotiations with OpenAI’s board failed to bring him back as OpenAI CEO. Though I suspect this was the plan all along. Investment in OpenAI has also supercharged Microsoft’s AI efforts, helping it court many businesses where Microsoft is getting the bulk of OpenAI’s revenue in their unique funding deal as well as a multi-pronged “copilot” implementation of Generative AI and GPT-4 in their services.

How many copilots do you need or how much of the talent OpenAI has itself poached to be considered an equal to Google? We’ll have to wait until early 2024 when Gemini finally launches to know the answer. Given the decline of talent in recent years from Google Brain and the quality of talent in Microsoft Research, we might soon consider the Sam Altman lab inside of Microsoft as on parity with Google DeepMind.

This is a developing story and many details of this new project are not yet known to the public.