One of tech’s biggest players is making a big investment in open and transparent artificial intelligence.
News from Business Insider shows emerging reports that Microsoft will become a partner in the OpenAI initiative built by Elon Musk and other tech leaders. The goal is to try to promote better human control of technological advances.
Microsoft is reportedly chipping into the tune of $1 billion. That should make a decisive difference in an initiative focusing on evaluating supercomputing from an ethical and humanitarian standpoint.
AI Initiatives
Musk, for his part, has been open about the need for transparent and monitored AI for years — often characterizing AI advances as nefarious. He’s stated again and again that human initiative is paramount in harnessing new technologies the ‘right’ way.
Musk told the New York Times: “… what is the best thing we can do to ensure the future is good? We could sit on the sidelines or we can encourage regulatory oversight, or we could participate with the right structure with people who care deeply about developing AI in a way that is safe and is beneficial to humanity.”
OpenAI
Since its founding in 2015, OpenAI has pioneered robot technologies to better understand human-robot interaction.
It’s also made forays into the use of key IT services like Microsoft Azure and their data-handling capacities.
Some of AI’s lineup involves its own controversy … co-founder Peter Thiel, for example, is also co-founder of Palantir, a group that’s currently under scrutiny for working with America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). But in general, it works on the vanguard of promoting accessible and transparent artificial intelligence work.
As for the market’s response, at press time, MSFT stands near $139, a near high for the month. Incremental advances of the equity draw on an already highly valued stock representing a blue-chip firm trading on its history of tech dominance. A key issue is how the OpenAI partnership could influence values — and IT frontiers — as it expands.
