Microsoft invests $1 billion in artificial intelligence lab
Microsoft has agreed to invest $1 billion in and partner with research company OpenAI, co-founded by Elon Musk, to develop artificial general intelligence, a technology that could have human-level intellectual capacity.
The companies said Monday that they will build a hardware and software platform of "unprecedented scale” within Microsoft’s cloud service provider Azure that will train and run increasingly advanced AI models. Microsoft will also become OpenAI’s preferred partner for selling its technologies and the two will jointly develop Azure’s supercomputing technology.
The companies said applying their shared principles and ethics would "create the foundation for advancements in AI to be implemented in a safe, secure and trustworthy way."
OpenAI, co-founded in 2015 by Musk and other prominent Silicon Valley investors, focuses mainly on artificial general intelligence, which could perform any tasks that humans are capable of, different from existing AI that can do only what people trained them for.
The company said it expects AGI to help tackle global challenges such as climate change and to provide more personalized health care and education.
July 29, 2019