While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argues that artificial intelligence is on the verge of reaching human-level cognitive capacities, Microsoft, the company’s largest investor, disagrees. According to the agreement between them, if OpenAI develops an AGI-level artificial intelligence, its special access partnership with Microsoft can end. However, Microsoft management has made it clear that it does not agree with Altman’s definition of AGI.

Microsoft management does not believe in OpenAI’s artificial intelligence promises

Although the concept of AGI (artificial general intelligence) is defined in different ways in different sources, the generally accepted approach describes artificial systems that are equal to or exceed human intelligence. While OpenAI argues that it is very close to this goal, Microsoft is cautious about this claim. The company’s CEO Satya Nadella states that AGI cannot be proven only with the scores obtained from benchmark tests. According to Nadella, the AI ​​systems presented by Altman as AGI are not truly artificial general intelligence.

Microsoft, which has access to the technologies developed by OpenAI, may lose this privilege when the AI ​​in question reaches the level of AGI. For this reason, how AGI is defined in the agreement between the parties has become a critical issue. According to the latest information, Sam Altman argues that reaching AGI is a matter of time, while the Microsoft side considers this a speculative claim for now.

In the past, disagreements and management crises between the parties gave way to deeper disagreements over time. At this point, it is inevitable that OpenAI and Microsoft will go to court.

The definition of AGI in particular is expected to become a decisive element in this case. The ethical and technical consequences of the dispute, as well as its commercial effects, are likely to have wide repercussions in the world of artificial intelligence.

In its statements on this issue, the OpenAI front argues that artificial intelligence is constantly increasing its capabilities and that the AGI limit is approaching, while Microsoft evaluates these developments as marketing-oriented comments. The company’s top executives state that AGI represents a much more complex and comprehensive threshold, and that current systems have not yet reached this level.

This tension between the two companies also points to an important turning point in terms of the future and governance of artificial intelligence. When technological progress will be accepted as AGI and who or what will make this decision stands out as a question that can affect the future of not only the two companies but the entire sector.