In an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Tuesday, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman made it clear that he admires OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin used the analogy of winning a bicycle race to ask what Microsoft's plans are for its massive AI future when it doesn't rely so heavily on OpenAI. But Suleyman evaded.
“I don’t buy the metaphor that there is a finish line. This is another false framing,” he said. “We have to stop framing everything as a furious race.”
He then addressed the Microsoft corporate line regarding the agreement his company signed with OpenAI. OpenAI has reportedly invested $10 billion using a combination of cash and cloud credits. The deal gives Microsoft a large stake in OpenAI's for-profit business, allowing it to embed AI models into Microsoft products and sell the technology to Microsoft cloud customers. Some reports suggest that Microsoft may be eligible for some OpenAI payments as well.
“It is true that we are in fierce competition with them,” Suleyman said of OpenAI. “They are an independent company. We do not own or control them. There aren't even any board members. So they do their own thing entirely. But we have a deep partnership. I am very good friends with Sam and have great respect, trust and belief in the work they do. And that will continue for many years to come,” Suleyman said.
These relationships, both close and distant, are important to Suleyman's profession. Microsoft's investors and enterprise customers value our close relationships. But regulators were intrigued and in April the EU agreed that the investment was not a true acquisition. If that changes, perhaps so will regulatory participation.
Suleyman says he trusts Altman when it comes to AI safety.
In a sense, Suleyman was the Sam Altman of AI before OpenAI. He has spent most of his career competing with OpenAI and is known for his own ego.
Suleyman was the founder of AI pioneer DeepMind, which he sold to Google in 2014. As Bloomberg reported in 2019, he left the company in 2022 to join Greylock after being placed on administrative leave for allegedly harassing employees and then moving on to other Google roles. Partner as a venture partner. A few months later, he and Reid Hoffman, a member of Greylock's Microsoft board of directors, launched Inflection AI, with the goal of building their own LLM chatbot.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tried and failed to hire Sam Altman last fall, and OpenAI fired him and then quickly reinstated him. Microsoft then hired Suleyman and most of Inflection in March, leaving the company a shell and a big check. Suleyman has been auditing OpenAI code in his new role at Microsoft, Semafor reported earlier this month. One of OpenAI's former big rivals, he's now moving deep inside the crown jewel's fanatical rival.
There's another wrinkle to all of this. OpenAI was founded on the premise that conducting AI safety research will one day prevent evil AI from destroying humanity. In 2023, when he was still an OpenAI competitor, Suleyman published a book with researcher Michael Bhaskar called “The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Biggest Dilemmas of the 21st Century.” This book discusses the risks of AI and how to prevent them.
A group of former OpenAI employees signed a letter earlier this month outlining concerns that OpenAI and other AI companies are not taking safety seriously enough.
When asked about this, Suleyman expressed his love and trust in Altman, but said he would like to see both regulation and a slower pace.
“Maybe it's because I'm British with European leanings, but I'm not afraid of regulation like everyone else is by default,” he said, describing all the criticism from former employees as “healthy dialogue.” .” He added, “I think it’s great to have technologists, entrepreneurs and CEOs of companies like Sam, who I love so much and think is great, talking about regulation.” “That person is not cynical and sincere. “He truly believes that.”
But he also said: “Friction will be our friend here. “These technologies are going to become very powerful, very intimate, and ever-present, so now is a good moment to look at them.” If all this conversation is delaying AI development by six to 18 months or more, “it’s time well spent.”
These players are all very cozy together.
Suleyman wants AI in the classroom, collaboration with China
Suleyman also made interesting comments on other issues. AI Competition with China:
“With all due respect to my good friends in D.C. and the military-industrial complex, if the basic frame is that there is bound to be a new Cold War, that is exactly what it will be, because that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. “They are afraid that we will become hostile, so we have no choice but to become hostile and this will escalate,” he said. “We need to find ways to work together and respect them while also acknowledging that we have different values.”
But he also said China is “building its own technology ecosystem and spreading it around the world.” We have to pay really close attention.
When asked about his thoughts on children using AI for schoolwork, Suleyman, who said he doesn’t have children, shrugged. “I think we need to be a little bit cautious about fearing the downsides of every tool. Like when calculators came out, there was a kind of gut reaction of, oh, no, everyone is going to be able to solve every problem to some degree. Equations right away. And it’s going to make us dumber because we can’t do mental arithmetic.”
He also envisions a time in the near future where AI will chat in real time in the classroom, like a teacher's assistant, as its language capabilities improve. “What would it look like for a great teacher or educator to have a profound conversation with AI in real time in front of an audience?”
The bottom line is that those who build AI and profit from it may be setting unrealistic expectations if they want to govern and protect humanity from its worst impacts.
