OpenAI Considers Revising AGI Arrangement With Microsoft

OpenAI is reportedly considering altering a provision regarding Microsoft, it’s largest corporate investor. OpenAI’s current structure stipulates that if the AI startup achieves its goal of creating artificial general intelligence (AGI), described by the company as “a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work,” such a system would not be included in its licensing agreements with Microsoft.

Now, OpenAI is said to be considering lifting that stipulation in order to acquire more funding from Microsoft, the Financial Times reports. Microsoft has already invested over $13 billion in the Sam Altman-led unicorn, and Altman has recently claimed that AGI could be achieved within “a few thousand days.”

The provision was originally put in place due to safety concerns regarding AGI, which Altman had previously said could pose an existential danger to humanity if it were to fall into the wrong hands. In 2023 he told Time Magazine that “if AGI goes wrong, no bunker’s going to help anyone.” OpenAI’s website states that Microsoft previously agreed to “leave AGI technologies and governance for the Nonprofit and the rest of humanity.”

Earlier this week at the New York Times’ Dealbook conference, though, Altman struck a very different tone regarding AGI. When asked about the possibility of ending OpenAI and Microsoft’s relationship due to the advent of AGI, Altman downplayed AGI’s potential impact and safety risks, saying his guess is that “we will hit AGI sooner than most people in the world think, and it will matter much less. And a lot of the safety concerns that we and others express actually won’t come at the AGI moment.”