Microsoft's Satya Nadella and Bill Gates were 'very worried' about Google's advancements in AI
Newly surfaced emails from 2019 have shed light on Microsoft's deep-seated concerns regarding Google's formidable strides in artificial intelligence (AI). The correspondence, unveiled as part of the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google, portrays Microsoft's apprehension over Google's AI prowess, prompting strategic decisions including investments in OpenAI.
Concerns over Google's AI Advancements
In a detailed email exchange, Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer, expressed profound unease to Satya Nadella and Bill Gates about Google's AI advancements, particularly highlighting the remarkable precision of its AI-powered "auto-complete in Gmail." Scott articulated that Microsoft lagged "multiple years behind the competition in terms of ML [machine learning] scale," a revelation underscoring the urgency for action.
The emails, subject-lined "Thoughts on OpenAI," also garnered attention for the conspicuous redaction of a significant portion of Scott's discourse, hinting at potentially sensitive discussions surrounding strategic manoeuvres.
Strategic Decisions and Investments
In response to Scott's stark assessment, Nadella emphasised the imperative of Microsoft's proactive stance, asserting, "This is why I want us to do this," while looping in Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood into the correspondence, accentuating the strategic significance of the deliberations.
In 2019, the tech giant made an initial $1 billion investment in what has evolved into a multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, a move heralded for its prescient timing.
Collaboration with OpenAI
The strategic collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI has yielded tangible dividends. Leveraging OpenAI's cutting-edge technology, Microsoft swiftly integrated AI innovations into flagship products like Bing and Microsoft 365, capitalising on the burgeoning interest in AI post-ChatGPT.
In the midst of these developments, Google released a new AI chip rival to Nvidia, further escalating the competition in the AI landscape.
Vigilant Monitoring of Competitors
The email correspondence further illuminates Microsoft's vigilant monitoring of its competitors, with Scott highlighting the ambitious AI undertakings of OpenAI, DeepMind, and Google Brain. Scott's acknowledgement of Google's strides in data centre designs and distributed systems architecture underscores the multifaceted dynamics of the AI landscape.
Strategic Imperatives in AI Development
As the unredacted portions of the emails reveal, Microsoft's strategic imperatives encompassed a spectrum of AI domains including reinforcement learning (RL), natural language processing (NLP), and the transformative bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT).
