This is the best summary I could come up with:
Microsoft has withdrawn from its non-voting observer role on OpenAI’s board, while Apple has opted not to take a similar position, reports Axios and Financial Times.
The development comes as regulators in the EU and US increase their scrutiny of Big Tech’s investments in AI startups due to concerns about stifling competition.
The decision is part of “a new approach to informing and engaging key strategic partners” under Sarah Friar, who came on as OpenAI’s first chief financial officer last month.
Regulators in both the US and Europe are worried that Big Tech’s heavy influence in fast-growing AI startups may unreasonably edge out competition and establish de facto monopolies over key technologies that would stifle smaller competitors.
In June, the FTC began looking into investments made by Big Tech companies (such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google) into generative AI startups.
Meanwhile, the European Commission also announced it was exploring the possibility of an antitrust investigation into the Microsoft/OpenAI partnership after deciding not to proceed with a probe under merger control rules.
The original article contains 536 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Oh shit, here we go again.
Eh, just trying to avoid scrutiny.
Yeah the only change here is room for plausible deniability. There will still be regular meetings between the companies, just not in the “board room”. As if that matters.
It’s probably more likely that Microsoft wants out of the board so that it can be free to pursue acquisitions of OpenAI’s competitors without a conflict of interest.
This is how this bullshit bubble ends, hopefully.
That means we’ll get back to being able to work on projects that aren’t a complete waste of everyone’s time, right? Right??
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
No
Well, if you mean some completely NEW bullshit project based on some vaporware looking for a niche, then yeah.
For instance, block chain is still a completely untapped block of cheese for which - any day now - someone’s gonna dream up an actual need that isn’t totally contrived. You should learn more about that so you know the keywords and when to excuse yourself to update your L-I profile.
I find it bizarre that Apple and Microsoft don’t have their own AI to work with — even if it was just through an acquisition. Too much of a copyright and safety hot potato?
Well… Microsoft dipped their toe in the water and it was promptly bitten off.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-shuts-down-ai-chatbot-after-it-turned-into-racist-nazi/
I remember that one. Pure comedy gold.
Apple has been on an AI shopping spree for a while now, and Apple IP is going to be driving a lot of what’s in Apple Intelligence.
The language and diffusion models that Apple has on device, and in that private cloud compute feature, are all Apple IP.
ChatGPT is only prompted when a query looks like it could benefit from it. And when that happens, the user is asked for data consent for every query.
