Commentary: From OpenAI to Microsoft, Sam Altman exposes the charade of AI accountability

JUST ANOTHER BIG TECH EXECUTIVE

By Monday morning, Microsoft and Nadella had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Altman and Brockman – who had been forced off the board and later resigned – would immediately become Microsoft employees in charge of the company’s new in-house AI team.

If OpenAI employees follow them out the door, as hundreds seem eager to do, Microsoft will have pulled off, or some might say lucked into, the most stunning acqui-hire in Silicon Valley history. As tech analyst Ben Thompson put it, “Microsoft just acquired OpenAI for US$0 and zero risk of an antitrust lawsuit.”

Microsoft’s new position of strength in AI will be used to bend the new frontiers of this technology even more to its will than it has done already. Nadella’s personal involvement was instrumental in getting Altman back into the building at OpenAI, if not quite back into the company, in an intervention that was only natural given what’s at stake for the US$2.8 trillion computing giant and its blockbuster US$10 billion OpenAI investment, the cornerstone of its future.

One inherent weakness of all major AI companies is that right now the costs of computing power, and access to the latest chips to run the technology, requires a level of financial backing that is incompatible with any true independence. 

There will likely be ripple effects as other big tech companies take a closer look at their exposure to AI partners, and likely demand more oversight or control. One silver lining, I guess, is that the charade of accountability at OpenAI has been exposed before the groundbreaking company found itself facing a real crisis. We can be thankful the only existential risk at the moment is the one all this has posed to OpenAI itself, not the rest of us.

Meanwhile, Nadella’s immediate concern won’t be how to restore ethical checks and balances to the development of AI, but how quickly everyone can get back to work developing AI. And so, “the mission continues,” as Altman tweeted Monday morning.

But whose mission? Microsoft’s or OpenAI’s? As a Microsoft employee, Altman will find it harder to convince the world and regulators that he is working for the good of humanity, and not for the good of shareholders.

He is now just another Big Tech executive. But let’s face it, he always was.