Microsoft tops CTO Kevin Scott, CEO Satya Nadella and co-founder Bill Gates were very afraid in 2019 that Google was about to overtake them in the AI sector. The story should end with the Microsoft merger and AI launch after three years of massive investment in OpenAI.
Gates is likely more active at Microsoft than he thought
It reveals internal emails dubbed “Thoughts on OpenAI” between the two summits in 2019. Then you might wonder why we know this: The reason is the case brought by the US Department of Justice against Google. Scott said the company was several years behind Google in terms of scaling AI, so in 2019 they actually ended up investing $1 billion in OpenAI — and they've since pumped in another $12 billion.
In the summer of the same year, the company discovered that expansion was the problem. He explains that it took Microsoft half a year to copy Google's LLM Bert and train him because Microsoft's hardware stack wasn't powerful enough. Scott only discovered this when he delved deeper into the LLM technology and found that Google was ahead of them in terms of model training: “I was very, very nervous.” The newly revealed emails also reveal a specific feature he liked at the time: the autocomplete capabilities In Gmail.
As for Bill Gates, there was little news in the media at the time of writing about his work at Microsoft, but at least in 2019 and since 2016, Gates must have been important in securing an agreement with OpenAI. In terms of longer strategic roadmaps, it is not impossible that it is still an important player.
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