Microsoft And Elon Musk's OpenAI Partnering To Further Develop New Artificial Intelligence Technology

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk and software giant Microsoft are teaming up to continue the evolution of artificial intelligence.

The announcement came Monday when Microsoft and Musk’s OpenAI announced the partnership that would mean Microsoft investing $1 billion in the artificial intelligence company. Through this investment, both companies would work to develop Azure AI and Microsoft would be the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI.

The overall goal of this partnership would be to build artificial general intelligence that would solve more complex problems than current artificial intelligence systems.

“The creation of AGI will be the most important technological development in human history, with the potential to shape the trajectory of humanity,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a press release.

“Our mission is to ensure that AGI technology benefits all of humanity, and we’re working with Microsoft to build the supercomputing foundation on which we’ll build AGI. We believe it’s crucial that AGI is deployed safely and securely and that its economic benefits are widely distributed. We are excited about how deeply Microsoft shares this vision.”

The companies have ambitious, long-term aspirations for the new AI technology. Up to this point, artificial intelligence has seen breakthroughs in areas like language processing and robotics. However, the press release explains that the goal of this partnership is to have artificial general intelligence solve “multidisciplinary problems,” such as climate change and healthcare.

“AI is one of the most transformative technologies of our time and has the potential to help solve many of our world’s most pressing challenges,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in the press release.

“By bringing together OpenAI’s breakthrough technology with new Azure AI supercomputing technologies, our ambition is to democratize AI — while always keeping AI safety front and center — so everyone can benefit.”