The Six Five team discusses Apple & Microsoft leave OpenAI board.
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Transcript:
Daniel Newman: Let’s talk a little bit about Apple and Microsoft deciding to, well, in Microsoft’s case, deciding to leave its role as an observer on the board of directors at OpenAI and Apple deciding not to pursue what was expected to be their participation, following that deal, to be part of the observers of the board of directors at OpenAI. Man, Pat, look, that company builds the coolest technology on the planet. OpenAI is doing things unimaginable, but I still tell you there’s something going on. It’s like a volcano in that thing and it’s just burning from the inside out.
He casts a controversial figure. His top lieutenants are all leaving. One of them is starting a company that’s literally got the name of your ethical or whatever he is calling it AI in the name of the company. And to me that felt like a very direct dig at the fact that OpenAI’s existence was not based upon that. I did see an interesting, Jay Cal from All In shared a video I saw of Sam driving around in a two and a half million dollar Koenigsegg to which he said, “I will be starting an NFP or whatever. I want to start a non-for-profit or whatever.”
Patrick Moorhead: Yes, exactly.
Daniel Newman: And look, I’m a capitalist. I’m all for people being successful and what Sam’s doing is changing the world, but Apple and Microsoft increasingly want nothing to do with it, which is weird because Apple has obviously wants a lot to do with it, but they don’t want to be uniquely close in a way that the outside world can see. So I’m going to give you the caveat there in a minute. Microsoft, even moreover, and there’s been that controversial commentary that’s come in the market from Satya Nadella talking about them being over and under and all around. And basically no matter what Open AI does, they have the whole thing under their control. But being observer on the board seems to be that cutoff limit of where they do not want to be anymore because guess what? The probers are busy probing again and they want to figure out if these companies are colluding or doing anything that’s going to uniquely position and give advantage.
And would the spot as board observer give them more power? Here’s the thing, with them being the largest commercial relationships, not money necessarily because the Apple Open AI one doesn’t have a direct monetary relationship, at least not disclosed, but with the influence of money I still think that both those companies are going to have an outsized ability to influence where and how open AI goes directionally. And of course we’re even hearing Open AI potentially changing its corporate structure to enable it to go public or in some way be able to be a beneficiary corp that can in fact be invested in more easily by more outsiders. The only thing I want to add about this is if you remember Microsoft made that inflection deal with Suleyman, and I think a lot of the company is AI strategy revolves around that. They are more directionally trying to build stuff on their own. They basically acquired inflection, but they don’t call it an acquisition. They did it that way very intentionally. They were able to avoid all scrutiny, all regulatory approvals, but they did basically hired everybody, licensed all the technology and left nothing in the company other than a shell.
So it was really interesting, by the way, super smart, super smart. I want to be very clear about that. But now the regulatory bodies are probing this. They’re like, “Is that legit?” And I think we’re all saying, “Hey guys, waking up. Good morning. How’s it going over there in government? It’s good that you’re starting to pay attention.” So the long-short Pat is they’re all going to be involved. They’re going to continue to use, they’re going to continue to influence. They just don’t want to be named as formally participating in the shaping and driving of the company’s governance.
Patrick Moorhead: Yeah, I don’t have much to add on this. It was interesting, your first hack that you were going down I was wondering if you’re going to hit the regulatory piece, but yeah, I mean both Apple and Microsoft got word from either FTC or the DOJ and they had to bail and it was amazing. I think it was on the same day was just so shocking because I think everybody was surprised. So Microsoft got put on the board after the big shakeup in leadership there. Sam was CEO, he got fired, then he was going to be a Microsoft employee, and then he came back on and then Apple just received their board seat after the deal that they did for Apple AI. So yeah, I think this is pre-crime and these guys are getting ahead of the pre-crime to not get these folks on their back. I haven’t read the filing or the warning, but it must be a lot of fun.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
