Altman’s recent actions have struck many as unethical — and that could spell trouble for Microsoft, OpenAI’s closest partner.
Credit: © Microsoft Big tech companies are often not built on technology alone. Frequently, they also gain prominence and success thanks to the outsized exploits or personalities of their founders or leaders. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are two of the earliest and best-known examples.
In some cases, founders or CEOs have the opposite effect — their personas do serious damage to their companies. The most prominent current example is Elon Musk, whose embrace of right-wing conspiracy theories is doing Tesla great harm because so many of the EV car company’s potential customers are liberals or progressives and have vowed not to buy Teslas .
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is nobody’s idea of an outsized tech personality. The no-drama technocrat tends to stay out of the public eye, and when he’s in it, he’s not exactly mesmerizing. His rescue of Microsoft from irrelevancy had to do with smarts, vision, and excellent managerial skills, not a compelling persona.
A very different person connected with Microsoft, one who helped turn it into the world’s most influential, powerful, and wealthy AI company, is Sam Altman, a founder and CEO of OpenAI. Microsoft has invested $13 billion in and is a close partner of OpenAI, which created the technology underlying Microsoft’s generative AI tool Copilot.
Altman has become Mr. AI, ubiquitous in the news media, in the halls of Congress , and beyond. As the public face of genAI and the technology’s most well-known booster, he’s one of the reasons AI has taken off like it has.
So far that’s been great for Microsoft; the more he pushes AI, the more Microsoft gains. But there are signs that may end. Recently Altman’s reputation has been tarnished by claims he used the actress Scarlett Johansson’s voice to be the audio interface for a personal AI assistant without her permission. Beyond that, he appears to have abandoned his promise to make sure AI doesn’t turn destructive, and he’s taking hits for it.
If Altman becomes toxic, what will Microsoft do? Will […]

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