India  

Microsoft/OpenAI AGI argument unlikely to impact enterprise IT

Computerworld Friday, 27 June 2025 ()
There may be trouble in the industry’s biggest AI alliance, with a contract dispute about AGI threatening to topple the partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft.

The dispute, according to a report from The Information, involves a line in their contract that allows for the alliance to die once AGI (artificial general intelligence), the ability for genAI to replicate the capabilities of human thought, is achieved.

The problem is not with the lack of a precise AGI definition. It is that the concept is impossible to prove. OpenAI could deliver 100 proofs that show that they have achieved AGI and Microsoft could counter with 100 proofs that it hasn’t. Sentience is impossible to prove — or to disprove — with examples.

“They’re never going to settle on a definition of AGI that is intuitively satisfying to all. Any attempt to define AGI by looking at the internals of how the mind works often gets muddied by things like qualia and consciousness, which are notoriously difficult to pin down using an externally verifiable measure,” said John Licato, an associate professor at the University of South Florida’s Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence. “Instead, I expect they’re going to need to pick a somewhat arbitrary dividing line, purely tied to tests of performance. One example might be based on some consensus-based variant of the Turing Test in which a group of laypeople are asked to interact [blindly] with either humans or the AI, and they are then asked which they interacted with. If a large enough percentage of people are fooled, then the test is passed.”

*Both sides want to exit the deal*

Setting aside any AGI test, what is likely behind
0
shares
ShareTweetSavePostSend
 

You Might Like