Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership was born from Google envy

It turns out the lay of today’s AI landscape can be traced back to — what do you know — fear, jealousy and intense capitalist ambition. Emails revealed in the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google, first reported by Business Insider, show Microsoft executives expressing alarm and envy over Google’s AI lead. That spurred an urgency that led to the Windows maker’s initial billion-dollar investment in its now-indispensable partner, OpenAI.

In a heavily redacted 2019 email thread …

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