MICROSOFT CORP. agreed to invest $1 billion in a partnership with research group OpenAI, gaining a prominent cloud-computing customer from the artificial intelligence (AI) field.

OpenAI, co-founded by Elon Musk and other wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud services to train and run the group’s AI software. The two will also jointly develop supercomputing technology, and Microsoft will be OpenAI’s preferred partner to commercialize its creations, the companies said in a statement on Monday.

OpenAI started in 2015 with much fanfare. Industry luminaries including Musk and Peter Thiel committed at least $1 billion to the nonprofit to build AI that could match or improve on the technology being developed by tech giants such as Google, Facebook Inc. and Microsoft. However, Musk said he left OpenAI’s board last year over disagreements about some of the group’s plans. More recently, OpenAI started a for-profit arm to help it raise more money.

The $1 billion investment goes to the for-profit arm, OpenAI LP, but the partnership is between Microsoft and the whole entity, OpenAI said.

A partnership with Microsoft, which has more than $100 billion in cash, is a quick solution to OpenAI’s funding needs. But it’s an about-face of sorts. The group was seen by some in the AI community as an important counterbalance to large technology corporations that have snapped up talent and used their computing power and huge data hoards to leap ahead in the field.

Advocacy groups and policy makers have raised concerns about some types of AI and called for regulation to increase transparency, guard against bias and ensure the technology isn’t used for military purposes and other dangerous applications. Those issues are likely to become more pressing as researchers try to develop AI that has more human-like capabilities.

In February, OpenAI unveiled an algorithm that can write coherent sentences, including fake news articles, after being given just a small sample. The implications were so worrying that the group opted not to release the most powerful version of the software.

The partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI will focus on Artificial General Intelligence, which aims to get computers to learn new skills and complete varied tasks like humans can. That’s a contrast to existing AI, which can learn specific jobs, such as understanding images, but can’t tackle different problems on its own.

AGI, and the ability for computers to potentially teach themselves so much they eclipse humans, was what disturbed Musk so much that he helped found OpenAI. On Monday, Microsoft and OpenAI addressed such concerns.

“The creation of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will be the most important technological development in human history, with the potential to shape the trajectory of humanity,” said Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI. “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.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the goal is to “democratize AI — while always keeping AI safety front and center — so everyone can benefit.” Microsoft and OpenAI said the work will be governed by both companies’ AI ethics policies.

Microsoft is also looking for more Azure cloud customers and for ways to promote Azure’s AI capabilities, so a tie-up with a leading research arm in the field is lucrative. The two organizations will use Microsoft’s work on supercomputers to build technology in Azure that has the scale to train and run more sophisticated AI models.

“We chose Microsoft as our cloud partner because we’re excited about Azure’s supercomputing roadmap,” said Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s co-founder and chairman, in an emailed statement. “We believe we can work with Microsoft to develop hardware and software platform within Microsoft Azure which will scale to AGI.”

Other OpenAI investors include the charitable foundation of LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and venture capital firm Khosla Ventures. Founders include Musk, Altman, co-founder and former president of start-up incubator Y Combinator, as well as Brockman and AI researcher Ilya Sutskever, who serves as OpenAI’s chief scientist. — Bloomberg

TENCENT Holdings Ltd. and Pokémon Co. will jointly develop games, an alliance that may help the Nintendo Co.-backed company crack the world’s largest mobile gaming arena.

Tencent, whose WeChat social media service is used by more than a billion people across China, said its TiMi Studio Group will take the lead in developing titles with the Japanese company behind the popular monster-hunting franchise. The two have struck a broad agreement on collaboration, Tencent said in a post on its official Weibo blog without elaborating.

The social media giant could prove a strong ally for Nintendo and Pokémon Co. in China, where local titles dominate and gamers have shunned consoles in favor of smartphones and PCs. Developers there have also complained of rampant piracy, where popular titles tend to trigger a wave of copy-cats.

Tencent’s own Let’s Hunt Monsters has drawn fire for adopting many features of viral phenom Pokémon Go, from the use of real-world locations to how players toss balls to capture monsters. The title has consistently ranked among the 30 highest-grossing apps in China, according to researcher Sensor Tower.

Pokémon Co., in which Nintendo owns a significant stake, is looking to follow up on its surprise hit Pokémon Go, which created a sensation in the gaming community by letting users hunt monsters and prizes in the real world with their smartphones. In May, it unveiled several new initiatives at an event in Tokyo, including a Detective Pikachu sequel for the Switch console and a new device for tracking sleep.

Tencent, in turn, gains a strong franchise to bolster its international presence. The Chinese company seeks growth beyond China and its executives have been keen to assuage game developers’ concerns about intellectual property infringement.

“While Tencent has focused mostly on China in the past, we are now looking at the gaming sector with a much more global perspective,” TiMi executive Vincent Gao said in an interview in June. “This will make the company pay better attention to IP protection.” — Bloomberg

IT’S A SIGN of the times when farmers make more money advocating for the industry on social media than actually farming.

Zach Johnson, who grows corn and soybeans in Minnesota, is known in YouTube circles as MN Millennial Farmer. It’s a role, he says, that’s provided him and his wife, Becky, about five times more in earnings than he can make on the family farm in the last year.

Johnson, 34, became a video blogger three years ago to advocate for growers and the technology they use. Now, he and Becky have about 300,000 subscribers and 50 million views under their belts. Their experience reflects both the depressed state of the rural economy and growing consumer interest in how food is produced.

“Yes, we use GMOs, we use pesticides, drain tiles and irrigation and there are real reasons why we use those things,” Johnson said in an interview. He describes his role as bringing balance to a discussion often dominated by critics of modern farming practices.

The Johnsons aren’t alone online. In rural communities across the US, YouTube, a unit of Google, is the most popular social media with 59% of people using it, according to a Pew Research Center survey in 2018.

Keith Good is the social media manager at the Farmdoc project at the University of Illinois, created to provide online data and analysis that will aid decision-making for farms under risk. Over the last year, he’s seen a dramatic increase in farmers posting more videos on social media.

“Farm organizations and commodity groups have encouraged producers to be part of the conversation on social media,” Good said.

Suzanne Cook, or WT Farm Girl, has racked up nearly 40,000 subscribers documenting her experience as a first-generation farmer, learning and failing in front of the camera.

Cook, who is 37, advocates for more women to get involved in farming. Many of her viewers are just learning about farming, just like her. Only about 10% of her viewers are women, she said, and they aren’t just youngsters.

“For a female, it’s even harder because most guys don’t take you seriously,” she said in a telephone interview. “YouTube has helped me because a lot of my subscribers are encouraging.”

Josh Draper, or Stoney Ridge Farmer, has more than 220,000 subscribers following his journey of building a first-generation cattle farm from an dilapidated tobacco plantation. As a US Air Force veteran, he advocates for more veterans to join farming. He also wants to show that he raises his animals “humanly and with respect.”

Draper decided to start blogging because “a lot of people are getting back to agriculture.” He bought a camera, did some honeybees videos, followed by a video of him sharpening his mower, and “it took off.”

The online videos produced by Zach and Becky Johnson sometimes present their information in the form of husband and wife chats. The subject matter can range from the use of a wide range of new technology to how they harvest their soybean test plot.

‘LOVE FARMING’
“I love agriculture, I love farming,” Zach Johnson said. “It’s my whole life, and it’s the life for all of my friends and family.”

Like many of the other bloggers, Johnson sells his own merchandise, does public speaking and features endorsements in his videos. That’s helped him generate profit additional to the ones he gains from YouTube ads.

“People have become so disconnected from agriculture,” Johnson said. “They’re curious about where their food comes from, and who the people that grow their food are. We have a really good opportunity to talk to people, discuss those things and show them why we do the things that we do.” — Bloomberg