Emails from 2019 that have recently come to light reveal Microsoft's long-standing worries about Google's impressive advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). The letter, which was made public as part of the Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit against Google, illustrates Microsoft's concern about Google's artificial intelligence capabilities and how that concern led to strategic choices, including investments in OpenAI.

Microsoft's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, wrote to Satya Nadella and Bill Gates expressing deep concern about Google's artificial intelligence (AI) developments. Scott specifically brought attention to the exceptional accuracy of Google's AI-powered "auto-complete in Gmail."According to Scott, Microsoft was "multiple years behind the competition in terms of ML [machine learning] scale," which highlights the pressing need for intervention.

The emails, with the subject line "Thoughts on OpenAI," also attracted notice since a large chunk of Scott's speech was noticeably redacted, raising suspicions that the conversation may have touched on delicate topics related to military maneuvers.

After reading Scott's harsh evaluation, Nadella responded by saying, "This is why I want us to do this," and he included Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood in the conversation to further highlight the strategic importance of the discussions.

The tech giant, hailed for its foresightful timing, invested $1 billion initially in 2019, launching a multibillion-dollar relationship with OpenAI.

There have been noticeable benefits from Microsoft and OpenAI's strategic partnership. Microsoft capitalized on the growing interest in AI post-ChatGPT by quickly integrating OpenAI's cutting-edge technology into major products like Bing and Microsoft 365.

Microsoft's quick release of AI products has highlighted its competitive advantage and raised questions about Google's AI efforts, its longtime adversary. Google introduced a number of AI-powered products, such as the Gemini AI model and the chatbot Bard, as part of its increased attempts to dispel the notion that it was falling behind.

The exchange of emails reveals much more about Microsoft's close observation of its rivals, as Scott points out the audacious artificial intelligence projects of DeepMind, Google Brain, and OpenAI. Scott's recognition of Google's advancements in distributed systems architecture and data center designs highlights the complex dynamics of the AI field.

Examining Microsoft's AI talent pool, Scott praised the caliber of professionals there, especially in the voice, vision, and Bing departments. He did, however, openly admit the limitations preventing them from being as scalable, which is a crucial component of Microsoft's strategic alignment with OpenAI to realize its AI ambitions.

Microsoft's strategic priorities covered a wide range of AI fields, such as reinforcement learning (RL), natural language processing (NLP), and the transformational bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT), as the emails' unedited sections make clear.