Satya Nadella Predicts Artificial Intelligence Will Have a Huge Impact on Society
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp., referred to the internet as a “tidal wave” in a memo he sent in 1995, emphasizing its significance for all aspects of the company’s operations. Presently, Satya Nadella, the current leader of Microsoft, expresses his belief that artificial intelligence will have an equally profound impact.
“The Bill memo in 1995, it feels like that to me,” Nadella said on this week’s episode of The Circuit With Emily Chang. “I think it’s just as big.”
Central to Microsoft’s latest turnaround effort is OpenAI Inc., a startup whose generative artificial intelligence technology has generated so much buzz that it won a $13 billion commitment from the software giant.
“We have a great relationship,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on The Circuit. “These big, big partnerships between tech companies usually don’t work. This is an example of it working really well. We are very grateful for that.”
The union has many critics. The most vocal is Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI with Altman and then left the company, citing disagreements over its direction and adding a for-profit arm. He has said that OpenAI is now “effectively controlled by Microsoft”.
Asked about Musk’s criticism and the possibility that Microsoft could buy OpenAI, Altman said: “The company is not for sale. I don’t know how to be any clearer than that.”
Just as Netscape inspired Gates’ Internet Memoir, the creation of OpenAI and Microsoft’s support for it was partly driven by the threat of Google dominating AI. Google invented the architecture for OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, known as transformers. While Google remains competitive in AI, Microsoft and OpenAI are considered early leaders.
Of course, after Gates’ order, Microsoft’s web browser drove Netscape off the market and catalyzed a crippling antitrust lawsuit by the US government. In artificial intelligence, Altman said OpenAI’s position is far from certain. “Not only is this a competitive environment, but I think this is probably the most competitive environment in tech right now,” he said.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company welcomes discussions with governments about ensuring competition in artificial intelligence. In an interview with Circuit, Nadella warned that the true impact of artificial intelligence remains to be seen.
“We in the technology industry are classic experts at exaggerating everything,” Microsoft’s CEO said. “What motivates me is that I want to use this technology to really do what I think at least we’re all for in technology, which is to democratize access to it.”
This episode of The Circuit With Emily Chang premieres Thursday, August 17 at 8 p.m. in New York on the Bloomberg app and Bloomberg.com and at 10 p.m. on Bloomberg Television. Watch the extended discussions on The Circuit podcast.
