AI will be the last invention of mankind? Nadella is betting Microsoft's future on AI

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1. The Bing launched by Nadella has never been able to shake Google's dominance in the search field, until the emergence of OpenAI's generative artificial intelligence, making Microsoft the center of a new round of artificial intelligence boom.

2. Microsoft is becoming a heavyweight in the field of artificial intelligence, and it is integrating the generative artificial intelligence tool Copilot into many of its products. Microsoft's $10 billion-plus investment in OpenAI looks like it's shaping up to be the best deal of the century.

3. When asked whether Microsoft had considered acquiring OpenAI, Nadella said that the two parties have established a long-term and stable cooperative relationship. The two companies maintain independent operations and cooperate deeply in pursuit of common goals.

4. Nadella said that he is not worried that AGI will appear, or will appear soon, which may help 8 billion people around the world live in abundance and create a world that is very suitable for survival.

5. Nadella does not believe that artificial intelligence will destroy human beings, and said that the loss of control of technology is the human beings who have given up their responsibility. He sees securing the grid and nuclear energy as lessons for managing artificial intelligence.

6. Nadella said that there are some very practical things that can help reduce the "illusion" problem of artificial intelligence. As the technology gets better, there will always be a solution.

Image credit: Generated by Unbounded AI tools

Tencent Technology News In the past few decades of technology trends, Microsoft is one of the few technology giants that has persisted until now. Under its third chief executive, Satya Nadella, Microsoft has seized on the artificial intelligence buzz, and it's been all the rage lately. In fact, a few years ago, Nadella spared no effort to support the development of artificial intelligence, and now he can finally reap the rewards. Nadella said that artificial intelligence may be the last invention of mankind, and all of Microsoft's businesses will integrate artificial intelligence technology. It can be said that he is All in AI.

In stark contrast to 2009, Nadella and the company he runs, Microsoft, are rising to fame for their new Bing search engine. At that time, Nadella was not well-known. He was born in Hyderabad, India, studied for graduate school in the United States, and joined Microsoft in 1992, when the company was in the midst of its rapid rise. Nadella has bounced around the company and weathered several downturns, including Microsoft's antitrust legal battle and after Microsoft missed out on the smartphone revolution. When Nadella first proposed Bing, many were skeptical, and the business has struggled for years in the shadow of Google.

As we all know, Bing failed to shake Google's dominance in the search field, but Nadella's popularity is growing day by day. In 2011, he led the launch of the emerging cloud platform Azure and built related infrastructure and services. Then, in 2014, Nadella became Microsoft's chief executive, thanks to his track record, understated and effective leadership, and the approval of Bill Gates.

Immediately thereafter, Nadella began changing the company's culture and operations. He's open-sourced products like .NET, turned former enemies into friends (such as with Salesforce), and embarked on a string of big acquisitions, including Mojang (developer of Minecraft), Professional Social The website LinkedIn and the hosting platform GitHub for open source and proprietary software projects, loyal users of these networks also began to enter the Microsoft world. Nadella doubled down on Azure, helping it grow into a true competitor to Amazon's AWS cloud service. Microsoft has grown very fast, and today its market capitalization has reached $2 trillion.

Still, Microsoft seemed unable to fully recapture the glory days of the 1990s, until now. When startup OpenAI set out to develop jaw-dropping generative artificial intelligence products, Nadella quickly realized that working with the company and its CEO, Sam Altman, would put Microsoft in an At the center of a new AI boom. OpenAI accepted Microsoft's investment because it also needs the computing power of Microsoft's Azure servers.

As one of the first steps of the partnership, Microsoft impressed developers with the release of Copilot, an artificial intelligence product that automates certain coding tasks. In February of this year, Nadella shocked its competitor Google and the whole world by integrating OpenAI's most advanced large language model into Bing through a chatbot named Sydney. It is used by hundreds of millions of people. There are slight drawbacks, but in general, Microsoft is becoming a heavyweight in the field of artificial intelligence. The company is now integrating generative artificial intelligence tool Copilot into many of its products. Its $10-plus billion investment in OpenAI looks like it's shaping up to be the best deal of the century.

Nadella, 55, is finally being recognized. His thoughtful leadership style and humility have long stood in stark contrast to his predecessors. His swift and sweeping adoption of artificial intelligence has shown a fearlessness reminiscent of Microsoft's early days. Now everyone wants to hear his views on artificial intelligence, after all, artificial intelligence may become the hottest technology topic of this century.

The following is the full text of Nadella’s interview:

**Q: When did you realize that the current stage of artificial intelligence will have such a huge transformational impact? **

Nadella: As we moved from GPT 2.5 to GPT 3, we all started to see the potential of these new features. It's starting to show scale effects. We didn't just train it to program, but it got really good at it. That's when I became a believer. I thought: "Wow, the age of artificial intelligence has really arrived!"

**Q: Is there any moment of inspiration that makes you fully immersed? **

Nadella: It is this programming ability that led us to develop Copilot. But the first time I saw the big language model now known as GPT-4 was in the summer of 2022, and it was an exciting experience. I always use a query as a reference. Machine translation has been with us for a long time and is very mature in many ways, but it does not have the subtle ability to capture the deeper meaning in poetry. Growing up in Hyderabad, India, I always dreamed of being able to read Persian poetry. Especially the works of Rumi, whose poems have been translated into Urdu and then English. GPT-4 achieved these goals on its first attempt. It not only crosses the boundary between the two languages, but also maintains the original flavor of the poem. This is really cool!

**Q: Microsoft has been investing in artificial intelligence for decades, don't you have your own big language model? Why do you need OpenAI? **

Nadella: We have a series of efforts of our own, including a large model called Turing, which is housed inside Bing and available on platforms such as Azure. But I feel that OpenAI is pursuing the same things as us. So instead of trying to cultivate five different foundational models, focus on building one foundational model that will be the foundation of the platform effect. So we chose to cooperate. They bet on us and we bet on them. They make basic models, and we have done a lot of work around them, including developing artificial intelligence technology and tools to ensure artificial intelligence safety in a responsible manner. At the end of the day, we are two separate companies, working together deeply and pursuing the same goals, rather than multiple teams cobbled together to do something random. Our goal: "Let's keep working hard and create something that truly captures the world's imagination."

**Q: Have you guys tried to acquire OpenAI? **

Nadella: When I worked at Microsoft, I dealt with partners in many interesting ways. In the past, we built SQL Server through deep cooperation with SAP. So this collaboration is not new to me. The difference is that OpenAI is more unique in nature, and it belongs to a non-profit organization.

**Q: This is often an easy deal-killer, did you guys come up with complex solutions with OpenAI? **

Nadella: They created a for-profit entity, which we felt was "acceptable." We have established very good business partnerships. I think it's a long-term stable deal.

Q: Obviously the for-profit entity was created to allow OpenAI to make money from this deal like Microsoft did, but there is a cap on how much profit you can make from your partnership. When the cap is reached, like Cinderella's carriage turned into a pumpkin again, OpenAI will become a purely non-profit organization. How will your partnership change then? Will OpenAI say: "We are completely non-profit and we don't want to be part of a commercial operation?"

Nadella: I think they made that point in the blog post. But, fundamentally, their long-term idea is that we can achieve superintelligence. If that happens, I think all bets are off, right? If artificial intelligence is humanity's last invention, then all bets are off. Different people will have different opinions about what superintelligence is, or when superintelligence will emerge. But what is not certain is how the government views the matter? So I put that aside, after all these things will only happen if there is superintelligence.

**Q: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes that superintelligence will indeed emerge. Do you agree with his prediction that we will reach AGI superintelligence benchmarks? **

**Nadella:**I am more focused on the benefits it can bring to all of us. The fact that the Industrial Revolution didn't affect where I grew up until much later stuck with me. So I'm looking for something that might be bigger than the Industrial Revolution and actually do what the Industrial Revolution did for everyone in the world. So I'm not at all worried that AGI will happen, or anytime soon. That means 8 billion people are living in abundance, and it's a very livable world.

**Q: What are your plans to realize this vision? Right now, you're integrating AI into Microsoft's search engines, databases, and developer tools, and those who are still underserved still don't have access to them. **

**Nadella:**Let's first look at where the developer frontier is. One of the things that excites me is rediscovering the joy of development. Microsoft started out as a tools company, with a particular focus on developer tools. But over the years, the attention and process that developers once enjoyed has been disrupted by the complexity of software development. Today, we use Copilot, an artificial intelligence programmer, to write ordinary code and let human programmers solve more challenging problems. Now, the 100 million developers on GitHub can enjoy it. However, as AI changes the programming process, the number of developers could grow tenfold, and 100 million people could become a billion.

**Q: Can anyone with a smartphone and know how to speak be a developer? **

NADella: Absolutely. You don't have to write formulas, and you don't have to learn grammar or algebra. The learning curve gets better if you acknowledge the role of hints.

As for making it available to all 8 billion people, I saw an amazing demo in India in January. The government has a program called "Digital Public Goods," one of which is a text-to-speech system. In the demo, a farmer was using the system to ask about a subsidy program he had seen on the news. The system details the program, and the application form he needs to fill out. Normally, it also tells the farmer where to get the form. But a developer in India has trained GPT on all Indian government documents, so the system automatically fills in documents for him in different languages.

Something created on the West Coast of the United States a few months ago has been passed on to a developer in India, who has since written a model that allows Indian farmers to enjoy the benefits of the technology via WhatsApp bots on their phones. My dream is that 8 billion people on the planet can have their own AI mentor, AI doctor, programmer, and even a consultant!

**Q: It's a great dream. But generative AI is a new technology that remains somewhat mysterious. We don't really know how these things work, and they're still biased. Some believe it is too early for mass adoption. Google has been developing generative AI technology for years, but at a slow pace out of caution. You then integrated generative AI into Bing search and encouraged Google to do the same, despite Google's reservations. Your exact words were: "I want people to know that we made Google dance." Google did dance, changed strategy, and jumped into the market with its own generative AI search product, Bard. I don't want to say this was reckless, but suffice it to say that your bold Bing update started a desperate cycle of positive entry by competitors big and small, regardless of their technological maturity. **

Nadella: In a way, the beauty of our industry is that it’s not about who has the ability, but who can actually take that ability and turn it into a tangible product. If you really wanted to, you could go back to Xerox PARC or Microsoft Research and say everything developed there should be put on hold. The question is, who did something useful that actually helped the world move forward? That's what I think we need to do. Last year, who would have thought that searching would actually be fun? Google has done a fantastic job, locking in an industry-leading position in both product and distribution. Google Search is the default search engine on Android, iOS platforms, and the largest browsers. So I said, "Hey, let's innovate and change the search paradigm so that 10 blue links from Google look like AltaVista!"

**Q: You're referring to the search engine of the 1990s, which was immediately phased out when Google outpaced its ability to innovate. This is too harsh! **

Nadella: When I use the new Bing chat, I just can't go back to the old Bing. It doesn't make sense at all. So I'm very happy with the new Bing and Google Bard now. Let real competition exist and people enjoy innovation.

**Q: I think you're happy when you finally come out with a search innovation that brings people to Bing. I remember when you took the helm of Bing in 2009, it was so frustrating that you seemed to be chasing an invincible competitor. With artificial intelligence, are we at an inflection point, about to reshuffle the deck, where previously seemingly invincible winners are becoming vulnerable? **

Nadella: Exactly. In a sense, each revolution brings us closer to a vision first articulated by Vanne Bush in a 1945 article in The Atlantic that first mentioned computer-driven information Heaven. This is the dream, right? The question is, how do people actually create this sense of accomplishment? This sense of accomplishment spans from Bush to J.C.R. Licklider (who in 1960 envisioned the "human-computer symbiosis"), Doug Engelbart (who invented the mouse and the window ) to Alto (Xerox Parc's graphical interface PC), and then to a series of changes in PCs and the Internet.

It's all like saying, "Hey, is there a more natural interface that allows us as humans to enhance our cognitive abilities and do more things?" This is one example of that. Copilot is a metaphor because it's a human-centered design choice. So, so don't associate this development with the autopilot, it's about the copilot. Many people are saying: "My God, artificial intelligence is here!" In fact, artificial intelligence has already appeared around us. It's a black box, you and I are targets.

**Q: In my opinion, the future will be a tug-of-war between co-pilot and autonomous driving. **

**Nadella:**The question is, how do humans control these powerful abilities? One way is to align the models themselves with the core human values we care about. These are not technical issues, but more sociocultural considerations. Another approach is to design and manufacture options and products that fit context. That means really making sure that the environments in which these models are deployed are aligned with security.

**Q: How do you respond to those who say we should put a six-month moratorium on research in AI? **

Nadella: I have a lot of respect for anyone, including people who say, "Let's take all the hard challenges around AI seriously, and let's make sure that AI doesn't get out of hand." If AI takes off, we better get it under control. Think back to when the steam engine was first deployed and factories were built. Can we avoid centuries of horrible history if we consider both child labor and factory pollution? Therefore, whenever we get excited about a new technology, it is instructive to think about its unintended consequences. That said, at this point, I would say that we should accelerate the work needed to develop these technologies, not just stop. On the first day I saw GPT-4, we didn't rush to release Sydney because we had to do a lot of work to make the harness. But we also know that we can't do all the calibration in the lab. To align an AI model to the world, you have to align it in the real world, not in some simulation.

**Q: Do you think AI has the potential to destroy humanity? **

Nadella: If something gets completely out of control, that's a problem and we shouldn't allow it to happen. Saying things are going to get out of hand is an abdication of responsibility. We can deal with powerful technology. Electricity, by the way, has unintended consequences, but we secure the grid, we establish standards. Clearly, with nuclear energy, we solve the problem of nuclear proliferation. Both of these examples offer good lessons for how we deal with powerful technology.

**Q: A major problem with large language models is the so-called "illusion" where Sydney and other models make something up. Can this problem be effectively solved? **

Nadella: There are some very practical things that can help reduce "hallucinations." And the technology will definitely get better and better, there will always be a solution. But sometimes "illusion" is also a kind of "creativity", and humans should be able to choose when to use which mode.

**Q: This would be a big step forward because right now we have no choice. I want to ask a question about another technology. It wasn't that long ago that you praised the Metaverse. In 2021, you said that the breakthrough of mixed reality cannot be overemphasized. But now that we're pretty much talking about artificial intelligence, has this craze shifted the metaverse to other dimensions? **

Nadella: I still believe in the future of the Metaverse. In 2016, I wrote about three things that excited me: mixed reality, quantum, and artificial intelligence. I'm still excited about the same three things today. Today we're talking about artificial intelligence, but I think being always on is the ultimate killer app. Of course, quantum speeds up all of this.

**Q: AI is not just a topic of discussion. Now, you've got Microsoft rolling around this transformative technology. how did you do it? **

Nadella: An analogy I like to use internally is when we go from steam engines to electricity, you have to rewire factories. You can't just put the electric motor where the steam engine is and leave everything else the same. That's the difference between Stanley Motor Transport and Ford Motor Company. At Ford, the company was able to rewire to connect the entire workflow. Similarly, within Microsoft, the way software is developed is changing. This is a fundamental shift in core workflows within Microsoft, so our communications about our results, and how they will change every school, every organization, and every family, need to change as well.

**Q: How has this tool changed your work? **

Nadella: A lot of knowledge work is tedious, like sorting e-mail. Now, I don't know how I would live without AI Copilot in Outlook. Responding to an email is more than just writing an English essay, it can be a customer support survey too. It evaluates my customer support system and brings back relevant information. This moment is like the first time the PC came to the workplace.

**Q: Microsoft has done well during your tenure, but do you think you will be remembered for leading the AI transformation? **

**Nadella:**It depends on how people perceive me. However, I'm very excited about it. Microsoft has been around for 48 years, and I don't know how many companies that were founded around the same time still attract people's attention. The focus is not on what they did in the 80s, 90s or early 2000s, but what they did in the past few years. Only then will we have the right to survive. If we can't do that, we shouldn't be considered a great company. (Golden Deer)