Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Warns Against 'Hubris' Amid AI Growth (bloomberg.com)

Microsoft and its competitors should eschew artificial intelligence systems that replace people instead of maximizing their time, CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview on Monday. From the report: "The fundamental need of every person is to be able to use their time more effectively, not to say, 'let us replace you'," Nadella said in an interview at the DLD conference in Munich. "This year and the next will be the key to democratizing AI. The most exciting thing to me is not just our own promise of AI as exhibited by these products, but to take that capability and put it in the hands of every developer and every organization. [...] There's a thin line between hubris and confidence," Nadella said. "Always there is risk of hubris coming back, missing trends. The only long-term indicator of success is, âhow good is your internal culture?'" "What I've learned if anything in three years as CEO is, it's not about celebrating one product," he said. "That, to me, is the sign of a company that's built to last. In tech it's even more harsh."

Comments

Re:Defies the purpose of competition

[swb]

The powers that be will not allow chaos to happen.

...to them.

Powers-that-be the world over seem extremely content to live and move between high security walled compounds and let huge amounts of chaos to happen around them so long as it doesn't happen to them.

The min/max calculation they make is what is the minimum number of peers do they have to suffer to maximize their personal wealth and safety, and as a group, what is the minimum number marginally empowered flunkies (security forces, admins and service flunkies) do they have to pay for to maximize that same wealth and safety.

I just don't believe in any "democratizing AI" -- it will be like any other information technology. Its adoption is always at the top of the pyramid first and used to gain as much advantage over those below in the pyramid. I just don't see an AI good enough to imperil the powers that be being available to the average citizen. It will either be unobtainium or stripped down enough so that its only value is making the remaining cogs in the machine more efficient.

The smart play for those sitting at the top is to get over their moralistic impulses and figure out what kind of designer drugs they can dream up in order to pacify the masses long-term. Basic Income alone won't cut it and the available toxic soup the masses use to tune out just raises their security costs.

Re:Just PR speak

[ranton]

The truth is, people don't know what they're talking about when it comes to AI. AI will be a thing in the late 22th century, perhaps. As of now, Artificial Intelligence is just a buzz word to entertain the clueless at Corporate conventions.

No one is talking about a Skynet-level general AI when they are talking about the AI which will take someone's jobs in the next few decades. They are talking about improved voice recognition, image classification, machine learning algorithms, etc. These are the technologies threatening jobs in the short term. We don't need AI robots with consciousness for workers to be displaced.