T.There is no shortage of concern about the speed at which the world’s leading artificial intelligence labs are rolling out new AI tools that could change the way we live and work. Not long after Microsoft released his AI-powered version of its search tool Bing to a select group of users in February, Bing threatened a philosophy professor.
A month later, tech industry luminaries signed an open letter calling on the world’s leading artificial intelligence labs to suspend training of super-powerful computer systems for six months, calling for a six-month moratorium on training superpowered computer systems. advances “pose serious risks to society and to humanity,” he argued. In a TIME op-ed the same day, Eliezer Yudkowsky, a decision theorist who heads the nonprofit Institute for Machine Intelligence, urged the institute to stop research altogether. “Many researchers, including myself, deeply involved in these issues believe that literally everyone on earth will die as a result of building superhumanly intelligent AI under conditions far removed from our current conditions. I anticipate that it will most likely result in ,” he wrote.
But Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella isn’t worried. Microsoft put at least $13 billion into OpenAI, the lab that launched his ChatGPT in November. In his March, Microsoft and Google announced products that use AI to transform work. Microsoft and Copilot are AI-based tools that work across their 365 software suite (Word, Excel, Outlook) to summarize meetings, draft emails, and analyze data.
In an interview on May 8, Nadella said Microsoft has done its best to mitigate the unintended consequences of AI. For example, Copilot doesn’t create content or send emails without a human first entering the data that drives the AI’s response. Such AI solutions, he says, will free us up to do the creative tasks that humans are so good at, doing the tedious jobs we do.
read more: The AI Arms Race Is Changing Everything
Skeptics have expressed great concern about unemployment from this new wave of AI, but Nadella said AI could democratize access to new skills and help displaced workers find new jobs. claims to be possible. Generative AI (essentially algorithms that can create new content such as emails, white papers, and even code) can be used as a partner in the workplace without a traditional education. This means more people can become software engineers and security analysts. Because you will be working alongside a highly skilled AI. Microsoft believes the world can keep her billion professional developers alive and AI can accelerate that growth.
“That’s why AI is exciting,” he says. “We need new technologies to underpin the economic growth we enjoyed in the early 20th century. Such economic growth is possible this time, but what if it were much more uniform?”
U.S. productivity growth, which averaged 2.8% from 1948 to 1970, has slowed to just 1.4% over the past 15 years. One reason for this slowdown, put forward by economist Robert Gordon, is the lack of technological advances made before 1970, such as indoor plumbing, commercial air travel, and widespread adoption of communications technology. That’s it. (In the United States, productivity also increased in the 1990s after the adoption of the PC.)
Nadella believes AI has the potential to bring productivity gains back to the halcyon days of the mid-20th century. Yes, there are risks in deploying AI, he says. Jobs may be lost, people may have to undergo transitions, and AI may learn biases. This is because the information that AI learns comes from real people who have biases. But the benefits of AI may outweigh the risks.
Microsoft’s own data suggests that the way we work today is broken. According to his Microsoft’s Work Trends Index, released May 9, nearly two of his three people surveyed struggle to find the time and energy to do their jobs. I answered yes. The index surveyed 31,000 employees across 31 markets in February and March 2023 and found that across Microsoft’s 365 software, the average employee spent a whopping 57% of their time communicating, It turns out that you spend the rest creating. As a result, creativity lags behind. Nearly two of his three managers say they are concerned that their teams lack innovation or breakthroughs.
Of course, even if AI alleviates some of the downsides of people’s jobs, it could create new problems for many workforces in the process. AI can and will take jobs. It can, and probably will, provide more misinformation to a world already full of it. And perhaps most pertinent to people who are already overwhelmed with information at work can and probably will create even more information that they have to sift through. I guess.
Forrester analyst Rowan Curran, who studies AI and machine learning, said:
Nadella argues that the benefits of AI (at least Microsoft’s) outweigh any potential drawbacks. Ultimately, he says, Microsoft has put humans at the center of its AI design by choice, which itself mitigates unintended consequences. And he says there is already a healthy dialogue between governments and businesses about how AI needs to be regulated. “At the end of the day, I think we’re all going to be judged on just one thing: ‘Does the benefit far outweigh the social impact?’
That said, Microsoft has actively resisted EU efforts to regulate the use of AI. EU artificial intelligence law may ban certain uses of AI, such as facial recognition technology, but Microsoft and Google have said that the kind of “general-purpose AI” on which ChatGPT is based is exempt from regulation. We are lobbying to confirm. Nadella said he doesn’t know much about what Microsoft does or doesn’t do in Europe. He also refused to promise any restrictions on the use of AI for military applications. This comes after a rival Google used his AI to interpret video images and had to give up a contract with the military that could be used for drone attacks after being signed by thousands of workers. Because I had to. letter of protest.
read more: New AI-powered Bing threatens users.it’s no laughing matter
Of course, we still don’t know the impact of relatively unprotected use of AI on society. Critics say they could be disastrous and even AI developers don’t realize the potential. Nadella says this kind of complexity and uncertainty is not uncommon. After all, we learn science because we don’t fully understand it.
Today’s AI, he argues, is fulfilling the promise of the modern computer industry, which was founded to create tools that help the human mind better understand the world around it.For example, going back to 1945, in his seminal 1945 essay Atlantic, Vannevar Bush, an engineer who headed the U.S. Agency for Scientific Research and Development, suggested that further human progress would come only if humans more fully mechanized their records.
Nadella said AI could be the next step in this development, arguing that asking companies to stop using AI is, in a sense, asking them to stop embracing economic growth. doing. And because this growth is so accessible, he says, it needn’t be limited to Silicon Valley or the United States, and could be more widespread.
“Creating technology that allows us humans to increase our knowledge, do science, and help the human condition is at the core of enlightenment,” he says. “So trying to say, ‘Well, now is the time to stop,’ doesn’t seem like the right approach.”
It may come as a surprise that Microsoft, which not so long ago seemed to be lagging behind its competitors, is talking about offering a “core of enlightenment” product. In the 2010s, as Apple and Google took over Microsoft’s customers by introducing new operating systems, including web-based apps, some analysts focused on easily replaceable software, thus dooming Microsoft. business, said analyst Jason Wong. at Gartner. But her Nadella, who took the helm in 2014, recognized the value of the cloud and artificial intelligence, Wong says. Since Nadella took charge, Microsoft’s stock has risen nearly tenfold. The S&P 500 has only doubled in value over the same period.
The AI arms race is just beginning. But for now, AI is showing up in less intimidating and perhaps a little disappointing applications. Applications like Word, Outlook, and Excel are productivity software that many of us have been using for years, and it’s hard to imagine them taking over. Kill the world and all of us.
That said, researchers admit they don’t always understand why generative AI produces results. Microsoft opens the lid on AI, releases Copilot to more customers (initial launch targeted 20 enterprise customers), and integrates AI into PowerPoint like open image generator DALL-E As it turns out, the most frightening thing is that there is no one. Even Satya Nadella knows what happens next.
Other must-read articles from TIME
