Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, has reportedly urged staff to focus on the future, warning artificial intelligence could undo Microsoft’s dominance as layoffs continue. AI is slated to make some of Microsoft’s biggest businesses obsolete.
Microsoft has been among the most aggressive United States tech companies in adopting AI. The company has been investing billions in infrastructure and deepening its partnership with OpenAI. The company is embedding generative tools into Windows, Office, and Azure while cutting thousands of jobs as part of a restructuring process, as AI takes over the jobs of human beings.
“Some of the biggest businesses we’ve built might not be as relevant going forward,” Nadella said, according to The Verge. He noted that “some of the people who contributed to Windows NT came from a DEC lab that was laid off,” referring to the 1993 operating system that helped define Microsoft’s dominance.
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Nadella told Microsoft staff that “all the categories that we may have even loved for 40 years may not matter,” saying the company will only remain valuable “if we build what’s secular in terms of the expectation, instead of being in love with whatever we’ve built in the past.”
While systematically reducing headcount, Microsoft is also investing heavily in the AI that is responsible for many of those lost jobs.
The company has pledged around $80 billion to expand data centers supporting AI, outpacing rivals including Google and Meta, according to The Verge. It also maintains a multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, though tensions have emerged as OpenAI seeks new terms and more capacity. The two companies signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” this month as they negotiate a new agreement.
Other U.S. tech giants are also spending a lot of money on AI technology. Meta has boosted capital expenditures and expanded its AI infrastructure, viewing AI as central to its future.
In 2018, the “father of artificial intelligence” said that the singularity, the point at which AI is more intelligent than humanity, is only 30 years away. That year would come sooner than 2048.
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Where do you think this AI technology is leading us? Are we going to see a technocracy?