In Satya Nadella’s annual letter to shareholders, the Microsoft CEO outlined the company’s commitment to lead the AI transformation, noting the importance of responsible use of the technology after its recent major breakthroughs. Image source: rawpixel
In his annual letter to shareholders, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlined the company’s plans for artificial intelligence (AI) integration in its products and services.
Microsoft, along with other major tech companies, has been investing heavily in the AI space, will multiple announcements made this year in partnership with OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT.
Earlier this year, the company began its integrating AI Copilot on Bing and Edge, it’s search engine and web browser respectively.
In his annual letter shared on LinedIn on October 19, Nadella notes that Microsoft was entering a new AI age, planning to transform productivity and address various global challenges.
The company is aiming to responsibly lead the AI transition across its products and service, with Nadella highlighting the Microsoft’s commitment to economic opportunity, protecting rights, earning global trust, and working towards sustainability.
“As a company, we believe we can be the democratizing force for this new generation of technology and the opportunity it will help unlock for every country, community, and individual, while mitigating its risks,” Nadella says in his letter.
He outlines that Microsoft is integrating Copilot into its most used products, as well as creating a standalone app.
“Just like you boot up an OS to access applications or use a browser to visit websites today, our belief is that you will invoke a Copilot to do all those activities and more: to shop, to code, to analyze, to learn, to create,” said Nadella
Nadella states that there are two key breakthroughs that are pivotal to this new technological era.
The first is natural language processing — where AI helps computers to understand text and speech similar to humans themselves.
“We believe we have now arrived at the next big step forward—natural language—and will quickly go beyond, to see, hear, interpret, and make sense of our intent and the world around us,” says Nadella.
The second breakthrough is generative AI, described by Nadella as “a powerful new reasoning engine” with a range of abilities, including answering questions, recognising images, and solving problems.
“This generation of AI helps us interact with data in powerful new ways—from completing or summarizing text, to detecting anomalies and recognizing images—to help us identify patterns and surface insights faster than ever,” writes Nadella.
AI has been a contentious issue this year despite its innovations.
AI has been one of the primary concerns behind the recent Writers Guild of America strike and the ongoing Screen Actors Guild strike.
US actor Sarah Silverman was part of a lawsuit filed against Meta Platforms and OpenAI for the alleged use of copyrighted material for training their AI language models.
Nadella highlighted the need for responsible use of AI, noting the importance of consumer trust and the need for collaboration with government, industry leaders, and civil society to regulate and govern AI.
Microsoft will also be investing $5 billion in Australia to develop skills and infrastructure, with a focus on cloud technology and AI to build a ‘cyber shield’ name MACS (Microsoft-Australian Signals Directorate Cyber Shield).
The cyber shield will focus on defence “against sophisticated nation-state cyber threats”.
The initiative was announced by Microsoft president Brad Smith and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during his state visit to the US.
