Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella things artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have potential to create jobs and not just make some of the existing professions obsolete, the 50-year-old said during his Tuesday appearance at the latest iteration of the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in Los Angeles, California. Mr. Nadella also revealed that he believes AI applications could significantly improve the quality of life of disabled people, which is a demographic that may ultimately benefit from this emerging field and receive tools that would allow it to do jobs that were previously impossible for it to perform. While Microsoft’s head didn’t go into many specifics regarding new professions or expansions of the thereof it expects AI to generate, he mentioned the company’s mobile app Seeing as one example of AI allowing disabled people to do what they weren’t able to before, with the tool itself being designed to provide blind individuals with descriptions of anything seen through their smartphone cameras.
Mr. Nadella’s Tuesday appearance in Los Angeles was yet another in a long list of signals that the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant is adamant to continue pursuing advancements in AI technologies and their applications. The company revamped its general corporate strategy in recent times and almost entirely dropped the idea of participating in the smartphone segment as a major ecosystem provider, which is a move that was already projected when Windows Phone was essentially discontinued and Mr. Nadella himself revealed that he never would have approved the acquisition of Nokia which went through while Steve Ballmer was still heading Microsoft. Going forward, Microsoft will shift its resources to cloud services and related AI solutions, particularly those aimed at the enterprise segment, in addition to pursuing quantum computing and mixed reality technologies, the company previously suggested.
While the tech giant is positioning itself as one of the leaders in the rapidly growing AI segment, Mr. Nadella sees the technology as being largely collaborative in nature and believes that humanity must strive to work together on AI instead of fragmentizing its research and development. Such an approach could not only facilitate related advancements but allow top experts around the world to have constant oversight over the technology that some industry watchers are afraid could eventually turn against humans.