Microsoft’s CEO Has a Message: Don’t Let AI Eat the Economy
7/1/202621 min
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella recently wrote a blistering essay criticizing how the race for AI supremacy has played out, and specifically called out tech leaders’ dire prophecies about job losses. Nadella says the industry needs to figure out a path forward that is more beneficial to everyone, not just the biggest AI companies. WSJ's Bradley Olson, who spoke with Nadella in an exclusive interview, says that there might be a business calculus behind his message. Ryan Knutson hosts.
Further Listening:
- The Era of AI Layoffs Has Begun
- How AI Is Being Trained to Do Your Job
- The ‘Class of AI’ Enters the Workforce
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRyan Knutson· Host0:00
[music] If there's one thing that's defined the economy this year, it's this.
Speaker 20:09
AI increasingly doing work that used to be done by humans.
Ryan Knutson· Host0:12
[music] You might just call it the year of the AI layoff.
Speaker 20:17
Somewhere between 30 and 50% of his company's workload is now being handled by AI.
Dario Amodei· Soundbite0:24
Employees knew it was coming, but they didn't know who was gonna be laid off. This morning they got the email, 8,000 of them.
Speaker 20:30
Bots instead of people.
Ryan Knutson· Host0:32
And for a long time, the messages coming from AI leaders have felt kind of dark.
Sam Altman· Soundbite0:37
I think people are right to be anxious, and I understand it.
Ryan Knutson· Host0:42
That's Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of OpenAI.
Sam Altman· Soundbite0:46
This is not even a technological shift that happens every generation. Um, this is one of the big ones.
Dario Amodei· Soundbite0:50
It's hard to imagine that there won't be some significant job impact there.
Ryan Knutson· Host0:56
And that's Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic.
Dario Amodei· Soundbite1:00
And my worry is that it'll be broad, and it'll be faster than what we've seen with previous technology.
Bradley Olson1:07
Dario Amodei predicted, you know, a while ago that, like, half of all entry-level jobs could be affected by 2030, you know? And that's, like, a, a massive tectonic, very difficult thing to swallow for a lot of people.
Ryan Knutson· Host1:25
That's our colleague Brad Olsen, a tech editor in San Francisco.