Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. We go to India next,
Speaker 1: where the Artificial Intelligence Summit is underway. It brings together
Speaker 1: global leaders and tech CEOs, and it was there that
Speaker 1: we caught up with Microsoft President Brad Smith. Smith spoke
Speaker 1: with Bloomberg's Hustlin to Ahman, and their conversation began with
Speaker 1: a question about the growth in AI.
Speaker 2: I do think we need to act with urgency today.
Speaker 2: About a quarter of the population in the global North
Speaker 2: has access to and is using generative AI, but only
Speaker 2: fourteen percent in the global South. And when you look
Speaker 2: at the rates of growth, it's almost double in the
Speaker 2: global North what we're seeing in the South. So just
Speaker 2: as electricity divided the world, the countries that had access
Speaker 2: to it for a century industrialized their grew their economies.
Speaker 2: The countries that lacked access to electricity fell behind. We
Speaker 2: will turn this moment, and I believe, either into a
Speaker 2: moment where we will close this divide. We can use
Speaker 2: AI to really enable the global South to catch up
Speaker 2: in terms of economic growth, or we will continue and
Speaker 2: maybe risk even exacerbating the great economic divide that defines
Speaker 2: our world today. But what's most at risk for the
Speaker 2: global self.
Speaker 3: Is it jobs? Is it jobs getting eliminated reshaped? What
Speaker 3: exactly is the biggest concern?
Speaker 2: I think fundamentally it's economic development. It's prosperity because when
Speaker 2: you have a general purpose technology, meaning something like electricity,
Speaker 2: that reshapes the entire economy, what history tells us is
Speaker 2: that the countries that deploy it adopt it widely grow
Speaker 2: faster than those that do not. So it's about productivity growth,
Speaker 2: it is about job growth. It's about opportunities for a
Speaker 2: new and younger population. It's about opportunities to solve real
Speaker 2: world local problems using the best technology available. Microsoft.
Speaker 3: I'm meeting fifty billion dollars by the end of twenty thirty.
Speaker 3: What would be the priority for that kind of investment
Speaker 3: in funding?
Speaker 2: Well, we at Microsoft made clear we're on pace to
Speaker 2: spend fifty billion dollars by twenty thirty to bring AI
Speaker 2: to the global South. If you think about what happened
Speaker 2: with electricity, private capital did not come to these countries,
Speaker 2: They didn't bring power plants to these countries. This starts,
Speaker 2: I think, actually with investment and capability. So when you
Speaker 2: see a company like Microsoft investing, and we're obviously not alone,
Speaker 2: that's encouraging, especially since the investment is all about world
Speaker 2: leading technology. But it's just a start. I think it's
Speaker 2: going to require a massive amount of funding. It is
Speaker 2: really going to require getting the private markets moving. It's
Speaker 2: going to require governments using AI because they play key
Speaker 2: roles in generating demand and we need to scale the population.
Speaker 2: Requires schools, it requires government, it requires tech companies all
Speaker 2: working together. That's another big part of what we at
Speaker 2: Microsoftware announcing here this week.
Speaker 3: All this happening at a time when a lot of
Speaker 3: people are getting skeptical when it comes to AI. We
Speaker 3: talk about how AI will take away the jobs. We
Speaker 3: talk about how AI is a technology that's actually enriching
Speaker 3: the tech titans. How do you reframe? How should we
Speaker 3: frame the AI story?
Speaker 2: Well, fundamentally, I think we should recognize a few things.
Speaker 2: These kinds of technology waves typically take years and decades,
Speaker 2: not weeks or months. I think we should recognize that
Speaker 2: none of this is fundamentally ever about what technology does
Speaker 2: to people. It's about people making decisions about how to
Speaker 2: use technology. People who run businesses, people who run governments,
Speaker 2: people who run nonprofits. We have an opportunity, I believe,
Speaker 2: to use AI to make jobs better for people. There
Speaker 2: will be some processes that are automated, there will be
Speaker 2: some jobs that are displaced, but new jobs will be created.
Speaker 2: But mostly I think many jobs will change. And the
Speaker 2: key is to give people access to AI tools, give
Speaker 2: them the skills that they need to use them, give
Speaker 2: people the opportunity to innovate in how they work. I
Speaker 2: think when you do that, you create a much better
Speaker 2: foundation for the future.
Speaker 3: Given what you have just expressed, and just wondering how
Speaker 3: that's shaping the way you hire in the countries that
Speaker 3: you do business like India.
Speaker 2: I had a fascinating conversation just the last few days
Speaker 2: in another country, and it was with people in a
Speaker 2: company that had a contest for employees to use AI
Speaker 2: to create new studies to create Let me go back
Speaker 2: to that if I could. I had a fascinating conversation
Speaker 2: earlier this week in another country. Somebody who works in
Speaker 2: a company was describing the contest they had so that
Speaker 2: employees could use AI and create more use cases to
Speaker 2: create uses of AI that advanced productivity or built better products.
Speaker 2: But the most interesting thing this person said to me
Speaker 2: was it wasn't fundamentally about creating a better product it
Speaker 2: was about finding the people who wanted to lean in,
Speaker 2: who wanted to innovate, who had creativity and ambition. I
Speaker 2: think there's something that's important and even inspiring for all
Speaker 2: of us in that give people access to the tools
Speaker 2: to AI see what they can do. If you find
Speaker 2: an employee who wants to innovate, that says that that's
Speaker 2: an innovative person. That's the kind of person you want
Speaker 2: to bet the future of your company on by investing
Speaker 2: in their development.
Speaker 3: An AI future world. Would you be hiring more offer
Speaker 3: you a people?
Speaker 2: I think I might be hiring the same number of people.
Speaker 2: I think they might be doing different things than in
Speaker 2: the past. I do think that entry level work inevitably
Speaker 2: is changing. Instead of coming in and just doing one
Speaker 2: thing and you know, it may be more of the
Speaker 2: basic research or checking of citations or sources. I think
Speaker 2: entry level work may become a little bit more like apprenticeships.
Speaker 2: It may become something where you want people to be
Speaker 2: exposed to multiple different tasks and skills for the first
Speaker 2: year or two. I think this is a great time
Speaker 2: for employers that are far sighted. What do you really
Speaker 2: care about the most? If you're a great employer, when
Speaker 2: you're hiring someone new. Is it somebody who's going to
Speaker 2: do something that needs to get done for the next
Speaker 2: six months but may not be all that demanding, Or
Speaker 2: are you hiring people who are going to be come
Speaker 2: the employees that will lead your firm into the future,
Speaker 2: the people who three and five and ten years from
Speaker 2: now are likely to be sparking the innovation you need.
Speaker 2: That I think is and often should be at the
Speaker 2: heart of what great employers are looking for right now.
Speaker 2: We all know it's a tough job market for people
Speaker 2: graduating from universities, but flip that on its head, it's
Speaker 2: a great time for employers who are far sighted, who
Speaker 2: care about talent, who want to invest in people who
Speaker 2: are going to build the workforce not just for the
Speaker 2: next year, but for the next decade and beyond. I
Speaker 2: think that's what we want to be at Microsoft. I
Speaker 2: think that's what everybody who really has a long term
Speaker 2: vision should aspire to do. And we need to make
Speaker 2: AI and AI tools and AI skills a fundamental ingredient
Speaker 2: for everybody that we hire in that way.
Speaker 3: Brad, don't want to take a look at your Microsoft
Speaker 3: spownership with OpenAI. How do you see that evolving long
Speaker 3: a term.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it remains a critically important partnership for Microsoft.
Speaker 2: We bet on each other, but it's not as exclusive
Speaker 2: as it was, say a few years ago. Open Ai
Speaker 2: uses our compute, they train models in our data centers,
Speaker 2: but they work with other companies as well. We critically
Speaker 2: rely on open AI's frontier models. They are among the best.
Speaker 2: Many days they are the best in the world. But
Speaker 2: we have a relationship with Anthropic. We use open source models,
Speaker 2: we're developing our own models, so on both sides we
Speaker 2: work with more partners. But I think the partnership between
Speaker 2: the two of us remains an imperative. It's a huge
Speaker 2: priority for us at Microsoft.
Speaker 3: The question is why is it a hedge? Is it
Speaker 3: a strategic pivot? How would you describe that move looking
Speaker 3: at alternative.
Speaker 2: Partners Well, look, if you want to think about the
Speaker 2: partnership between open Ai and Microsoft, all you have to
Speaker 2: do is ask one question. Would any of this generative
Speaker 2: AI sector even exist if the two of us had
Speaker 2: not come together. Open Ai created something that no one
Speaker 2: else even understood was possible when they launched chat GPT,
Speaker 2: and open Ai could never have created that without Microsoft's
Speaker 2: compute and really frontier data centers on which to train
Speaker 2: that we built something special. Will each do special things
Speaker 2: on our own, will each do special things with other companies?
Speaker 2: Will each do I think, very special things with each other.
Speaker 3: Just one funnel question, because we're running out of time, apparently,
Speaker 3: copilot Is it losing traction?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. It's gaining ground. It's getting better
Speaker 2: every week, it's getting better every month. I say this
Speaker 2: as a user not just of M three sixty five Copilot,
Speaker 2: but our consumer copilot, our researcher agent, our other agents.
Speaker 2: We're seeing usage grow. We will continue to add features
Speaker 2: and functionality. I personally think it is an important part
Speaker 2: not just a Microsoft's past and present. It is a
Speaker 2: key part of our future. It is a key part
Speaker 2: of I think, making everyone more creative, more productive. I
Speaker 2: certainly find that in my own work each and every day,