Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlights impact of AI at World Economic Forum in Davos

Satya Nadella. Pic/AFP

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has highlighted the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in science. Nadella said science is probably the place where they will start witnessing "real acceleration."

Speaking in conversation with World Economic Forum Chairperson Klaus Schwab, Nadella said, "What AI will do to science is probably the most interesting thing to me because, in fact, just last week, we announced, something, I sort of felt this can be done. I did not understand how this could be done. So we took one of our models called Matogen which is sort of a generative model to generate new molecules and material."

"And we put it through an entire round trip where we came up with new molecules for a new material. Went to work in collaboration with one of the national labs in the United States, the Pacific Northwest National Lab and figured out how to produce a new battery that got 70 per cent less lithium. That's just phenomenal to sort of when we think about the climate, the energy transition. It's about taking 250 years of chemistry and somehow bringing it down to 25 years right? So, this is a proof point of that," he added.

Emphasising the impact of AI in Biology, he said, "The same thing is happening in Biology. If I think about what we're doing even with Page and what we can do with cancer detection or what we're doing with .... again in biology and to be able to use AI to simulate the molecular behaviour. So, I think that science is probably the place where we will start seeing real acceleration."

Nadella noted that the digitization revolution has brought new tools to science. However, he added that it has not fundamentally accelerated science. He further said, "But, if you can fundamentally accelerate science, cures to diseases, the energy transition, fundamental new material science. All of these I think, are going to be pretty profound."

Satya Nadella stated that a global regulatory approach to AI is desirable as these are global challenges and require global standards. He noted, however, that there "seems to be a broad consensus, though that is emerging."

"I think [a global regulatory approach to AI is] very desirable because I think at this point where these are global challenges and require global norms and global standards. Otherwise, it's going to be very tough to contain, tough to enforce, and tough to quite frankly move the needle even on some of the core research that is needed," Satya Nadella said. He stressed that there should be real, rigorous evaluations and safety and guardrails before the launch of anything.

"But that said, I must say, that there seems to be a broad consensus that is emerging. If I have to sort of summarise the state of play the way I think we all are talking about it is that it is clear that when it comes to large foundation models, we should have real, rigorous, evaluations and red teaming, safety and guardrails before we launch anything now and then when it comes to applications, we should have a risk-based assessment of how to deploy this technology," he said.

"If you are deploying it in healthcare, you should apply healthcare ....If you are deploying it in financial services, you should deploy it again the financial risk a consideration. So, I think if we take something as simple as that as a basis to build some consensus and norms, I think we can come together," he added.

He also said that the last thing the world needs is technology, creating a divide and added that they "need to be mindful of it."

Nadella said, "The last thing the world needs is technologies that create more of the divide right. I mean, if anything, my hope for sure is centred on realizing what we just talked about. Think about it. You have now a technology like something like GPT-4 that essentially can be used to create a personal tutor for every student in the world right. It's absolutely economically feasible, even with just the government spending that's happening even in the Global South right. So it's not just in the UAE, but it can happen everywhere."

Stressing that the tech industry must consider the unintended consequences of new digital technologies along with its benefits, Nadella said that "the biggest lesson learned perhaps for us is that we have to take the unintended consequences of any new technology along with all the benefits and think about them simultaneously as opposed to waiting for the unintended consequences to show up and then address them."

He further said, "I think that the fundamental change in last 10 years. I feel like our license to operate as an industry depends on that because I don't think the world will put up any more with any of us coming up with something that has not thought through safety, trust, equity. These are big issues for everyone in the world."

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