For anyone curious and lazy:
Speaking at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, Nadella pontificated about what would constitute such a speculative bubble, and said that the long-term success of AI tech hinges on it being used across a broad range of industries — as well as seeing an uptick in adoption in the developing world where it’s not as popular, the Financial Times reports. If AI fails, in other words, it’s everyone else’s fault for not using it.
Nadella explained the pitfalls the AI industry would need to avoid, perhaps betraying his own anxieties about its future.
“For this not to be a bubble by definition, it requires that the benefits of this are much more evenly spread,” Nadella said, as quoted by the FT. The “tell-tale sign of if it’s a bubble,” he added, would be if only tech companies were benefitting from the rise of AI. He gave the example of a pharmaceutical company using AI to accelerate drug trials; it doesn’t need to be used to discover the “magical molecule,” but provide some other tangible, less extraordinary benefit to developing the product.
Nadella is adamant that these kinds of boosts that AI provides will justify AI and carry the industry, stressing less spectacular and more practical applications of the tech.
“I’m much more confident that this is a technology that will, in fact, build on the rails of cloud and mobile, diffuse faster, and bend the productivity curve, and bring local surplus and economic growth all around the world,” he proclaimed.
I would wear a cape, but just too darn lazy.