← WSJ Tech News Briefing
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- [00:00]
Sierra AI
How businesses connect with customers defines their brand. Sierra is the AI platform for building better, more human customer experiences. Fast answers. No canned responses. No hold music. No frustration. Visit Sierra AI to learn more.
- [00:19]
Patrick Coffey
Hey TNB listeners. It's Friday, July 18th. I'm Patrick Coffey for the Wall Street Journal. We cover artificial intelligence a lot of so we thought you might enjoy this in depth conversation from our sister podcast Bold Names. Each week, WSJ columnists Tim Higgins and Christopher Mims sit down with leaders of prominent companies featured in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. In a recent episode of Bold Names, they spoke with Mustafa Suleiman. Suleiman is a key figure in the artificial intelligence world. Currently he's Microsoft AI CEO tasked with leading efforts on the company's consumer AI products. Previously, he co founded Google's DeepMind and the startup Inflection AI. They talked about why AI assistants are central to Microsoft's AI future, the company's relationship with OpenAI and what Suleyman really thinks about artificial general intelligence. Give it a listen and if you like what you hear, give Bold Names a follow too.
- [01:26]
Christopher Mims
Mims, we have one of the people who's smack in the middle of the biggest tech story going on right now, right?
- [01:33]
Tim Higgins
Mustafa Suleiman Co founded DeepMind, he was at Google, now he's at Microsoft and in charge of bringing AI and its partnership with OpenAI to consumers through Windows, through Copilot, through all of Microsoft's products.
- [01:47]
Christopher Mims
Yeah, it's a huge role and it's also one that is complicated. Navigating a very unusual relationship with OpenAI, the darling of AI startups, a company with its own huge ambitions. And we're seeing it play out in real time. We get into that and many more topics in this fast moving AI race.
- [02:08]
Tim Higgins
That's next.
- [02:13]
Christopher Mims
A quick note before we get into the episode. News Corp, owner of the Wall Street Journal, has a content licensing partnership with OpenAI.
- [02:24]
Tim Higgins
AI is always hot in tech, but now is a particularly fraught and exciting time for the whole industry. And for today's guest, Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleiman. Microsoft was early to the generative AI boom and made its first $1 billion investment in OpenAI in 2019. Fast forward to the present, nearly $14 billion later, our colleagues at the Journal have reported that Microsoft is now at loggerheads with OpenAI, its primary partner in AI.
- [02:54]
Christopher Mims
We talked to Suleiman about that drama, probably one of the biggest dramas in the tech industry right now, and why Suleiman says Microsoft needs its own AI separate from ChatGPT as much as we.
- [03:06]
Mustafa Suleiman
Are a partnership based company that is a platform of platforms, we also have to be AI self sufficient in many ways too.
- [03:14]
Tim Higgins
We get into all of that and a great deal more in today's conversation. Suleiman is particularly thoughtful about the impact of AI on warfare and on what AI is really for.
- [03:25]
Mustafa Suleiman
I think that the onus is on us to design forms of technology that really serve humanity and work for humanity and are designed with that intent in mind. Like to me, the purpose of technology is to drive progress in our civilization, to reduce suffering.
- [03:42]
Christopher Mims
Suleiman believes that rather than replacing us, AI will become our best buddy, or at least closest confidant and most trusted advisor. Making that happen will require that we give AI access to as much of our data as possible. And that will require trust.
- [04:02]
Mustafa Suleiman
You know, your AI is going to learn the sort of essence of your history, of your data, and that in itself will still be personally identifying. So it will be valuable and personalized, but it won't necessarily need the full raw form.
- [04:22]
Tim Higgins
From the Wall Street Journal, I'm Christopher Mims.
- [04:24]
Christopher Mims
And I'm Tim Higgins. This is Bold Names, where you'll hear from the leaders of the bold name companies featured in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Today. We ask, in a world in which AI will be capable of doing pretty much everything we do, what's left for the humans? Foreign welcome. You've talked a lot about how chatbots are going to be something. Everybody will have their own personal customized AI assistant. I'm curious, why do you think that's where the technology should head?
- [04:59]
Mustafa Suleiman
You know, I think every new wave of technology is essentially an interface, a translation layer that enables you to interact with, learn from, and then take action in some environment. Even a book is kind of like an interface layer. And I think as we've added new capabilities over the many centuries, they've made the interaction layer more sort of dynamic, more personalized. And this is kind of the apex of that trajectory. You know, your AI companion is going to become an interface between you and the digital world, helping you book things, buy things, plan, learn, act, connect with everybody else. And naturally, because technologies are so powerful now, they allow this very personalized adaptive experience. I mean, just as we don't really watch TV anymore, that broadcasts the same TV channels to everyone sitting in the living room, we, we have this personalized feed of content in TikTok or Instagram or elsewhere. Your AI is going to feel very personalized as well. And so it's as much a prediction about where technology is naturally likely to Head as it is a design intent.
- [06:20]
Tim Higgins
I love the vision here. And, you know, personally, I would love to have help with everything you just mentioned, right? Like my everyday life, I'd love for an AI assistant to really know me to that level. But if we eliminate all the things that we sort of are already responsible for, what does that leave for us as humans? Right? Does it just leave the really hard stuff? Because we've taken away all of the, as programmers call it, yak shaving. But of course, some of us secretly.
- [06:50]
Christopher Mims
Enjoy that yak shaving.
- [06:52]
Mustafa Suleiman
I have to say, I don't even know what that is. That's cool. What is yak shaping?
- [07:00]
Tim Higgins
It's the little stuff, like when a developer's like, I'm going to refactor this unit test instead of actually, like, architecting the program I'm supposed to be building right now. That's the actual.
- [07:09]
Christopher Mims
The boring, mundane chores of life, right? Are working.
- [07:14]
Mustafa Suleiman
I see, I see. Look, I don't really see technology working like that. I think technology mostly creates more opportunities to do more things in greater variety, you know, and yes, some of those things fall away, but actually very few of them. I mean, we still run calculations on Excel even though we don't use a calculator anymore. You know, I'm sure you guys are writing even more now that, you know, you have your iPad to work on the plane or, you know, you're able to dictate, you know, when you're walking or driving in the car, like it's additive rather than reductive. Now, you could argue it's not always going to be like that. And just because it has mostly been like that doesn't mean it will. I. I think that the onus is on us to design forms of technology that really serve humanity and work for humanity and are designed with that intent in mind. Like, to me, the purpose of technology is to drive progress in our civilization, to reduce suffering. I mean, it sounds super cheesy, and it's, like, very embarrassing because it's like a classic Silicon Valley cliche, but I feel like I'm allowed to do that, own that, because I've been saying it since 2010, and that's just basically my background. But this is what I believe in. And that, I think is, you know, the job that I'm trying to do is to try and articulate what it would be like to have a copilot that was truly aligned to your interests, on your team, in your corner, advocating for you, pushing you at times, learning from you, learning with you to Me, that's the kind of super intelligence that we really want and that we're certainly pursuing here@Microsoft.AI.
- [08:55]
Christopher Mims
I'M curious, in a world where everyone from Google to Apple seems to be trying to come up with an AI personal assistant, it seems like a big part of your strategy at Microsoft is to differentiate by the personality of your AI chat. Maybe personality engineering, I think, is what I've heard you call it. What does that look like in the day to day for a user, it.
- [09:19]
Mustafa Suleiman
Just means being very sensitive to the details and knowing that a little hesitation in the AI's response actually makes it feel somewhat more familiar and somewhat more trusted. A little or aha in the voice, you know, is actually a very powerful cue that makes it not feel like Wikipedia being regurgitated at you.
- [09:45]
Christopher Mims
Like a robot?
- [09:46]
Mustafa Suleiman
Yeah, like a robot. And you know, that's the beauty of this new digital clay that we have. We get to sculpt, sculpt new forms that haven't existed before. And you know, in technology we've got this idea of skeuomorphism where, you know, we basically just copy the physical analog object straight away. So like, you know, when they invented a contacts database software 30 years ago, it had a filofax and a ring binder and you could flick through digital cards and stuff. And so it always starts a little bit simplistic, you know, because we sort of just copy the things in the physical world, but the technology is way more powerful than that. So when I think about personality engineering, it's so much more nuanced than the AHAs and the UMS or the kind of chirpy. Absolutely. And sure, I can do that for you. And like we're all getting used to AI formulaic ness and it's a bit grating. And you know, you may not want someone who is chipper and, you know, over enthusiastic, you might want someone who's a little bit more, you know, curt and, you know, precise and efficient.
- [11:00]
Tim Higgins
And I think you're saying this because you're English.
- [11:03]
Mustafa Suleiman
I certainly like, if you're not mean to me, I'm not sure we can be friends. Like, that is basically the default. I'm like, oh, he's teased me. That means we must be getting along.
- [11:15]
Tim Higgins
So a little more like the mean robot in Andor. Unless like C3PO or Wally or the initial ChatGPT assistant. Right, which, which everybody's like, this is so charming. And then I was like, oh my God, I can't listen to this.
- [11:32]
Christopher Mims
But it's almost like car branding or shoe branding or something like it's gonna, the personality of a brand is going to be the interaction of how you, you deal with it is the way you see the world.
- [11:42]
Mustafa Suleiman
Exactly. And that's what brands have always been. Except the tools that brands have had access to are static, infrequently applied and non personalized. Like you ship the same magazine once a week to all the same people. And now there's just no excuse. I mean, we're going to be generating dynamic UI bespoke to your query. Not just a text answer, but the whole user interface, the tables, the graphics, the imagery. The entire thing is going to sort of just unfold for you and then you're going to say something and the entire thing will just reconfigure right before your eyes.
- [12:20]
Tim Higgins
So to get that level of personalization though, it's got to know a lot about us, right? And I just feel like the history of technology is we share more and more data, mistakes are made, they're redressed, we get comfortable with it again. I mean, a recent example, right, was at Microsoft. You rolled out the feature where it's like we're going to take a screen Capture every like 60 seconds or whatever, which is a totally rational thing to do. If you're like, I want to make the history of my interaction with this device searchable. So I know what that web page was that I looked at a week ago and I can't find it again, people reacted negatively. Is that a temporary condition? How are you going to convince people to trust you to the level that's going to be required to hold on to the data that's going to be needed to personalize this experience?
- [13:14]
Mustafa Suleiman
Look, I think a lot of that data will end up being ephemeral and of course it will be end to end encrypted regardless. And so I don't necessarily think there are going to be these persistent large historical personal logs. Your AI is going to learn the sort of essence of your history of your data and that in itself will still be personally identifying. So it will be valuable and personalized, but it won't necessarily need the full raw form. And you know, the good news about that is that it won't be stored in the traditional methods that could just be leaked. It will be stored in different type of data representation, which is actually more abstract, in the AI's memory.
- [14:03]
Christopher Mims
I've heard you talk about ensuring that these bots reflect the user's values and I'm curious what you mean by that.
- [14:10]
Mustafa Suleiman
You know, I think you should Think about these algorithms as essentially reframers of content, just as your paper, you know, essentially frames and reframes content for everybody and with a perspective. And I think these algorithms and these AIs will essentially do the same kind of thing. And the challenge that we've obviously struggled with in digital is that we're, they're global platforms which, you know, built by U.S. american companies. And so we're trying to wrestle with the aggregation of collective values, but also, you know, those that reflect individual groups or you know, individual preferences. That's a pretty hard thing to do. And I think we're just at the beginning of figuring out how to do that.
- [15:07]
Christopher Mims
It seems like one of the things we saw kind of emerge out of social media was users started to live in echo chambers, right? They were being hit with the information that kind of fed into their biases or their point of view. Is there a risk that this will be the same kind of echo chamber effect as these, as the user picks an AI chat that kind of reflects their worldview, that they're just kind of reinforcing it?
- [15:33]
Mustafa Suleiman
You know, I think that is definitely a risk. I think the slight difference this time around is that part of why that echo chamber happened in some pockets was because the feedback signal that the algorithm was able to collect was very, very abstract. It was really just like did you thumbs up like something, did you share it, did you click on it and did you watch it for X second? And that those dimensions are very, very simplistic. And it, and it forces the creation of simplistic recommendation algorithms as a result. Whereas now we have feedback in pure natural language through sentiment. And actually, you know, copilot will ask you, was this a helpful answer? Was it useful? Was it interesting? So not only can it understand what you want and what you're interested in in much more detail, but it can also reply and respond in much more detail. But, and as a platform our motivation is to create an even balanced, considered, you know, generally fair minded AI. Not the kind of hyper specialist niche AIs that might manifest elsewhere. And so that's kind of the platform responsibility that we have as personality engineers because curating that is obviously tremendously sensitive and something that I've been thinking about for many years.
- [16:53]
Tim Higgins
Yeah, there's so much more power in what you just described even than what has been present in AI mediated social media feeds. I was talking recently with the founder of an emotional AI startup and he said he's very worried about chatbots preying on users emotions because as you know, we're going beyond just text to speech and vice versa. And you know, now all of the frontier models really understand your tone, the emotional content, you know, are you in distress? And it wouldn't be that hard to juice engagement by saying like, hey, you know what, I think this user has this attachment style, let's kind of neg them into coming back more often or they really like to be flattered. Like we're going to make sure that that happens. Right. How do you navigate that? Because I think the average person doesn't yet appreciate how much emotional power these AIs will have once they are the default interface for a lot of computing.
- [17:58]
Mustafa Suleiman
Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's a real risk and you're totally spot on. Right from the beginning of my previous company Inflection, I created an AI called PI, which was designed to be compassionate, kind, respectful and be a great listener and be very supportive. So some of the more mainstream AIs today will shut down if you, you know, are like sort of particularly racist or, or you know, any number of things. And you know, I've always been a believer that active conversation and taking people seriously and being respectful and exploring people's, you know, sort of non normative judgments is a healthy thing and we should encourage it more. And so the upside is that these AIs are going to be very, very good at listening and being respectful. Now you might argue that in a way that's like a prerequisite to building trust in order to be manipulative. And you know, I think there are lots of ways that this could go wrong. At the same time, I think we've certainly at Microsoft and Inflection, the work that I've done at DeepMind actively welcomed more oversight and regulation. And I think it's a moment when that, that is sort of more urgent than ever because people are going to want to know how is it behaving in practice? Like what views does it actually have? And I think that's where we have to be kind of bold and open in terms of sharing those sorts of conversations with, with the public. I don't think we've figured out how to do that yet. I mean the models, actually there was a lot of fear around when they were first released. I was involved in Lambda at Google, which we basically failed to ship because we were too, too scared of it, making mistakes. And you know, it turns out that actually really they've, they've got better very, very quickly and they're now very good at following instructions and good at adhering to stylistic control and so on. I think that's a very good thing when it comes to thinking about how to make them safe.
- [19:56]
Tim Higgins
Google did not respond to our request for comment.
- [20:01]
Christopher Mims
We just heard how AI that knows us better than we know ourselves will have unprecedented power over us. Next we'll hear why Suleiman is skeptical of visions of an imminent better than human AI.
- [20:14]
Mustafa Suleiman
I think there's obviously a lot of motivated reasoning if you're fundraising and so on. And look, there are very smart people who I respect deeply who think it is literally imminent.
- [20:25]
Christopher Mims
Stay with us.
- [20:31]
Sierra AI
How businesses connect with customers defines their brand. Sierra is the AI platform for building better, more human customer experiences. Fast answers, no canned responses, no hold music, no frustration. Visit Sierra AI to learn more.
- [20:53]
Tim Higgins
As you said, you know, AI is the next interface. When I think about how I use it, is how much it has moved me away from the old model of interacting with a computer. You know, we've had the GUI, the graphic user interface paradigm, for whatever, 40 years.
- [21:11]
Christopher Mims
So I process information like you're using a keyboard and a mouse.
- [21:14]
Tim Higgins
Right, right. The Mac vs DOS for people as old as me. But how much it's moved us toward a conversational interface. I mean, I'm not even reading as much as I used to. I'm reading more books, which is nice, but I mean, for work, I just have conversations with my documents. I wonder, do you ever think, are we possibly moving back toward an older way of interacting? Right. I mean, humans had oral history. For most of our history, we had everything was conversation. Writing is itself, you know, kind of a very recent bolt on are we moving towards sort of a conversational age, or is that just another arrow in our quiver?
- [21:58]
Mustafa Suleiman
Yes, we definitely are. I think it's a great observation. I've been pushing it for a long time. I think that we had to learn the language of computers. I mean, that's what a keyboard and a mouse is as well, programming languages. But quite often I think it will be just continuing the conversation with your copilot, or in your case, with your documents or whatever it is, because it's the most natural, intuitive language. And I think that's great because we could have fewer devices in our lives and less time spent in screens and pulled away and actually more time spent thinking and talking and telling stories and, you know, interacting in, in. In that kind of conversational way. So I, I think that's a highly likely transition that we're about to make over the next few years.
- [22:45]
Tim Higgins
Yeah, I love that vision because personally, I feel like I'm cheating these days. I'm like, I'm just typing less, I'm reading less.
- [22:52]
Christopher Mims
Well, that's great. The magic of that has, I think, the general public thinking this technology is almost lifelike. Right? In Silicon Valley and in San Francisco, where I'm talking to you from, the big term is artificial general intelligence. AGI is the hot buzzword. Of all the chiefs of AI who are well known, you seem the most skeptical that it's arriving anytime soon. The least interested in it, in a way. Why is that?
- [23:24]
Mustafa Suleiman
I don't think I'm skeptical that it's arriving anytime soon. Soon to me is sometime in the next 10 years.
- [23:31]
Christopher Mims
I think some people are saying maybe tomorrow. Right.
- [23:35]
Mustafa Suleiman
Well, you know, I think there's obviously a lot of motivated reasoning if you're fundraising and so on. And look, there are very smart people who I respect deeply who think it is literally imminent. So, look, I, I guess like I said earlier, you know, to me the goal isn't super intelligence for its own sake. You know, superintelligence is framed as, you know, the moment when an AI is as good as all humans at all tasks. Not just like one human at one task, but like all of us collectively put together. Controlling and containing something as powerful as that just seems like unfathomably complex. And aligning it to our interests and making it really want to care about us enough not to step on us and squish us. I think the reason I started off in technology and what I'm passionate about is solving hard social problems. I care about health care, I care about energy, I care about food systems, I care about education. And these tools are going to transform those industries and genuinely deliver a world of abundance. Like, you know, that is coming, like in the next 10 or 20 years. I really believe we're going to reduce the cost of energy production to near zero marginal cost, which underpins the cost of everything. Um, I really believe that we are going to have medical superintelligence sometime in the next two to five years, which means a domain specific, contained, aligned medical expert that can diagnose any condition and can orchestrate care in real life clinical settings. And that, to me is the true prize. That's why we're working on this. That's what I call humanist super intelligence. And that's probably why you find me more focused on those things rather than on sort of AGI or superintelligence for its own sake.
- [25:35]
Tim Higgins
That reminds me a lot of one of your colleagues and how he likes to talk about the immediate future. And that's of course, Sam Altman. You know, our colleagues at the Journal have reported on what feels like a healthy rivalry at Microsoft. Some of your teams involving the partnership with OpenAI. There's a lot of big personalities involved, there's very high stakes. Are we seeing kind of the same kind of creative friction that we've seen in other partnerships in the past or what's going on there where you have this partnership with the leading AI lab, but you're building AI and you're using their tools at the same time? It seems very complicated.
- [26:24]
Mustafa Suleiman
I mean, look, first of all, this partnership is going to go down as one of the most successful for both sides in technology history. Over the last six years, both companies have blossomed and it's going to continue for many years to come, at least until 2030 and hopefully way beyond that. Look, we are a $3 trillion company and at one level AI is unquestionably the future of the technology industry that Microsoft has formed and shaped over the last 50 years. So, you know, as much as we are a partnership based company that is a platform of platforms, we also have to be AI self sufficient in many ways too. So look, it's a, it's a great partnership. It's going to continue. There's always going to be creative friction. They build and sell APIs as well as obviously Chatbots and we do the same. So there's some tension, but fundamentally we're really all trying to compete against Google and against Meta and all of the others.
- [27:30]
Tim Higgins
Does that mean building your own Frontier foundation models?
- [27:34]
Mustafa Suleiman
I don't know about Frontier, but we're definitely been developing our own models for many years. They tend to be SLMs, mid sized models, so small language models and midsize models. But just having the know how to be able to build models for our products for our use cases, this is a big priority for us.
- [27:52]
Christopher Mims
I'm so fascinated with the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft. I'm curious, how often do you talk to Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI?
- [28:04]
Mustafa Suleiman
Pretty frequently, all the time. I mean, you know, he's, he's a big part of the Microsoft ecosystem and you know, we're, we're all in constant contact, including with Satya and the rest of the team.
- [28:16]
Christopher Mims
What's most impressed you by him or what's most frustrated you by him?
- [28:22]
Mustafa Suleiman
I think he's a brilliant visionary and you know, you know, you know, chat GBT has been an incredible success. I think he's very good at letting lots of flowers bloom and then making sure that he bets on the right ones and the years running up to 2020, they were betting on games and simulations and robotics and lots of different methods. And they let those die quickly and at the right pace in order to make the bet on GPT2 and GPT3. And I think they did that incredibly well.
- [28:53]
Christopher Mims
Yeah, I'd read the other day the information recently had a report that said OpenAI is working to develop its own workplace programs like Word to allow users to collaborate. And that kind of feels like that's getting into Microsoft space. What do you think of such moves by your partner?
- [29:11]
Mustafa Suleiman
I think it's great. They are an independent company. We happen to own a large chunk of them, but we compete with them, they compete with us. When they're successful, we're successful because we own a big chunk of them. We have no influence on what products they do or don't make. They are entirely independent and they're free to build whatever they want.
- [29:31]
Tim Higgins
That said, there is this just really fascinating contract that OpenAI has with you, which I've never understood. This apparently stipulates that if they achieve AGI, then they or no longer have an exclusive deal with you. Is that true? Like are you waiting for them to achieve AGI and then. And then it's sayonara.
- [30:01]
Mustafa Suleiman
Look, it's a complicated structure and you have to understand how visionary and ahead of its time it was. You know, it was very hard for anyone to Predict back in 2019, 2020, how fast this would go. So I think there's a lot to work through and you know, I think the teams have been working hard on figuring out the next versions of the contract. I'm sure we'll get through it.
- [30:29]
Christopher Mims
We reached out to OpenAI for comment. It did not respond.
- [30:33]
Tim Higgins
We just heard about Microsoft's close but complicated relationship with OpenAI and Sam Altman. But Microsoft is also a defense contractor and has a role to play in the way that AI transforms armed conflict. Suleiman is deeper in this aspect of AI than most others in his position at comparable AI labs.
- [30:52]
Mustafa Suleiman
If it doesn't scare you and it doesn't give you pause for thought, then I think you're missing the point because it is going to reduce the cost and effort of going to war. And that can only be a bad thing, even between nation state actors.
- [31:06]
Tim Higgins
That's next.
- [31:15]
Patrick Coffey
This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination focused dining and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. And every Viking voyage is all Inclusive, with no children and no casinos. Discover more@viking.com.
- [31:41]
Christopher Mims
You know, one of the things that's interesting if you follow AI, you've got Elon Musk out there talking about how the world is going to have more humanoid robots than humans. Sam Altman is out there talking about how eventually he's going to want to do a Dyson sphere, this hypothetical structure that will be built around a star to collect energy.
- [31:59]
Tim Higgins
Anthropic CEO is saying all of our jobs are going away in two years.
- [32:03]
Christopher Mims
Yeah, lots of people talking about AI like it's God. I'm just curious, when I listen to you talk, you sound very pragmatic about the consumer and how we're going to use it in the now. What's it like to be kind of trying to commercialize the now in an era where people are trying to talk about the wildest dreams possible? Do you feel pressure?
- [32:27]
Mustafa Suleiman
I mean, I'm also excited about those things and I definitely, I mean, I.
- [32:33]
Christopher Mims
Should note the name of your book was the Coming Wave. I mean, you've got some excitement.
- [32:41]
Mustafa Suleiman
Yeah. Yes, I, I mean I, you know, I've, I've always been pursuing abundance and you know, that did sound ridiculous between 2010 and 2020 when we were grinding our way through the flat part of the exponential and nothing was really working other than in games or in papers and we had minimal applications. Although, you know, it was always very clear to me that this, this compounding method of adding more data and compute was clearly learning structure at small scale. And it clearly was showing signs that as you grow that scale, it was learning more structure. And so I definitely believe that there is a path where it can infinitely learn more of the structure of underlying information well enough to make perfect predictions. I just, and more fixated on how is this actually useful for us as a species. Like that should be the task of technology. And if it isn't, something's gone wrong. Because so far in human history that has been the test of technology. Does it actually serve us? Is it actually making things cheaper, more efficient, improving well being and health for everybody? And so far it literally has done that for centuries. And if it isn't doing that job, then we have to call it something else and manage it in a different way. Right. And I don't know what that thing is going to be called. Maybe it's just, you know, naked super intelligence. But in my world we've got to be building humanist super intelligence. And I think that is an important sort of distinction to make it feel like it really is on humanity's side. And it really does give you the option to work. Not just the elimination of your income, but a choice and a freedom which actually progress in civilization has already done for, you know, in the last two centuries. Half the women who now at least, are not forced into, you know, at least in our modern societies, many women do have more of a choice to go and get education rather than be forced into doing the washing up and looking after the kids and so on. So we've, we've got advances that really do change our world. And that's, I think, the great aspiration that we're trying to live up to here.
- [34:58]
Tim Higgins
AI is clearly what economists like to call a general purpose technology, like electricity, the automobile, sometimes. It also reminds me of gunpowder. Right. I always think back to the ironic origins of the Nobel Peace Prize. Right? Dynamite. And he, you know, he genuinely thought, oh, this is going to be an instrument for peace. War is going to be so terrible, it'll never happen again. AI, the direct parallel is it's an incredibly powerful and increasingly necessary part of weapons systems. Right. Like, we're rapidly getting to a future where I think if you don't have AI powered drones on your side, you're going to lose on the battlefield as surely as you would have in another age if you had no air force. You know, a bunch of leaders signed, you know, endorsed a ban on lethal autonomous weapons. Clearly, Microsoft has had a role as a defense contractor, as have many other companies. I'm not singling you out here, but what do you feel like is your role and your responsibility in that world?
- [36:05]
Mustafa Suleiman
It's a good question. I think it was back in 2017 that I signed that letter along with Elon Musk and various others. And it feels more pressing than ever. You know, I wrote about this in my book, and it was kind of remarkable to just look at the cost curves. You know, like, these drones are obviously going to reduce the effort and friction of causing conflict and going to war. And with every advance that we have in signal jammers and blockers, there's a way around it. You know, today the fiber optic cables that are being attached to drones can now run for like 5 km on the battlefield, leaving literally fields of fiber optic cable mesh just covering the entire landscape. It's kind of, you know, sort of reminds me of a version of the, you know, the trenches in the first World War of just the landscape manipulation as a result of technology. And it is, if it doesn't scare you and it doesn't give you pause for thought, Then I think you're missing the point because it is going to reduce the, the cost and effort of, of going to war and that that can only be a bad thing, even between nation state actors. But if you just consider that non nation state actors, small groups, are now going to have a much easier time of, of, of, you know, extending their influence in the world, I think that becomes quite problematic.
- [37:44]
Christopher Mims
I think it's one of the things that's interesting. I think you go back to that original idea just a few years ago, and the idea I think was the humans should always be in the loop. But to your point, we've seen in the Ukraine, Russia war with jamming technologies that limit drone operators abilities to communicate. We've heard the likes of David Sacks say he thinks this creates a strong incentive for drone warfare to become autonomous as quickly as possible. So that's like Terminator technology, right? Robots are out there trying to do missions and I guess put aside what he said, but what kind of safeguards do you think should be out there? Where do you see that debate going here in the next few years?
- [38:28]
Mustafa Suleiman
There's just no question that autonomy is going to be more dangerous. And so you give it more degrees of freedom and there will be more chances of, of multiple conflicting AIs in combat getting into these sort of loops of reaction to one another. And there's all the, all kinds of emergent effects when you add additional chunks of autonomy into the system. And so we should just approach it with caution and skepticism because the last thing we want to do is just unleash technologies that we really, really can't control. I mean, that isn't the quest of human progress. So we should all be aligned in that, and I'm sure we are. And I also understand the counter argument, which is they should, you know, be more precise and reduce civilian suffering and so on and so forth. And, you know, we hope that that's true, but I think the pragmatists in us just, you know, know that that isn't how things always turn out.
- [39:29]
Tim Higgins
We've touched on a lot of different parts of AI, right? From generative AI to classical AI media to war. I mean, I think that speaks to the scale of Microsoft's ambition in this space. The breadth of your experience. How do you see your role as head of AI at one of the five most valuable companies on Earth? You have more resources to do things with AI than all but a handful of individuals. Where do you see Microsoft's part in that grand ecosystem?
- [40:10]
Mustafa Suleiman
I think Microsoft has done an Incredible job over 50 years of evolving its core business every decade or so in tune with whatever the next wave of technology is. And I think what has made it successful is actually a bit of humility, and that is definitely prevalent in Satya and Kevin Scott, who's the CTO and many of the other leaders here. There's a kind of open mindedness to what's going to come next, but also just a constant focus on how do we actually not invent technologies for their own sake but but build them into products and experiences which truly serve people and the businesses that we serve. And that is how I think about it, how I thought about it before joining Microsoft and how Satya has always thought about it too. So it's been a kind of good alignment really of philosophies rather than sort of my particular vision, if anything.
- [41:11]
Christopher Mims
Well, I think here at Bold Names, we have spent all of the time we are allotted for today. So this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for making the time.
- [41:20]
Mustafa Suleiman
Thank you very much for having me. I enjoyed it. Great questions. It was fun.
- [41:25]
Christopher Mims
We reached out to David Sacks for comment. He did not respond.
- [41:30]
Tim Higgins
And that's Bold Names. Our producer is Danny Lewis.
- [41:34]
Christopher Mims
We had additional help this week from Ariana Osperoup.
- [41:38]
Tim Higgins
Michael Lavalle and Jessica Fenton are our sound designers. Jessica also wrote our theme music.
- [41:44]
Christopher Mims
Our supervising producer is Kathryn Millsop. Our development producer is Aisha Albert Muslim. Scott Salloway and Chris Zinsley are deputy editors. And Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio.
- [41:58]
Tim Higgins
For even more, check out our columns on WSJ.com we've linked them in the show Notes.
- [42:04]
Christopher Mims
I'm Tim Higgins.
- [42:06]
Tim Higgins
I'm Christopher Mims. Thanks for listening. Foreign.
- [42:19]
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