Microsoft chief Satya Nadella warns AI boom could falter without wider adoption

https://www.ft.com/content/2a29cbc9-7183-4f68-a1d2-bc88189672e6

by petethomas • 6 months ago

14 16 6 months ago

TowerTall• 6 months ago

zippyman55• 6 months ago

I suspect it will falter with or without wider adaptation. I’ve been happy to adopt the free offerings and still engage my brain. I don’t see how they get enough revenue to pay for the massive outlay of all these data centers.

infinitewars• 6 months ago

The strategic value for the government guarantees they will keep them afloat. Arguably more important than banks these days.

al_borland2• 6 months ago

The ads are coming. Google is also beginning to push the idea of agentic shopping, so the AI will probably get a kick back if it pushes you to buy certain products.

Of course, all of this undermines the value of the AI, because it will no longer be giving the best information, as it knows it, it will be pushing high margin items for its owners, much like a pushy salesman. Not that current AI product recommendations are any good, as I’ve run into several situations where the source on its data is a low-effort SEO page loaded with affiliate links.

bdangubic• 6 months ago

will no longer be giving the best information, as it knows it, it will be pushing high margin items for its owners, much like a pushy salesman

like google search does?

allears• 6 months ago

And of course that would burst the bubble. So adopt it or else!

FridayoLeary• 6 months ago

Saying the quiet part out loud. Also isn't it his fault for investing in it the first place? Desperately finding things to put copilot onto in Windows isn't working out so well, it seems.

fuzzfactor• 6 months ago

For a number of players, big ones too, all the money that's going to change hands has already done so.

Plus even if AI were to work absolutely perfect at this point, it's still not worth money to consumers.

This is not something that was consumer-driven, and there has been no pent-up demand among consumers that is available to be unleashed.

With the money that's been spent so far, it's only worth that much if it can economically replace a fair number of employees almost completely, and the figures are so high already that small-business employers will not likely add up to enough.

People are expensive, even at the lowest of training, so the incentive has always been huge to lower the cost of people, since way before plantation times or Roman legions.

Naturally this really adds up mainly for those who are paying the cost of people, and have power and resources to do something about it.

Other than very large employers, including governments, who else is in position to get their money's worth?

What's supposed to be in it for consumers?

How are they supposed to be motivated to spend any more than they already are when the truly intelligent thing to do is actually cut back and it's so obvious it doesn't take a computer brain to figure it out.

k310• 6 months ago

I have suspected all along that AI will commoditize, as in "free with your phone purchase" and sediment, being valuable only to verticals with highly curated databases.

Microsoft and Google have been in the "all things to all people" business, IMO, and to me, that's no moat around that, and invites enshittification.

As infinitewars implies, another excuse for massive data-gathering, and many of us watched the entanglement of search engines and government evolve (or devolve, depending on your POV) But what happens when you have ALL the data?

Again, I think that this massive funneling is, as we said in fishing, just dynamiting the lake and collecting all the fish.

Businesses with specialized needs won't need Microsoft, since they can/must create their own focused databases and spin up their own apps, witness DeepSeek and friends. I really don' think that a surgeon cares about the latest TikTok trends.

_wire_• 6 months ago

Hype.

Look at the hype.

You've gotta adopt, because look at the hype.

If you don't adopt the hype was for nought.

We need a government support: Think about the poor investors!

This is free market innovation, govt get out of our way!

moogly• 6 months ago

It's OK, Satya. Sometimes you do a bad bet and make something people don't want, but you kill it and try something else. What you don't do is to beg people to use it just because you've spent billions on it.

rsynnott2• 6 months ago

“Use copilot, or the economy gets it.”

This honestly feels like the prelude to asking for state support.

al_borland2• 6 months ago

I don’t see how people would tolerate a government bailout of trillion dollar companies making a bad bet.

That’s the game. If they want the reward, they have to be ready to accept the loss when the risk doesn’t work in their favor.

If they were dumb enough to bet the entire company on it and they go out of business, oh well. Let them go under and make sure the CEO walks away with nothing. No golden parachutes for tanking a company due to unchecked greed. That would serve as a nice warning before the next overhyped bubble.

rsynnott2• 6 months ago

I mean ordinarily I’d agree, but Americans in particular seem willing to tolerate basically anything from their government right now, so who knows.

tim-tday• 6 months ago

Certainly the way Microsoft is doing it. How does the demotivating poster go? “It may be that your purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others”

pjmlp• 6 months ago

He could start by not pushing it everywhere across all MS products, including programming languages, without any kind of proper planning what people want to do with it.

Microsoft chief Satya Nadella warns AI boom could falter without wider adoption

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