Tech regulation should be in national interest: Satya Nadella

OpenAI Inc. The company’s $1 billion investment in the for-profit arm of Open AI LP—the nonprofit behind the chatbot GPT, which is so popular in the tech world right now—is seen as giving Microsoft an advantage Using AI to usher in new ways in which we search for information online.

During his four-day visit to India, Hyderabad-born Nadella sat down with Peppermint For a wide-ranging conversation on AI, tech regulation, startups, modern work, India’s public digital infrastructure and how he views his work at Microsoft. Edited excerpts:

Are you considering launching Bing with ChatGPT or another language model?

We’re very excited about the work we’re doing with OpenAI, and you can expect us to do a lot more with the foundational model. As we did with the GitHub co-pilot, it was an early taste of what I think happens when great foundational models and products come together to empower people. A software developer today is so much more productive, creative and able to really flatten the learning curve. We want to do more with AI, quite clearly, across the length and breadth of all Microsoft products. So, I would say wait and see because we’re just getting started.

In terms of accuracy in search results, are these language models really there yet?

I think search and the big language model will be brought together in very new ways. There are fundamental challenges around any model—how do you ground the model and how do you maintain the freshness of the model—these are all good technical challenges that I think would have good technical answers. And in time to come you will see the result of all that.

Because English language is what such models are mostly training, what happens in countries like India, where there is a multitude of languages?

This is a good question. I think we shouldn’t think of it as just this one shot. It is a continuous refinement of the model with human feedback and AI generated content. So, let’s say I want to read Lorca translated into Hindi or English. I can do that today. Is that a Hindi poem? Is this an english translation? Is this a spanish poem?

What is considered knowledge in one language may be taken up in another language and perhaps modified in another language, which then returns it. So we should think about the fact that all the people in the world who consume these big models in all languages ​​and add to it; That way we can really democratize these differences and prejudices. Ultimately, the only test is collective human judgment against prejudice.

What do you think people don’t fully understand about where AI stands today?

I would say that what probably needs to be better understood is some scaling effect and the emergent behavior of larger models. I’m not saying that this is the be-all and end-all or that the model is going to be the last evolution of the architecture.

But GPT3 or 3.5 are not linear steps. So the question is, where is the nonlinear growth coming from? There are studies where if you train a large model on a corpus of all mathematical equations. It gets better. But if you train it on all the math equations as well as all the web text and all the literature in the world, it gets better at math than just the corpus it was trained on.

And you may say, why is that? It’s less intuitive because you and I didn’t go to school and only learn math. We learned history, we learned languages, and we learned many other things that, in turn, created common circuits (in our brains) that helped us get better at math. So, I think, that’s the key.

In the evolution of India’s tech industry, we have large legacy tech services firms. We have recently seen a wave of consumer startups. Are we about to see another wave of startups leveraging AI and the cloud?

Frankly, one thing that gives me great optimism for India is all the different ways in which technology is being used. I had a chance to spend time with a small business called Senco Gold, which is using the technology to expand its retail stores. I met a gentleman at State Bank of India who is blind and was building an app using Power Apps to automate a set of workflows.

India already has the second largest number of developers, and is number 1 in AI repositories, which means Indian developers are exploring every open-source AI repository and becoming core committers. So, the simple answer to your question would be, in the long run, there will be more intense use of AI. One of the things you should be talking about in India as well is the intensive use of new technology, be it the gentlemen using AI at SBI or the latest unicorn, because both are of immense value to India’s development.

As the super boss of both Microsoft Teams and LinkedIn, what can you tell us about how work has changed in the post-pandemic world?

There are three data points we are all learning from in the context of the post-pandemic world. One is this paranoia about productivity. Some leaders say we’re being very productive, while employees say we’re tired because I’m working at home or sleeping at work? I think the way to bridge this is through data. Aligned results. Every organization needs to be competitive, and ultimately needs to get the job done. It is probably useful to use that versus dogma about pre-pandemic things doing a particular way.

The second data point is that people fall for other people; They don’t come for politics. I think as leaders we all need to learn some soft skills to bring people together. I think it’s important to learn better soft skills about how to make connections.

Last thing is, just because you recruit them once doesn’t mean you won’t be able to recruit them again every day. None of us can take anything for granted, especially in a market like India.

What role do you see India playing in the overall regulation of technology, and have our current regulations affected your business?

I think there are going to be regulations in every country so that technology brought into the country and technology made in the country ultimately serves its social purpose. We welcome this and are not looking forward to regulation as we have fundamental faith in the technology and business model of technology. This is how I communicate.

It’s a constant evolution of regulatory regimes and technology, and things have to keep pace. And just because regulation can’t keep pace with the technology that’s coming, it’s up to people like us, who are in this business, to say that we have a core fundamental belief in what we build, design By.

What I’m also seeing on data privacy and data flows in India is very enlightening. Ultimately India has three things. One we are making in India by building our data centers and human capital so that others can make more in India – be it Senco Gold, SBI or InMobi.

But they are not just making in India for India; They are making in India for the world. Then you have to have a rule that accounts for all of that. Data does not come from one place. It might have been made somewhere else, and should have come to India. Then in India, people should be able to use it, add value to it, and then it should go out of India and others should use it. That’s the way for regulators to think about it. And anyway, all this should be done in the interest of the country. It is not about benefiting anyone other than the people of this country.

When you took over as CEO, you had a huge role to fill. Now you are being talked about as the great CEO of the world. How do you look back on your tenure at Microsoft?

I feel that if I want to live up to the culture that I follow, I have to pay more attention to the mistakes that I make every day so that I can learn from them and be better tomorrow. And if anything, we’re all just temporary managers of institutions that we hope should stick around if we do things right.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my Indian civil servant father, it’s that leaving an institution strong after you leave is more important than what you achieve during your tenure.

I want to make sure that I, personally, and everyone at Microsoft have the confidence to acknowledge our flaws.