“I think in general we’re all grappling for the right words to describe the arrival of this very very different technology to anything we’ve ever seen before. And I think the more people are talking about humanism, right, the primacy of the human that that’s a framework. It’s a loose framework. Um, and it’s the beginnings of a broader idea that I think lots of other people should should develop and adapt and so on. But that is a very clear statement which is that these things like the project of super intelligence should not be about replacing or threatening our species like that should just be taken for granted and it’s crazy to have to actually declare that. Um that should be self-evident but I’m seeing like lots of indications that people don’t always agree… The first step is safety containment and alignment. And then the second step is within that frame then accelerationism.” — Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI (11:35)
Microsoft is joining the race for superintelligence, but with a caveat: It will prioritize human control over the technology at the expense of maximum capability. “We cannot just accelerate at all costs. That would just be a crazy suicide mission,” Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who will head the company’s new superintelligence team, told Semafor this week. “We have to find ways of simultaneously having humanist superintelligence, which delivers the benefits that we’re all chasing for humans, and also accelerating technology at the same time.” As the capabilities of AI have progressed, the ability of humans to understand and control it have lagged behind. The result is that the largest, most powerful AI “foundation models” like the ones that power ChatGPT sometimes act unpredictably, and computer scientists can’t explain why. Some of Microsoft AI’s key leaders, like chief scientist Karén Simonyan, will move over to the superintelligence team. Suleyman will continue to lead Microsoft AI, where he helps shape products like Copilot, Edge, Bing and Microsoft Advertising.