Graduates' AI concerns a wake-up call for tech sector: Microsoft's Smith

Microsoft Vice Chair Brad Smith says students embrace AI's benefits but want humans, not machines, to determine its role in society and the future of work

The fear and disillusionment among college-going youngsters about AI and its impact on their future was experienced first-hand by Brad Smith, vice-chair and president, Microsoft, at his alma mater, Princeton University.

 

In a blog (AI, jobs, and the next generation), he said: “The reactions of this year’s graduates are a powerful wake-up call for the tech sector. Hopefully, leaders across our industry will listen and seek to learn from this reaction.”

 

He wrote that for the past half-century, the youngest generation of people and workers has led the way in adopting new digital technologies. A new Microsoft study shows this trend is true with AI. Hence, it is perhaps no surprise that college campuses are among the best places to learn about these emerging views first-hand.

   

As a tradition, graduating seniors have long donned “beer jackets” for celebrations, with each class selecting its own unique design. This past year, however, a brief controversy emerged until class officers, responding to a student petition, rejected a popular design because it had been created with the help of AI. “In its place, graduates wore jackets labelled both ‘100 per cent cotton’ and ‘100 per cent human’,” said Smith.

 

Smith, in the blog, said that the rejection of artificial fibres and artificial intelligence illustrates how human tastes shape market economics even as efficiency and productivity advance. Machines do not buy products; people do. Students and graduates recognise AI’s benefits. But they want to keep AI in its proper place. “They want the future to be determined by humans deciding the role of machines, not by machines deciding the role of humans.”

 

He argues in the blog that the graduates are sending another powerful message as well: “The American Dream has always stood for even more than a better job and greater economic opportunity, although that has been at its core.”

 

Smith says that to those in the tech sector who seemingly want to pursue a future where computers replace jobs and AI becomes more capable than people, the next generation has offered a compelling response: “Not so fast.”

 

He also highlighted that for Microsoft, too, there is a message: “This isn’t just philosophical. It’s our business model. Workers have been Microsoft’s lifeblood from the start. If the world’s people don’t have jobs, then neither do we. And if we’re not doing our part to help people use technology to pursue better jobs, then we’re not doing the job we were born to do.”