Nadella Predicted Ambient Intelligence
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A story about how Satya Nadella became Microsoft CEO and made a prescient prediction about AI's future.
"When Ballmer stepped down, Microsoft was in a downward to flat trajectory - it was an uninspired stock and company at the time. Satya Nadella, who became the CEO, wrote an internal manifesto about what Microsoft needed to do. At the time, he never thought he'd be CEO of Microsoft after Bill Gates and Ballmer, but they promoted him from within.
In 2014, he bet on two things - I don't remember the second one, but the first one he called 'ambient intelligence.' This was basically having computer intelligence and artificial intelligence in your environment to be helpful to you. It would know what you need without you having to fetch it or ask specifically. It could anticipate your needs and be aware of your context without you having to explain the whole situation.
What's cool is this was long before OpenAI was even incorporated. To bet on that as one of the two ways that the tech puck was going was pretty baller."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.