Microsoft’s Nadella says AI should mean cooperation, not threat

Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during the Microsoft Inspire partner conference at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, July 10, 2017. During his keynote speech Nadella unveiled Microsoft 365 software that brings together Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Advances in artificial intelligence should be used to help humans and machines work together, rather than to create competition between them in everything from chess matches to the job market, Microsoft Corp chief executive officer Satya Nadella writes in his new book, Hit Refresh.

“The first choices we get to make are choices around the design of AI, and let’s make that first design choice to augment human capability,” instead of seeking ways to have technology replace people, Nadella said in an interview Monday, a day ahead of the book’s release. He cited a Microsoft project that uses computer vision to aid blind users as one example. “Our goal should be to find more and more examples of such sort.”