Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, has reacted to student discontent with AI, telling today’s graduates that there is still a place for human creativity.
Students across the US have booed speakers who talked up AI at their graduation ceremonies in recent months, including Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, the CEO of a record label, and a real estate executive.
Smith hasn’t ventured out onto a podium to share his views, but in a lengthy blog post, AI, Jobs and the Next Generation, acknowledged students’ concerns about their futures.
He said that, just as painting survived the arrival of photography, so will the job market survive the arrival of AI. “While it may feel unfair that the job market is so uncertain, you were made for this moment. Technology is second nature to your generation. Constant change has taught you how to adapt quickly,” he wrote.
He also used the blog to promote a book written by his colleagues Ryan Roslansky and Aneesh Raman on how to get ahead at work in the age of AI.
The corporate world will see massive changes, he said: “This includes AI automation of tasks in current entry-level positions and, especially in the tech sector, corporate pressure to reduce headcount to help pay for AI’s enormous capital expenditures.”
Some of those changes are already here. In the past six months, we have seen massive job losses at Oracle, at Meta and at AWS. There are no signs of any let-up: Last month saw the tech industry shed more than 38,000 jobs. Students contemplating their future will find little comfort in Smith’s optimistic words, particularly as his essay shows that Microsoft is not making any changes to its AI program going forward.
Maxwell began writing about technology in 1984, when mainframes ruled the world. Since then he has written for just about every business computing title in the UK, and for a few in the US, covering everything from Artificial intelligence to Zero-day exploits and all points in between. He has also been editor-in-chief of several award-winning titles, including Network Week, Techworld, and Cloud Pro, and a regular contributor to Whatsonstage.com. In his spare time he coaches a junior rugby team.
