Microsoft CEO Pretty Sure He Can Keep AI From Escaping Human Control

Well, if you say so...

Neural Prison

When it comes to the search engine department, Microsoft is finally giving Google a literal run for its money for the first time in well over a decade. Earlier this week, Microsoft revealed its newly reinvented and AI-augmented Bing search engine, which is powered by a souped up version of OpenAI's ChatGPT. In a conversational format much like the chatbot it's built on, the new Bing can answer almost any question you throw at it with impressive results (though varying degrees of accuracy).

While some employees at the company are sobbing tears of joy, Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella took the opportunity to address concerns over safely developing its AI in an interview with CBS News.

First, he defended the decision to release the AI to the public, even if it's still full of kinks.

"The only way for any new technology to be really perfected is to be in the market with real human feedback," Nadella said. "If anything, in particular with AI, it has to get aligned with human preferences, both personally and societally, in terms of the norms."

"And yes, we will have many, many mechanisms in place to ensure that nothing biased, nothing harmful gets generated," he added.

Maintaining Control

At the interviewer's prompting, the Microsoft CEO acknowledged that the ominous possibility of an AI going rogue and turning against humanity is a valid concern.

"Runaway AI — if it happens — it's a real problem," Nadella admitted.

"But the way to sort of deal with that is to make sure it never runs away," he confidently avered. Who woulda thunk it!

Beyond stating the obvious, Nadella went on to outline the context in which us humans should use AI to avoid a collision course with a dystopian future.

"The first set of categories in which we should use these powerful models are where humans, unambiguously, unquestionably, are in charge," Nadella said. "And so as long as we sort of start there, characterize these models, make these models more safe and over time much more explainable, then we can think about other forms of usage."

More on AI search: Google's Demo of Upcoming AI Shows It Making Huge Factual Mistake