Satya Nadella says fears of mass AI-driven unemployment underestimate society’s ability to respond.
In an interview on the OMR Podcast, the Microsoft chief executive pushes back on the idea that AI alone will dictate economic outcomes.
According to Nadella, people, societies and governments have a big say about AI diffusion and its potential for labor market disruption.
“I’m not being Pollyannic about this, but I’m saying let’s at least have a bit of optimism in our ability as humans and human societies and as political economies, right? One thing that is discounted is that we have control. It’s called political economy and elections, and people are not going to tolerate anything that is not going to be beneficial on a societal scale.
And so I’m a big believer that what is the real governor, it’s just not going to happen to us. We’re going to shape what happens to us.”
While Nadella acknowledges that a sudden spike in unemployment would be difficult, he highlights that workers have the power to acquire new skills and stay abreast of the labor market.
“If unemployment suddenly comes, it’s going to be challenging. And so that’s where I would say, let us all focus on making sure that we are doing all the things to help us skill ourselves such that we have more economic opportunity with what is going to be the new productivity curve.”
Nadella notes that dystopian forecasts ignore the levers society still controls, including wages, regulations and market incentives.
“So anytime anyone gives me a dystopian worldview that we’re all going to be unemployed, of course I’m afraid of it. But I’m also saying I’m not so out of control of it.
We all, as a society, get to sort of make sure that the technology we build and how it diffuses, what happens to wages, how we litigate, what expertise we will reward and not reward, so many things that we have control over that we should not abdicate all that.”
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