📱 Mustafa Suleyman: "AI Will Support You!"
In the spring, Microsoft struck a deal with startup Inflection AI, co-founded by Mustafa Suleyman — also co-founder of DeepMind. Suleyman, now ahead of Microsoft AI, gave an interview to Wired about artificial intelligence with empathy, the recent upgrade of AI assistant Copilot, which can now communicate with a human voice, and a world where AI agents do most of our routine tasks.
As always, we've selected the most interesting things for you:
➡️ About AI with empathy
What I've long believed in, even since before DeepMind days, is AI’s potential to provide support. That's the beauty of this technological moment: to see this companion that really gets to know you. It’s coaching you, encouraging you, supporting you, teaching you. That isn't going to feel like a computer anymore.
➡️ About AI agents
The first stage is AI processing the same information you process — seeing what you see, hearing what you hear, and consuming the text you consume. The second phase is [AI having] a long-term, persistent memory that creates a shared understanding over time. The third stage is AI interacting with third parties by sending instructions and taking actions — to buy things, book things, and plan a schedule. We at Microsoft are experimenting with these features right now.
➡️ About Copilot Vision
This new feature (available in Microsoft Copilot Pro) lets you chat with your AI companion, who sees everything you see and talks to you in real-time about what you're looking at. It changes your digital life, because you don't have the burden of having to type something in.
➡️ On the challenges of the future
The big thing here is figuring out how to craft trusted technology. The problem with this technology is that you can get it working 50-60% of the time, but getting it to 90% reliability requires a lot of effort. I've seen some stunning demos where it can independently go off and make a purchase. But I've also seen some moments where it doesn't know what it's doing.
➡️ About the boundaries of AI
We've got to get the security part right; we've got to get the privacy part right, of course. But I think the real thing is trying to design the conversation so that the agent is able to articulate boundaries, so it can say that's not something I'm prepared to engage in. If we can nail that, we let it buy things for you on your behalf, negotiate on your behalf, enter into a contract on your behalf, or plan a schedule. And you're like, I trust you, Copilot, you got this, right?
More on the topic:
📱 Mustafa Suleyman on TED: "AI is a New Digital Species"
#interview @hiaimediaen
