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Nadella: Workers Should Use AI To Upskill, Avoid Displacement
The looming threat of AI of jobs across various sectors has not lost steam. However, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says people should embrace the technology rather than let it make them redundant.
"What's the best protection against displacement?" Nadella said recently on the OMR Podcast. "It's to…understand the new medium, the new tool, the new skills required and transform yourself in [your] job."
Nadella emphasized that if workers fail to use AI to reskill, they could find themselves in a vulnerable position in the not-too-distant future.
He points towards software developers using AI. "That is what's happening in software development and you can see it where software developers are getting more productive; the IT backlog is huge."
AI has democratized software development, giving ordinary people the ability to build apps. One example is "vibe coding," which -- as we've written extensively on our sister site Visual Studio Magazine -- adopts a more conversational approach by developers using AI tools. AI writes code based on the described prompt, replacing the traditional need to write code.
Between Microsoft's embrace of AI-assisted coding in its flagship developer products and infrastructure giant AWS warning of a future where "most developers are not coding," many in the field are now grappling with how much of their craft will remain theirs.
Nadella oversaw Microsoft's investment of more than $13 billion in OpenAI since it first backed the ChatGPT owner in 2019.
The two tech giants are partners in cloud and AI but find themselves competing in the same space. Recently, their once tightly aligned relationship has begun to loosen, with Microsoft expanding its partnerships with other infrastructure and AI players -- notably with OpenAI rival Anthropic.
Nadella compared the shift towards using AI in the workplace to the 1980s PC boom. The introduction of PCs, spearheaded by IBM and Apple, saw technology made available to a wider audience and accelerated software development. It laid the groundwork for the tech-driven era we find ourselves in and kick-started the digital era.
Nadella said this period significantly improved productivity worldwide and said that, today, workers who adapt to AI will benefit most.
"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," Nadella said. "Such that we have more economic opportunity with what is going to be the new productivity curve."