AI Can Be A Tool As Well As Weapon: Microsoft President

MICROSOFT President Brad Smith thinks that Chinese research firms will bring competitive rivals to OpenAI's ChatGPT. As per a Nikkei Asia Report, Smith warns as AI continues to get massive eyeballs and US giants like Google and Amazon are racing to onboard artificial intelligence into their products, China will be swift to catch up.

While referring to the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, Google and OpenAI (with Microsoft), he said, "We see three at the absolute forefront" in the AI backdrop. Further, the tech giant's President called the race "enormously competitive."

Generative AI, the underlying tech behind ChatGPT, is capable of generating textual and imagery (via text inputs) with precision comparable to humans. The AI's capacity has got the world buzzing about its use cases in education, health and business. However, it has also induced fears of job cuts in future. Plus, it can be manipulated to spread misinformation and leak confidential data. To tackle this, Smith recommends improvements rather than a halt on innovation.

Further, as per the report, he said AI can be a tool as well as a weapon, just like other technologies. "We should absolutely assume, and even expect, that certain nation states will use AI to launch cyber attacks, even stronger cyber attacks and cyber influence operations than we see today," he warned.

"What we have fundamentally found is that technology innovation, when pursued well, can actually lead to stronger defense at the expense of strong offense. That's the real lesson from the war in Ukraine," Smith added, pointing to tech firms such as Microsoft that helped Ukraine guard against cyber attacks from Russia during the war.

"We can move faster than even a human can go. We are using AI to detect cyber influence operations of foreign governments and disinformation campaigns," he said. However, if the best minds with the best technology are combined that is "where we should be able to outperform the adversaries of the world's democracies," he said, as per Nikkei Asia.

"All of this new technology is going to require even more computational power. There are huge opportunities for companies to keep innovating and keep succeeding." The tech holds the potential to address labour shortage in the Asian region, he believes. Further, he adds, Asia's tech suppliers would benefit from the AI rush as chips for this technology are of "critical" importance.