"All In on Translation Reporting"... Why MS CEO Is Obsessed with AI Revealed

Satya Nadella CEO Who Decided on OpenAI Investment
"Dreams of AI Teachers and Doctors for 8 Billion People"

Microsoft (MS) made its first investment in 2019 in OpenAI, the developer of 'ChatGPT,' which sparked a global craze for generative artificial intelligence (AI). The decision to invest was made by Satya Nadella, MS CEO. At the time, Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, visited MS's Seattle headquarters several times to persuade Nadella, and MS has made three large-scale investments through this year.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft (Photo by Microsoft)

◆ Nadella Amazed by GPT-4 Surpassing Machine Translation

In a recent interview with the U.S. IT media Wired, Nadella was asked if there was a 'eureka moment' that made him fully immerse in AI. He introduced that moment as when he first used the AI now called GPT-4 last summer. Previously, when moving from GPT-2.5 to GPT-3, he saw new AI capabilities and felt something was happening, but the definitive 'this is it' moment was then.

Nadella said, "There is one question I always use as a reference when testing translation machines," referring to the translation of poetry by Jalaluddin Rumi, a Persian cultural Islamic jurist and poet. Rumi is a 13th-century poet whom the BBC once described as "the most popular poet in the United States." Nadella, who grew up in India, said he had dreamed of reading poetry in Persian and especially wanted to read Rumi's poems.

Poetry is a difficult literary genre to translate. Because the meanings of words and lines are subtle, it is very challenging to translate without a clear understanding of the language's characteristics. Robert Frost, a representative American poet, once said, "Poetry is what is lost in translation." Although Rumi's poems have often been translated into English, they have been evaluated as not properly conveying their meaning.

[Image source=AP Yonhap News]

Nadella marveled, "GPT-4 accomplished that (translation) in one go." He added, "It was not just machine translation but preserving the independence of poetry beyond the boundaries of two languages. That was quite impressive." GPT-3 has about 175 billion parameters, while GPT-4's exact number is unknown but is said to be in the trillions. This implies that GPT-4 translated and expressed the subtle meanings of words and sentences used in poetry as naturally as a human would.

◆ Can Anyone Develop AI If They Have a Smartphone? "Absolutely"

In this interview, Nadella also shared his dreams for AI and addressed current public concerns about AI potentially destroying humanity.

He proposed a vision where, through AI, all 8 billion people worldwide could develop (software) with just a smartphone. He said, "There is no need to learn formulas, grammar, or math. Just by advancing prompting, the learning curve will improve," adding, "This (development) will be democratized." He further said, "My dream is for all 8 billion people on this planet to have AI teachers, AI doctors, AI programmers, and AI consultants."

When asked if AI could destroy humanity, he firmly replied, "If a situation arises where it is completely uncontrollable, that is a problem. We must not allow that." He emphasized, "Saying AI could become uncontrollable is itself shirking our responsibility," and "We can handle powerful technology." He cited examples such as electricity, which is safe because of regulations, and nuclear energy, which is also well managed.

Nadella also stated in the interview that the partnership with OpenAI will continue long-term. He described the collaboration as, "Rather than many teams doing various things, we have become two independent companies deeply cooperating with one goal and discipline." He added, "We have a good commercial partnership and feel there is a long-term and stable agreement between the two companies."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.