Microsoft CTO Views

Microsoft's CTO lays out the 2 tech trends he
believes will change the world: 'People haven't

wrapped their heads around this yet'
Matt Weinberger 12h
Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology o cer. Microsoft
Microsoft's chief technology o cer, Kevin Scott, sees two big

things coming down the pipeline in the tech industry, he told
Business Insider.
The first is an explosion of cheap, powerful silicon processors

coming in the next five to eight years, leading to every device,
everywhere, getting a microprocessor capable of running
advanced artificial intelligence.
The second, related trend Scott sees is the increased importance

of reinforcement learning, the style of machine learning that helps
power Google DeepMind's famous game-playing software bots.
Combined, the explosions of software and hardware will give

developers everywhere the tools they need to easily solve
computing problems once thought impossible in a way that's
cheap and e cient enough for every car, toy, and appliance
manufacturer to take advantage.
A big part of Microsoft's role in this is making it easier for

developers to take advantage of these trends in their own
software, Scott said.
At most companies, the chief technology officer is tasked with
overseeing the engineering teams and basically making sure the
company is staking its technological bets in an intelligent way.
 
At a company like Microsoft, where there are tens of thousands of

engineers all over the world testing and building and prodding in an
unknowable number of directions at any given time, the CTO's role
can be a little bit broader, said Kevin Scott, who's held the role since
he came over from LinkedIn — a Microsoft subsidiary — in 2017.
Scott told Business Insider in an interview last week that he tries to

help CEO Satya Nadella "make sure we are doing what Satya calls the
'left-to-right scan.'" In other words, it's in Scott's purview to make
sure Microsoft is "not failing to do things that we're going to regret
not doing three to five years down the line."
While he may not lead research and development, Scott is in charge

of the company's engineering culture. Scott not only helps scout
future engineering leadership from across the company, but holds
regular events like AI 365, a forum where Microsofties — including
Nadella — come together to talk about the latest developments in
artificial intelligence and how they can refine their approach to it.
Indeed, those two aspects are closely linked, Scott said, as AI is

"perhaps the second-most important thing we're doing at Microsoft
right now," behind only marquee businesses like Windows, Office,
and the Azure cloud but just as vital to the future of the company.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Getty
And in his capacity as a futurist, Scott foresees two big trends, closely
intertwined, that are less than a decade away from changing the
world, he said.
"I am fully expecting there to be an explosion of cheap compute
silicon over the next five to eight years," Scott said. Furthermore,
Scott expects that so-called reinforcement learning, a popular
 to do tasks, will be matched by
method of "teaching" machines how 
equally powerful software.
"People haven't wrapped their heads around this yet," he said.
An explosion of silicon
In Scott's estimation, we're right on the verge of a new era of small,

cheap processors that are powerful enough to run advanced AI.
That change will be driven by simple need, he said. As self-driving

cars, cashierless retail stores, and automated manufacturing become
increasingly common, existing processor architectures are struggling
to keep up with the raw amounts of data generated and analyzed by
these types of systems.
Microsoft has made some strides in this area. Its Project Brainwave,
for example, is an AI-optimized system designed for the Microsoft
Azure cloud using a novel architecture called FPGA, while its Azure
Sphere initiative is a design for small, cheap, highly secure processors
for internet-connected gadgets and toys.
Read more: For the first time ever, Microsoft will distribute its own
version of Linux
But Scott doesn't expect that Microsoft will get into the processor
business in a meaningful way — indeed, Azure Sphere is something
Microsoft has welcomed the rest of the industry to license for their
own products and designs.
That is to say: Don't expect Microsoft to go after the likes of Nvidia,

Intel, or Qualcomm anytime soon.
"I don't think Microsoft has any inherent desire to be a

microcontroller vendor," Scott said.
 
Microsoft's Project Brainwave is an initiative to build better systems for running complex
artificial-intelligence algorithms. Microsoft
Instead, Scott expects it'll be the current class of startups who will
come up with the next big thing in processors. Scott didn't name
names, but at least five processor startups have raised over $100
million each to tackle the problem.
Once those cheap, powerful chips start hitting the market, Scott said,
you can expect that everything will get a lot smarter, from cameras to
appliances to industrial robots and children's toys. When it's
affordable to put AI-powered software anywhere, it'll start popping
up everywhere, he said.
As for quantum computing, an extremely promising form of

supercomputing relying on a kind of math that even Bill Gates
doesn't fully grasp, Scott expects it's coming — and said Microsoft is
investing heavily to bring about this quantum revolution.
Still, he's less comfortable guaranteeing exactly when that revolution

will begin, given that Microsoft, IBM, Google, and others are
searching for the kind of scientific breakthrough that would take
quantum computing beyond the research lab and into real-world
usage, he said. But the possibility is "exhilarating."
Read more: Bill Gates says even he doesn't understand the math
behind quantum computing, the next big thing in tech
Reinforcement
Scott's second big prediction is related to the first: As the processing

power available to software developers expands, so too will the
capabilities of AI-powered software.
One of the hottest trends in the AI field is a model called

reinforcement learning, where you "reward" a system for producing a
desirable outcome. AlphaGo Zero, the latest version of the Google
DeepMind system that beat a world champion at the ancient game of
Go, is the poster child for reinforcement learning — the software
essentially taught itself to play by facing itself over and over again.
 
At the speed with which the field of reinforcement learning is

progressing, Scott said, the biggest constraint for what AI can do right
now is processing power. He said that with sufficient processing
muscle, even those problems that computer scientists have dubbed
"NP-hard" — that is, problems so complicated that they can't be
efficiently solved by a computer in a reasonable timeframe — could
be tackled with reinforcement-learning models.
TV screens show the live broadcast of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match between
Google's AI program, AlphaGo, and the South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol in
2016. Associated Press/Ahn Young-joon
His example is the problem of arranging shipping containers for

transport: Given the varying sizes of the containers, their weights,
where they've been loaded, and where they'll ultimately be taken off
the boat, there are just too many variables for a computer system to
give one definitive, best answer in a timeframe that humans would
find practical. The best that most systems do is approximate, using
algorithms designed by humans to get a useful, if not perfect, answer.
But the combination of hardware and software will make those

problems trivial, or at least easier to solve. That in turn will bring an
explosion of new and interesting places for AI to pop up, as
computing tasks once thought improbable or impossible suddenly
become easy.
Where Microsoft comes in
This, finally, is where Microsoft comes in.

While Scott and the rest of the world wait for that silicon revolution,
Microsoft is trying to make AI accessible to more people.

Part of that comes from good old-fashioned research and 
development, as Microsoft offers a widening set of AI capabilities to

users and developers. PowerPoint users can take advantage of AI with
its automatic slide-design tool, while developers using Microsoft
Azure get access to AI-powered tools for image and audio recognition.
What Scott is particularly excited about is the prospect of making AI

easier for developers to use, he said. He spotlighted Lobe, a company
Microsoft bought in September, as the perfect example of this: Lobe
lets developers drag and drop AI technology into their code. By
investing in ways for developers to more efficiently and easily use AI,
Microsoft is helping the software industry get ready for the world
that's coming, Scott said.
And in a way, Scott said, this push for developer productivity is

bringing Microsoft full circle. Microsoft's first product was designed
to make the then-cutting-edge Basic language easier for programmers
to use. Now it's making AI easier for developers to use.
Still, he says, the rise of AI will bring some interesting new risks. As
every device, everywhere, starts to get powerful processors and
connected to the internet, it will be an "interesting attack surface for
hackers" to try to exploit, he said. That's why Microsoft has invested
in technologies like Azure Sphere that help to secure connected
gadgetry. But it's just one more thing to worry about as we face an AI
boom.
"I'm an engineer," Scott said. "There are lots of things that keep me up
at night."
Get the latest Microsoft stock price here.
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Microsoft's CTO lays out the 2 tech trends he

believes will change the world: 'People haven't

Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology o cer. Microsoft

Microsoft's chief technology o cer, Kevin Scott, sees two big

The ﬁrst is an explosion of cheap, powerful silicon processors

The second, related trend Scott sees is the increased importance

Combined, the explosions of software and hardware will give

A big part of Microsoft's role in this is making it easier for

At a company like Microsoft, where there are tens of thousands of

Scott told Business Insider in an interview last week that he tries to

While he may not lead research and development, Scott is in charge

Indeed, those two aspects are closely linked, Scott said, as AI is

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Getty

equally powerful software.

"People haven't wrapped their heads around this yet," he said.

In Scott's estimation, we're right on the verge of a new era of small,

That change will be driven by simple need, he said. As self-driving

That is to say: Don't expect Microsoft to go after the likes of Nvidia,

"I don't think Microsoft has any inherent desire to be a

As for quantum computing, an extremely promising form of

Still, he's less comfortable guaranteeing exactly when that revolution

Scott's second big prediction is related to the ﬁrst: As the processing

One of the hottest trends in the AI ﬁeld is a model called

At the speed with which the ﬁeld of reinforcement learning is

His example is the problem of arranging shipping containers for

But the combination of hardware and software will make those

Where Microsoft comes in

This, ﬁnally, is where Microsoft comes in.

development, as Microsoft oﬀers a widening set of AI capabilities to

What Scott is particularly excited about is the prospect of making AI

And in a way, Scott said, this push for developer productivity is

Get the latest Microsoft stock price here.

NOW WATCH: How to sit in your o ce chair without hurting

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