Kevin Scott is Microsoft’s chief technology officer, its executive vice president of AI and Research, and the author, with Greg Shaw, of the new book, “Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley, Making AI Serve Us All.”
Scott, who joined Microsoft with its acquisition of LinkedIn, goes back to his roots in rural Virginia in the book, making the case that there is a middle ground between the extreme viewpoints about the future of artificial intelligence — one in which short-term disruption is followed by long-term benefits as technology augments and improves human endeavors.
But first, he says, we must ensure equal access to technology, starting with rural broadband, the importance of which is underscored by the rise of remote work during the current COVID-19 crisis.
Scott spoke with us via phone this week about his vision for the future of artificial intelligence and the country, in advance of the book’s release on Tuesday, April 7. He will also be participating in a live stream with “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, who wrote the forward to the book, at 10 a.m. Pacific on Monday, April 6.
Listen to our conversation above, subscribe to GeekWire in any podcast app, and continue reading for edited highlights.
The influence of his rural upbringing: “When we began the process of writing the book, one of the first things that I did was take a trip back home to rural Central Virginia, where my family still lives, and I still have a ton of friends and family. I had this ‘aha’ moment as soon as I started chatting with people. These are some of the most ingenious and industrious people that I have ever known.
“And they have always been able to take the tools that were available to them and create really interesting things to make businesses that did good things for their customers, that created jobs, that created benefits for their communities, that helped individuals fulfill their creative or entrepreneurial visions, and really let them do incredible and compelling things.
“It just became immediately obvious to me that they were going to be able to do great things with AI.”
Opportunities and challenges for democratizing AI: “Because of open source software and cloud platforms and all of the educational materials that are available online, a motivated high school student could do what was a difficult thing for me, that took six months 16 years ago. They could do it in two days, over a weekend. The tools are there.
“The things that we have to go solve in these communities are about access. How do you get kids educated, where they have the skills they need to participate in the digital future, to be able to take what is already available to them in terms of these AI tools and build things and create opportunity for themselves? How do you get them the role models that they need to see themselves in these jobs of the future?
“And then how do we solve things that should be prosaic at this point but that still are still barriers, like broadband access for everyone? You can’t expect businesses or individuals to be able to connect themselves to a digital future when they can’t connect to the internet.”
AI and jobs: “If you look over very, very long periods of time, technology and automation is almost always a good thing for society. We’ve benefited from fire and agriculture and our existing industrial base, and we will benefit from AI, as well.
“There’s this pattern that happens when a new disruptive technology comes along. There are going to be jobs, for sure, that are impacted, but I think it’s actually more complicated than people imagine. Just thinking about it as a cost cutting tool is a colossal failure of imagination. How can this be a tool that enhances and augments human beings to let them do more of what they are truly great at? That’s the right way to think about AI.”
The impact of COVID-19 on innovation: “We have a sobering set of circumstances right now, both in terms of the human cost of the virus and the economic impacts. We’re very fortunate that we have a technology infrastructure that allows us to remotely collaborate with our colleagues. Software development has been trending in this direction for a long while, where you can do virtually a lot of your work now, even from an operations perspective, in the cloud.”
“I don’t think that the pace of innovation, at least in software and biosciences, slows down as a consequence of this. I think if anything, what you’re going to see is, when you come out the other end of this, we will have the conditions for even more innovation than we’ve ever seen before in both of these areas, just because there’s going to be so much investment and such a very, very important and urgent need from the public for all of this stuff, the technology infrastructure and our capabilities with healthcare and pharmaceuticals, to get much, much better much more quickly.”
“Reprogramming the American Dream,” by Kevin Scott with Greg Shaw, is due out on April 7, published by Harper Business.
