Making AI Accessible: Kevin Scott's Vision at Microsoft
As one of the most influential and innovative companies in the world, Microsoft’s impact on the AI landscape has been profound. With a relentless pursuit of excellence and a commitment to pushing the boundaries of what is possible, the tech giant has established itself as a major player, driving advancements that are transforming industries and revolutionising the way we live and work.
Central to driving this AI revolution is Kevin Scott, Microsoft's Executive Vice President of AI and Chief Technology Officer. With a career spanning two decades in academia and industry, Scott’s expertise as a researcher, engineer and leader is reshaping the future of AI.
Before joining Microsoft, Scott served as the SVP of Engineering and Operations at LinkedIn: playing a pivotal role in building the technology and engineering teams, guiding the company through an IPO and six years of rapid growth. Prior to joining LinkedIn, he oversaw mobile ads engineering at Google, including the integration of the US$750 million acquisition of AdMob, a leading mobile monetisation platform.
Scott’s influence extends beyond the corporate realm. He is the host of the ‘Behind the Tech’ podcast, featuring interviews with tech industry luminaries who have shaped today’s technological landscape. He has also authored the book ‘Reprogramming the American Dream,’ which explores how AI can realistically benefit everyone, not just the privileged few.
As a co-inventor on several patents around search and information extraction, Scott has also authored publications on dynamic binary rewriting, collectively cited hundreds of times in scholarly research. His contributions have garnered recognition, including a Google Founder's Award, an Intel Ph.D. Fellowship, and an ACM Recognition of Service Award.
Beyond his professional accomplishments, Kevin actively advises several Silicon Valley startups, serves as an angel investor, and founded the non-profit organisation Behind the Tech. He is an emeritus of the Anita Borg Institute's board of trustees and a trustee of The Scott Foundation. Additionally, Scott serves on the Leadership Council for Harvard's Technology for Public Purpose (TAPP) program, reflecting his commitment to leveraging technology for societal benefit.
With his diverse background spanning engineering, leadership, entrepreneurship, and academia, Scott brings a unique perspective and valuable experience to his role as CTO at Microsoft. His passion for creating impactful technologies, fostering innovation, and leveraging AI for the greater good aligns with Microsoft’s mission and positions the company as a driving force in shaping the future of technology.
Driving innovation at Microsoft
At Microsoft Build 2024, Kevin highlighted the company's commitment to making AI accessible to a wide range of customers. “We have over 50,000 customers using Azure AI tools and the Azure AI platform,” he said, emphasising the diversity of Microsoft’s customers, from small startups to Fortune 100 companies.
A major part of Microsoft's AI strategy involves its close collaboration with OpenAI. As Scott explains: “We are riding a fundamental wave in the development of this AI platform.” He highlights OpenAI's recent launch of GPT-4o as “a really stunning achievement, a multimodal model that understands a bunch of different input types, from video to text to speech, and it can respond in a bunch of rich ways.”
Microsoft has been heavily involved in the development and optimisation of GPT-4o. “An enormous amount of work has gone into GPT-4o, in both the model itself, as well as the supporting infrastructure around it, to ensure that it's safe by design,” he notes.
Scott also emphasised Microsoft's focus on efficiency, stating: “Between the launch of GPT-4, it's 12 times cheaper to make a call to GPT-4o than the original chat or the GPT-4 model, and it's also six times faster in terms of time to first token response.”
Looking ahead, Scott expressed optimism about continued AI progress. “There's no point of diminishing marginal return here. You can count on things getting more robust and cheaper at a pretty aggressive clip over time.”
Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI allows it to push the frontiers of AI capabilities while optimising efficiency and safety. As Scott put it: “It's a really important thing to internalise, and something that we challenge ourselves on at Microsoft all the time is to aim for things that are really, truly ambitious.”
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