Will AI Save The World + Azure's Origins — With Bob Muglia

Bob Muglia is the former CEO of Snowflake, author of THE DATAPRENEURS: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future, and ex-head of Server and Tools at Microsoft. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the latest in artificial intelligence, including Marc Andreessen's essay — Why AI Will Save The World — and the lessons in his book. We also go deep into the emergence of Azure at Microsoft, which he was present for, and how Satya Nadella was able to push it forward despite the cultural challenges. Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 0:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Bob Muglia is our guest today. He's the former CEO of Snowflake, a $50 billion-plus technology company, and he was also the head of Server and Tools at Microsoft, which is the division that produced Azure, Microsoft's cloud services offering, and it's also the division that its current CEO, Satya Nadella, came out of. Muglia has a new book out called The Datapreneurs: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future, and he's here to talk about it. But first, we're going to dive into Marc Andreessen's new essay, Why AI Will Save the World, and dive into its arguments and merits. In the second half, Muglia and I will have a discussion I've been looking

• 0:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  forward to having for a long time. We're going to speak about the formation of Azure and the conflicts inside Microsoft before it emerged. This is definitely one of the tech stories I've wanted to get to the bottom of, and we're going to hear it from Muglia, who is right there. So here we go. My conversation with Bob Muglia is coming up right after this. This episode is brought to you by Genesis. What does it actually take to put a Gentic AI to work across an entire enterprise? I recently spoke with Genesis Chairman and CEO Tony Bates about why orchestration is emerging as a competitive advantage in customer experience and what companies need to get right in the AI era. Then, I sat down with Adam Mitchell, Head of Enterprise Business Solutions at Voya Financial, to go inside

• 1:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  a large-scale agentic CX transformation, including the business decisions, trade-offs, and lessons along the way. You can watch both conversations now on my YouTube channel today. It's never been more challenging to get Frontier Compute. How do you know where to look, who to trust, or how much to pay? Akash is an open cloud that provides easy access, flexibility, and peace of mind. That's how companies like Razer were able to cut their inference cost by 15 times. Visit akash.network/alex for a free consultation. That's akash.network/alex for a free consultation.

• 2:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bob, welcome to the show.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Good to be here, Ox.

• 2:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great to have you. So I emailed you in March 2019 and I was writing this book about Microsoft, actually all the tech giants, but specifically a focus on reinvention at Microsoft. You ran the server and tools business there, Satya Nadella, eventually took it over and transitioned it to a cloud business. And we're going to talk about that. We'll start with AI. We'll talk about that. And I never heard back and I almost feel bad for sending it at that time because I think you were in the middle of being pushed out as leader of Snowflake.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  I was transitioning out of Snowflake and I don't remember the email. I apologize for not, I try and respond to these things when I don't remember, but I apologize for not if I didn't get back.

• 3:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  No apology necessary. And I, when I saw your name come through that you had a book in the works, I was like, all right, this is finally the conversation with Bob. Here we are.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  We have a chance to do it now.

• 3:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Of course. And you're at a very interesting point. You're releasing a book. You actually wrote the book, had some parts about ChatGPT and Dolly in it with basically a month after they came out. And now it's being published this month and it's been amazing what's happened with your previous company, Microsoft, Snowflake's obviously involved. And the discussion has just evolved in so many different ways. So in your book at the, towards the end, you have some discussions about AI ethics and sort of the rules we want to set for AI. And recently, Marc Andreessen, the head of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, who I'm sure our listeners are familiar with,

• 3:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  came out with this post and basically said, we don't really need to worry about any of the worst case scenarios about AI. I mean, I'm simplifying it a bit, but point by point, taking the AI doomerist's concerns and basically saying, these are actually fallacies. I know you read the post, so let's just start there. I'm curious what you thought about Andreessen's central thesis.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Well, generally speaking, I think I agree with Mark. Let me start by saying that. I mean, in the sense that I am an AI optimist and he is also an AI optimist. I'm a technology optimist and clearly Mark is as well. And, and I think that AI is going to do incredibly positive things for the world. And we're going to see an incredible set of advances over the next few years. You know, with these co-pilots or assistants that are going to help us in so many ways. AI is going to make us smarter and more productive, and that's a good thing. And in general, I agree with Mark that there's, you know, a lot of reason to be optimistic about jobs as well. Although Mark did over, you know, he did simplify it a little bit in that, in that, that while technology has historically always created more jobs than it's displaced.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  It's very inconvenient and challenging, you know, really the problem actually for the people that are displaced. And I don't want to, and to me, those are the sorts of issues that are still going to be very real societal issues over time. Even if Mark is fully correct in that more jobs are created, you know, we'll have to, have to deal with the reality that many people will lose some jobs. And I think we've seen that over time. Perhaps it's a great, you know, the transition goes well and there's great jobs ahead for everyone, but I'm hopeful about that.

• 5:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, wait, so let me stop you there for a minute because we will, we are definitely going to get to the jobs situation, but and I'm going to start to read some of these arguments that Andreessen makes and actually want to get your perspective on it.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. Cause he made a lot of different arguments.

• 5:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yes, he did.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  He was very, he was very thoughtful in what he put together.

• 5:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. So he actually splits the categories of the people that are criticizing AI into two different categories. And I think it's very interesting. You're shaking your head. I'm going to read it anyway. He calls it the Baptists and the bootleggers. And the Baptists, he say, are the people that actually have serious concern and really believe in it. And the bootleggers, he says, are people who are kind of doing this to profit off of the fear. To basically say that AI is dangerous, to say that AI is going to take jobs and to put themselves cynically in a better position. So, and he says, oh, something very interesting. He says, the bootleggers always win because the Baptists are just going to raise the alarm and be of, you know, be concerned.

• 6:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  While the bootleggers with their malicious intent are going to go and say, take that fear and actually turn it into something that furthers their self-interest.

• 6:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  What do you think about that?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, Mark sort of talks about two extremes of people's approaches to things. And, and, and he's not wrong about what he's saying, I, what I would say. But I think he oversimplified that a wee bit. It's a little bit too simplistic. I have a slightly different, what I would say is, and I think Mark, Mark referenced this, but not explicitly, and I think it's really worth referencing this explicitly and distinguishing between two kinds of fears that people have about AI. One is the fear that AI, which is a tool, that people will use, and people will use it for bad things. And Mark very clearly said in his piece that that's going to happen, and I agree with him in that. In general, we have built a lot, as humanity, we built tools from the very beginning.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Tools have enabled us to be as productive as we are in society, and, and obviously, it's, it's how we live our lives. And many tools have positive and negative uses, and AI is absolutely one of those tools that can be used for, for ill and, and can, can be used for a lot of good. And AI is a very powerful tool, and so, you know, the, the, the good and the evil could be very powerful. But I have a lot of belief that we will fully control that, that the right things will happen. Mark says that no new legislation is required. I'm not quite as optimistic about that as he is, that, that no legislation is required. I think there may need to be some. But I do share some of Mark's concerns that we could over legislate this and, and put too many restrictions in.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  And the worst concern I would have, and Mark reflects this in his, in his, in his blog, is that we restrict the, uh, the, the, all of the innovation that is happening in the open source community right now. Because I think that's where the most interesting innovation is happening in AI. And I think it would be a real bad mistake if through, through perhaps well-intentioned, but, but mis, mis, misapplied government regulation makes it so that only the largest companies have the money to deal with all of the regulatory concerns. So I do have some of his concerns on that. But this is AI being used by people as a tool.

• 8:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  And the second thing that Mark addressed, and he kind of waved this off, and I'm not with him on this, is this idea that AI will eventually become an intelligent entity that is effectively the equal of us. Mark says that's not going to happen. He certainly seems to imply that that's not going to happen. I'm not so sure about that. And when I talk to a bunch of the AI researchers, they're not so sure about that either. So that's an interesting question. And that's where I think the bigger and broader concerns of existential risk come in. This is not a concern, I think, in the next five or even 10 years. But if you go out longer, as AI gets smarter and smarter, could it do some things to deceive us? Are there ways

• 9:32Speaker 01

  we could lose control of it? While I am an optimist that we will not lose control, and that we can always pull the plug, because these things are, in fact, digital circuits running in data centers that, at least for now, we still control, I do think there is something that needs to be thought about there. So that's one area where I disagree with Mark.

• 9:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And I think, so he does say that they are going to be, I don't think he precludes the idea that they're going to be on par with us intellectually. I just think that he believes that there is, you know, a kill switch, because you can unplug it the same way you can unplug a toaster. And let me just read his, his argument to what you would say, and sort of, we can go back. Because, by the way, like, I think what he's trying to say broadly by writing this piece is that startups, you know, because that's who he funds, are going to be hurt by this fear, which he calls a moral panic, because what's going to happen is the established companies will use it to legislate barriers, and then eventually lead, that will lead to regulatory capture. I'm sure you, you know, who ran

• 10:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  a company, basically from close to no revenue to something that's now, you know, just a few years later, $59 billion market cap, you understand the idea that the bigger companies want to box out the smaller companies by manipulating these fears.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I also understand, as a very large company, what can happen when government comes down on them, because I was very much at Microsoft, and part of Microsoft during the DOJ lawsuit. So the regular, I'm quite familiar with the regulatory regime, and some of the downsides associated with it. And so I have, again, I share some of those concerns with Mark, and I think it would be terrible if that happened. And I don't think there's a reason for it to happen either.

• 11:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it can happen. I was just talking with someone today, just like, These things logically might not make sense, right? Regulation that boxes out smaller companies might not make sense. But narratives are really important here because they are the stories that end up, you know, either pushing something forward or getting it blocked blocked. And then you can end up with suboptimal outcomes, even though there's like consensus. Consensus means nothing when it comes to government and regulation.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  I do agree, there's concern about this. I, I think that, that if you, when we really want to focus on, on issues with AI, I am much more concerned not about what's going to happen in the next five years, but will happen, say 10 to 15 or 20 years from now, as these things get smarter and smarter. And we want it, we have to think about how to treat them and how we work with them. Cause I do think they'll get smarter and, and while I do agree that we can pull the plug, eventually maybe we can't. I mean, there may come a day when they control enough of what they're, they're doing, that we won't be able to pull the plug. And, and that's why I do think we need to make sure that their values are, are aligned with what society believes in general are appropriate values. Values are complicated.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Everybody has different values, but there are societal values and societal norms. And it's appropriate as we, as we create these things, and we are creating them, that, that as they get smarter and smarter, we make sure that they accept the norms that humans think are appropriate, which is why I think that Asmat's laws are, are quite relevant in, in the conversation about, you know, about AI that is, is, is AGI and potentially super intelligent AGI, AI.

• 12:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. And he does, yeah, he does go through some of the arguments about why the fact like, let me just read his argument to you in terms of why he believes the fact that we might lose control of this to be not feasible. So he, he basically says AI is math. And he goes, my response to their position is non-scientific. What is, is that it's non, is that their position is non-scientific? What is the testable hypothesis? What would falsify the hypothesis? How do we know when we are getting into a danger zone? These questions go mainly unanswered apart from you can't prove it won't happen. And in fact, he says, their position is so non-scientific and so extreme,

• 13:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  a conspiracy theory about math and code, and some are already calling for physical violence, that I will do something I normally do not do, and question their motives as well. Just respond a little bit to what he's saying in that part.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I am heartened that there is an outcry of people that are asking questions about this. I think that's a good thing. And the conversation that we've been having across society for the last five months, six months, because it really all started in December, right after ChatGPT shipped. That's when this conversation got into high gear. I think it's a helpful conversation. The concerns about regulation that Mark has, I think, are all very relevant. And while I do recommend that we be thoughtful about this, and in particular, as the very large language models that get developed, say GPT-5 as an example, and its ilk that are coming out from the other tech companies,

• 14:29Speaker 01

  that we think through what those capabilities are, and we be thoughtful about how they benefit all of us, and will not take us down these negative directions. I do think all of those conversations are important. I also worry about the potential for overregulation and overreaction. And it's sort of funny, because my position on this is shifting relatively rapidly as time goes on. Because in January, I was worried that people wouldn't think this was important enough. And I clearly no longer have that concern, because there's been so many articles and so much outcry about this. And frankly, so many scientists that are really deep into the technology, expressing their concerns. Now, Mark can assign motives for this or not. I'm not trying to assign any motives associated with it.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  I think people are just genuinely concerned about what they're doing.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  With the realization that there are some incredible, that this is very, very powerful technology that will affect society. That's why I always come back to saying, you know, there's a lot to learn from Isaac Asimov and the things that he talked about because he really did project a society where we coexisted with intelligent machines. And he thought about it in his stories, he wrote about many of the challenges that are associated with that. They're really parables that, that, that provide us with some guidance here. And so I think that's all very relevant. Um, I am, I do think that, that it's appropriate for government to be worried about this and talking about this. Should regulation be going down now? I think it's a little early. I definitely think it's early because I don't think we know what to regulate. And I do think we have to be cautious.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  I think we'll learn a lot as well from what other parts of the world are doing. Europe has historically taken a more active regulatory role in technology and it would not surprise me if that's also the case here.

• 16:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  And we already saw Italy make some moves in that regard.

• 16:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, they rolled that back though, so.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  True.

• 16:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's talk about, so you mentioned the job thing. So let's talk about the job thing for a second because I like, I do want, let's get into this discussion a little bit about his arguments against being worried. I'm not, I'm not saying I'm taking a side. I just think it's interesting to discuss. So he talks about how automation, the automation can kill jobs. And he goes, the core mistake of the automation kills jobs doomers, that they doomers keep making is called the lump of labor fallacy. This fallacy is incorrect notion that there is a fixed amount of labor to be done in the economy at any given time. Either machines do it or people do it. And if machines do it, there will be no work for people to do. And he goes, when technology is applied to production, you get productivity growth, an increase in output generated by a reduction in inputs.

• 17:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  The result is lower prices for goods and services. As prices for goods and services fall, we pay less for them, meaning that we now have extra spending power, which we would use to buy things. This increases demand in the economy, which drives the creation of new production, including new products and new industries, which then creates new jobs for the people who were replaced by machines in prior jobs. The result is a larger economy with a higher material prosperity, more industries, more products and more jobs. Your thoughts?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  I agree with all that. I mean, he's totally right. The only thing is, there's one element he left out, which is time.

• 17:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  And, and, and these things happen over a period of time. And, and what's happening now, and this is an incredibly important point, is they're happening very quickly. When, you know, when, when, in the past, when technology affected jobs, it happened over years and decades. Um, it's not going to take decades. It's just not. It's months, it's days, months, and maybe years we're talking about. And so, you know, if in fact, we have automated, we have automation to the point where autonomous self-driving cars become a reality. And Uber and all of the other, the other, other car fleets replace their drivers with, with robots.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  That is going to displace the jobs of a lot of people that, that use that particular field. As almost, you know, either it's their primary income, or it's a last ditch income. You know, so there's real human displacement issues that I think are quite real and cannot be ignored in this. I mean, it's very, very important. Over time, Mark is correct. I believe more jobs will be created. But will those people be able to be trained to do some of those jobs? Classically, there's always been an issue in human history with this. And the speed at which the potential for this displacement is happening makes this more acute than perhaps past ones in the past.

• 18:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  That I agree with a hundred percent. The, um, the way that he ends his piece, I mean, he ends his piece with this like cute thing about how the people who build the AI before are legends and the people who are building AI today are heroes, which is like kind of an interesting assignment to people without, you know, to say that each and every one of them fit into that category is, I think it cheapens the word legend and hero. But that's a lecture for another day. Um, I'm curious.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Ending of his piece, though, I mean, you know, the little key ending.

• 19:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm curious, he makes a point right before that, talking about how the US and China are basically interlinked in a war over AI. And his theory is basically go ahead and win.

• 19:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  From the US standpoint, your perspective on that?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  I think that then, you know, first of all, I'm worried, you know, again, I said I have no, I have some concerns about of an existential nature, you know, in a long term period as AI gains superintelligence in particular, assuming that that happens. No guarantee it happens, but it sure looks like it's going to happen. I have bigger concerns, honestly, about the situation with China and the United States. I think, you know, I'm, I'm a Cold War baby, right? I was born in the 1950s. I ducked and covered when I was a child, right? In elementary school. I mean, I remember the nuclear, the nuclear fear that we had. I grew up with that over my, over my life, you know, it's one of the things that, that,

• 20:26Speaker 01

  that people were afraid of. It's been almost a non-issue since 1990, after, after the Berlin Wall fell. We've really forgotten about what that means to, to live in a world where we have these large existential, okay, enemies, because that is an existential situation. Nuclear war is an existential thing. The Taiwan situation is an extremely scary situation right now, and it has a potential to put us in conflict with China.

• 20:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, but the, the broader AI thing is sort of...

• 21:00Speaker 01

  The AI fits into all of this, though, because in a way, AI is the solution through all of this, is that, you know, if it progresses humanity forward collectively. I generally speaking agree, however, with Mark that we must progress AI quickly because the Chinese, you know, they will have a different, they will have a different approach to this and different, as I say, values are critical. Values will determine what is created. We are creating these, these, these, um, this, these systems, whether they're tools or entities, we are creating them and they have the values that we put in them and it is no, there's no question that China will have a different set of values. So I do agree that we need to move quickly.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  I hope that through all of this, AI will help to bring people together, humanity across the world together, because this conflict that I see coming with China doesn't seem to help anybody. Um, and I'm, and it does make me very concerned.

• 21:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, I'm with you on that also. You, throughout this conversation, you've said that you think AGI is, artificial general intelligence is...

• 22:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Inevitable, and it certainly seems that way in your book. So I'm curious what makes you so sure of that? And, you know, is that something we actually want?

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, whether, whether we want it or not, may not matter, because I think we're on a trajectory to get it.

• 22:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, no, of course, it matters. It definitely matters. You can't just throw up your hands and say it doesn't matter. We built them, though.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Yes, we did. Yes, we did. And we, just like we will build AGIs if we have the ability to do so.

• 22:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think that we need it when we're working towards technological progress. It's not, you can't just throw up your hands and say it's gonna happen. This is a decision that people make.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  People are, is a very broad statement, right? I mean, you can have your decision. Look, all these, all these scientists signed that thing that said we should put a six-month moratorium on AI. It went nowhere, absolutely nowhere. People ignored it completely. I mean, short of government regulation, which I completely do not believe is appropriate. I completely, that would be disastrous. I don't know how to stop it. I don't know how to stop it. Now, you can tell me, you can disagree, and why, well, smart people can say, hey, this trajectory doesn't result in what, what one would call an AGI, which is a, a, a system, that has, a computer system that has the intelligence of a median human. That's kind of the general definition of an AGI. And, and I, I think we're proceeding

• 23:30Speaker 01

  on a very well-defined path towards that right now. It's certainly not provable that, that it's gonna happen. And, and, and I don't have proof that it'll happen. And I will also tell you that when I started writing the book, I had no idea that it would happen in my lifetime. Okay?

• 23:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you still don't know it will happen.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  But now I believe it. The difference is, the difference is, I lived, you know, over 60 years of my life.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Having spent a lot of time reading science fiction as a kid in Asmau, spending a lot of time thinking about intelligent robots. And my entire career has been about making computer systems more intelligent and more productive for people. And I've been able to use the tools that are at my disposal, the chips, the power that they give, the database software, the application software, the development tools, the languages, all that stuff, to be able to build, you know, to work with teams to build some really cool products over time. Now, intelligence is available. For God's sakes, computers can respond effectively to English. APIs, English is now an API. Oh my gosh, my head explodes at stuff like this.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  So, so what happened, to be straight, and it's, you know, it was, I'll say, you can, you can disagree with it if you, you know, if you like, but it's what I believe. I, I spent sixty plus years of my life believing that all this technology was interesting, but I wouldn't see a world where intelligence was actually available to be applied to a broad set of problems, and now it is. Will that result in an AGI, given the trajectory we're on? I totally believe it.

• 25:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Was it just?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Will it result in superintelligence? That's a fair question. That's a fair question.

• 25:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  And then does it result in, you know, in what people sometimes refer to as a technological singularity, which is an acceleration of progress kind of beyond anything we can imagine? And no one knows that, of course. No one knows that, of course.

• 25:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Was it just ChatGPT and Dolly that convinced you?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  It was all the pieces. The first thing that got me honestly was, was, was the, was the, was Copilot, Microsoft Copilot.

• 25:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, but that code's alongside you.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  And, and when I realized that, that, of all the things that we expected, you know, the, the, the technology advances to, to drive, productivity of developers like that was just, it, it, people, that came out of left field from my perspective, that, that all of a sudden, a computer could assist in writing code, such to the point that a developer could get, get forty percent or more of their work done by a Copilot AI machine. I didn't see that coming.

• 26:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I do speak with CEOs. I guess you've seen it in action. I've spoken with some CEOs who said, yeah, we all use it. And I say, well, what sort of productivity increase have you seen? And they're like, still waiting. But the CEOs that you speak with, are they in that same, when it comes to Copilot in particular, are they in that same boat? Or have they actually seen that 40% increase?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  What I hear from the Microsoft people is that people are using it all over the place. And that it is, you know, that a lot of the code that's being written is written by this, by the AI, by Copilot. Now, it's certainly true that most of what Copilot is writing today is the lower value code.

• 26:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, right.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  That that doesn't require the level of intelligence. But, you know, but that's still an incredible productivity improver. And, you know, we haven't even begun to see these. You know, right now, what we have are.

• 26:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, no, you're setting you're setting me up for for what I'm going to come to, which is the AI, will AI save the world question that Andreessen, Andreessen's post is will AI, why AI will save the world. So I'm going to give you a minute to speak about that in a moment. But the AI, it's very interesting. I've never heard someone speak, refer to AI as, sorry, artificial general intelligence as a median human intelligence, sort of like, I feel bad for the people who just are under the gut, like AI is smart as you is as smart as you, but you're too dumb.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  That came from Sam Altman, by the way.

• 27:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  But I also like, it's interesting. I wonder like, why you think it's possible to reach that point and then not reach super intelligence? Because if an AI, which has access to all the information in the world, can become as smart as one median human being, how does that it doesn't stop? Like, can it possibly stop that way?

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think it does stop, right? I don't think it does stop.

• 27:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Just gets smarter.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  So I'm just saying, we haven't proven that we're going to hit what people would call AGI. We certainly haven't proven that we've hit super, we'll hit super intelligence. But I agree with you. If we want a trajectory to AGI, we'll reach, we'll, it'll continue to get smarter. And that's where, and that's where the concerns kind of come in, right? That's why I do think there are some concerns, because, because these entities will move beyond us in some ways. And I think that's where we need to make sure that that the values that we imbue into them are consistent with what what will protect humanity and protect our lives. Because that I still find that very important.

• 28:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. Okay, so let me now sort of end this segment talking about some of the benefits that Andreessen sees and why he believes AI will save the world. And I'm curious if you agree with him. You know, it seems like you are open to a little bit of the idea that AI could destroy the world, but let's see if it will save the world after I read a few of these. So he says, "Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful. Every person will have an AI assistant, coach, mentor, trainer, advisor, therapist that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, knowledgeable, and helpful. Every scientist will have that assistant that can greatly expand their scope of scientific research of achievement. Every leader of people, CEO,

• 28:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  government official, nonprofit, president, athletic coach, teacher will have the same. That magnifies the effects of better decisions by leaders across the people they lead are enormous. So this intelligence augmentation may be the most important of all." He talks about productivity growth, scientific breakthroughs, the creative arts going through and evolution, and AI even improving warfare, because leaders will have a realistic understanding of how many of their people will get killed before they go to war and not be optimistic about it and be able to make better decisions. So having heard these arguments, and you read it, you read it this morning, is AI going to save the world?

• 29:38Speaker 01

  AI is, is a huge part of the, it is a huge part of our world. And together, we will work with AI, you know, to defer, determine the future of, of, of society and humanity. It is going to have enormous benefits to people. I totally agree with Mark. All the things you described.

• 29:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you won't go, you won't go to the extent of this.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  With the exception of killer robots, let's, let's talk about killer robots a little different, separately. That one, that one has kind of in its own sort of, AI and warfare is a fascinating conversation. Um, uh, and again, I'm not, I'm not such a purist to suit to try and say that's never going to happen.

• 30:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, your old company is working with big contracts with the Department of Defense, so they clearly believe that something is up there.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  There's a lot that will happen there. You know, Asimov outlawed that essentially in his, with his laws of robotics. He made it impossible. And unfortunately, that will not happen. That's not, that we will not, that we will not see. Um, in terms of the incredible benefits to society, these co-pilots or assistants Mark described, tutors, the ability to incredibly to help people in learning and, and, and training in school, I believe all of those things are going to happen. It will have a huge change in society that I think is a little, you know, we have to be thoughtful about that because we saw large benefits as an example with social media. We also see some downsides associated with it. And if we're spending all of our time as humans interacting with AIs,

• 30:59Speaker 01

  I do wonder what that will do to our relationship amongst all of us. And no one knows because no one has experienced it. Society is going to undergo a massive change. I do believe at some level that we are merging with these things. I mean, that's our long-term outcome is that they are becoming part of us. It's already happening. All of us, you know, who can walk through a day without looking at your phone a thousand times a day? Kids on average spend, what, seven hours on a screen and 15 minutes outside playing these days. I mean, we are already engaging really deeply with these devices and we see some negative impacts from the way people are developing and particularly children. So those are questions that I think are still unanswered.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  In general, I believe that this will be incredible, this will provide incredible benefits to society. It's also interesting, I'll just say, one of the fascinating things that I've learned through this process of writing the book is that when I was a kid, I read a whole lot of what Isaac Asimov wrote. He wrote over 450 books, 470 books almost. And I've had a chance to reread a bunch of his, of what he wrote. He had a very thoughtful nuanced view of how robotics and society would interact. And in fact, in Asimov's writings, robots never established themselves on Earth in a major way, not in society. They were out in the agricultural fields, but they were not part of day-to-day society.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  And in the long run, Asimov rejected robotics as the future for humanity because he felt people would become too dependent on them. And in his stories, he talked about what happened as people got more and more dependent on robots and actually stopped innovating in his world. So it's really interesting because while I do agree that with Mark that all of these things will happen, and I think they're super positive, I personally can't wait to have my calendar assistant to help me fill out my calendar and, you know, and get things done. I had an executive assistant for most of my life and I don't have that now. And there's a lot of benefit to having some help with that. But I do think there are going to be a lot of really interesting societal implications to this and the way people work with each other.

• 33:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  And we'll have to see how that goes.

• 33:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  So basically, AI, I think you're going to summarize your position as AI could save the world, but not necessarily. And it sort of depends on how we handle it.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  What does save the world mean? I mean, I save the world. What I actually struggle with that is the word save the world. With the exception, potentially, where I do think it is really interesting is going to be our relationship with China and how AI impacts on that. I think that's a fascinating dynamic that will happen, you know, in part, you know, I will see some of it and younger people will see almost all of it, I think. But, um, but I, I think that AI is part of our world and it is going to become an embedded part of society. Certainly by 2030, we will not know how we live without it. That's for sure.

• 33:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  The question really, I mean, I think what he's saying with save is improve it dramatically. While everybody, it's the, it's the opposite of what people are saying, AI will destroy the world. He just used the opposite there.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  He's trying to write something provocative.

• 34:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, it's a response to the doomerism. So, okay. Bob Mugley is here with us. He is former head of server and tools at Microsoft. I can't wait to speak with him about that on the other side of this break. Also former CEO of Snowflake and the author of the book, The Datapreneurs, The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future. Well, very appropriate subtitle. We'll be back right after this. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does.

• 34:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf. It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence. So innovation scales without scaling risk. Avpoint, the unifying trust layer for AI. Head to avpoint.com to see how enterprises deploy AI with confidence. Learn more at avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast. That's avpt.co/bigtechnologypodcast.

• 35:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Violent threats against executives are growing at an alarming rate. When a company experiences backlash, executives are the first people blamed. When their address and other personal details are sitting online, this backlash can lead right to their front door. The team at Ironwall knows this better than anyone. They've protected some of the most targeted executives and individuals on the planet for almost two decades. As a wide-glove enterprise security service, they protect your people with continuous personal data removal, proactive prevention tools, and human-led emergency support. So when someone goes looking for your executives, Ironwall ensures they hit a dead end. So here's what to do. Go to ironwall.com/bigtechnology, fill in the quick form, and request your free risk assessment.

• 36:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Their team will show you just how exposed your executives are and how to lock it down before a threat reaches their front door. That's ironwall.com/bigtechnology. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 36:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Bob Muglia, author of The Data Preneur's The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future. Bob, let's do a little bit of biographical stuff. I want to ask you some of the questions that I wanted to ask you when I was writing the book, and now we have a chance because we're sitting down with each other today. So here's the story as I heard it. Server and Tools built effectively servers for companies that they would maintain on-premise and built that into an exceptionally successful, successful division, largely thanks to your leadership. In fact, it became so successful that when people started to think about the move to the cloud, Microsoft didn't want to go there.

• 37:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  When Amazon built AWS, the company basically said, "We're not, we don't believe in the cloud in the beginning," because it didn't want to lose. It hadn't, I mean, you can cite the numbers, right? Multi-billion-dollar revenue coming in from installing servers in people's offices. It did not want to be in a world where, you know, that business could be threatened by putting those servers, you know, outside the office. And Even the customers, the chief information or chief technology officers and chief information officers that were inside the company didn't want Microsoft to transition away from the old model because they would lose their autonomy and lose a lot of their power, which came with setting up and maintaining those servers in the office.

• 38:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  So it was actually a big struggle inside the company to actually move to the cloud until Satya Nadella came in and said, all right, well, we know that this is where the future is heading and that's sort of the origin. He ran server and tools and that's the origin story of Azure. That's what I've heard. I haven't been able to speak with Satya about it, but I do have you here with me today. So what is the actual story that happened inside Microsoft that gave birth to Azure?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  That's totally wrong. Why would we start by saying that? It's totally wrong.

• 38:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  I wish you would have picked up the phone before the book went out, but okay, let's hear it.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  The, um, the reality was that, that, uh, Microsoft, you know, while Steve ran Microsoft, it was Windows centric.

• 38:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Windows, but Windows included Windows Server to Steve, right? And in fact, if, in fact, you know, he, he and Bill, who was still involved, you know, in, at the company as a director at that point, um, uh, were very aware, they're, they were always very paranoid, right? They, they were the classic, only the paranoid survive. And so they were looking hard at what was happening at AWS and they saw that this, the writing on the wall. In 2009, I think it was 2009, Rolf Harms, um, who was working in the, um, business development area and strategy area, wrote a paper about how many data centers there would be in the world and they, you know, how many companies that ran data centers there would be in the world.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  And they had it, you know, at, you know, a handful, a handful. And the logic was it would all consolidate into these large systems, because these large data centers in cloud, in the cloud because of the cost economics associated with it. I didn't fully agree with, with Rolf because I didn't, because I thought that, that private clouds would be. Meaningful, and that could have happened potentially, but I actually think what happened in the world was that Microsoft shifted in that 2008, 2009 time period to move towards the cloud and our strategy was Azure. It was Azure, no question about it. And that was under Steve and that was under me. In fact, we moved, you know, Azure was originally

• 40:16Speaker 01

  developed under Ray Ozzy and it was developed in a site, in a group that was, you know, sort of not part of Server and Tools. And in my last year at the company, in 2010, really, that was the last year I was, I left in 2011, but the last year I was really running the division was 2010 because Satya took over in February of 2011. It was, it was the, you know, the Azure group worked for me. At that time, it was Windows Azure, though. Wow. Okay. Because Steve had a Windows-centric view of the world. And here's the crazy thing about it. And here's what was going on. The group that built Windows Azure built a product

• 40:56Speaker 01

  that did not run Linux and it did not run Windows Server. Let me, let me say that again. It didn't run, Windows Azure in 2010 did not run the version of Windows Server that we sold in retail. Hmm. And of course, ran just fine in AWS. And so we built the wrong product. We built a Pass product that was targeted at, essentially internally, it was mostly internally targeted at first, and with the idea that we could sell these internal services that were a whole new generation. That's not what happened. What happened was Amazon was Infrastructure as a Service and we built incorrectly a platform as a service, Pass, and literally built

• 41:39Speaker 01

  a system that in 2010 was incompatible with everything on the planet. So we were, we're making, we're totally losing. In fact, I, my, my leaving Microsoft was really about that and my belief as to where that needed to go, which was to be more compatible. And the leader of that group disagreed with me and Steve, Steve actually sided with that leader and, and that was what caused me to leave the company. That's the time that, that, that I left. I decided to leave Microsoft. And what happened was that, that

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Fortunately, when Steve asked me who he thought should replace me, I said, you know, there's one guy to do it, and his name is Satya. And Satya replaced me in February 2012 and immediately was able to affect the strategy I was unable to affect. I mean, in essence, the person that I was struggling with left the company.

• 42:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Okay, because he wanted the job and he didn't get it, which is a good thing. And what happened is Satya, being the new guy in there, was free to pursue the correct strategy. Satya and I were totally aligned on that strategy. I've never had one ounce of misalignment with Satya. I definitely had misalignment with Steve back in 2010. But I think everyone would agree that, in fact, building an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud and then adding past services on top of that was the way to go. I mean, we literally just built the wrong product. And it took, and Satya did some really good things. I mean, in particular, he put Scott Guthrie in charge of that. And that was, you know, I was not free to do that at the time.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  I mean, it was literally not one of my choices.

• 43:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  I mean, and because the person who was running it was in that job and Steve had a strong relationship. And once Scott took over, all the right things happened. I mean, basically, at that point, the product went great, you know, went in the right directions. So, you know, kudos to Satya for doing all of that. But it really wasn't a disagreement. It wasn't that disagreement. It was really a disagreement about infrastructure. It was about a weird technical thing. Mostly, it was about people, honestly. These things are always, ultimately, they come down to disagreements with people. And Steve was betting on one guy, and frankly, he made the wrong bet.

• 43:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. And this is sort of like the origin story of cloud and really Microsoft's reinvention. So, appreciate you telling us. I'm curious, like, what you think, what you think the lessons have been for Satya inside that company about how important it was for Microsoft to reinvent beyond? Because, you know, and this is another thing that I learned, that Windows and cloud are sort of two different, they're sort of competing in some ways. Because when, if you make everything available on the browser, for instance, and it doesn't really matter what operating system. You use, so.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  We succeeded at killing, you know, one of the, one of the great, you know, the saddest stories of Microsoft history was, you know, we're getting now into some of this, none of this is covered in the book. We're talking about the, the, the, you know, the issues that Microsoft had. One of the saddest stories, in my opinion, that, that ever happened at Microsoft was the death, the client API, the Windows API. And, you know, to me, the event that did it was when, when we killed Silverlight. Um, I don't know if you remember, Scott Guthrie had built Silverlight. It was a cross-platform. It wa, it was a flash, you know, Steve, Steve misunderstood it. He was, he viewed it as a flash competitor because it actually ran

• 45:00Speaker 01

  on the Macintosh, but it was a native Windows.net API to write Windows applications. And sadly, I was actually, was forced to kill it. I mean, it was one of the saddest days of my career. It was late in my career at Microsoft. And we went down, what happened is, we went down, when we killed it, we killed all momentum that existed on development for Windows, and we were never able to regain that. So the primary development of Windows programs, our browser programs. And we really lost, we've lost all developer traction on the client in that, in that timeframe. And what that means really is that Windows is really a device. It's, it's an operating system that runs on a device, but the apps that

• 45:44Speaker 01

  run on Windows, by and large today, what people use mostly are browser apps.

• 45:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Other than Office, basically.

• 45:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Well, I think that's, I mean, on Mac as well, largely that's the case.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  It is the case on the Mac, and the Mac as well. It is, it's true. But, but, but what was different is that we had a huge developer franchise that we threw away.

• 46:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  And, and that, that was what, that's what, that was really a sad, that was a sad day.

• 46:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  But, okay, we could go on that forever. So the question I have for you is about Satya, which is, do you think he learned some lessons about reinvention?

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  That, that he's carried through to the, that he's carried through to the CEO job? And I'm, because that, that is sort of like my way of asking, what do you make of this basic, basically reinvention of Microsoft through AI right now? I mean, it's not like a completely discarding of the old model, but it's a very big bet on a new technology. So what's your perspective on all this?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Well, I have infinite respect for Satya. I mean, I sometimes call him the Yoda of the technology industry. And I think that's sort of, there's a lot of truth to that. He, you know, the move that he has made, I mean, I think he's done a lot of good things in terms of understanding that Microsoft is first and foremost a services company. And that means that you deliver your, your product across every device. They understand that now. They really do understand that now. They don't always execute as well on it as I'd like them to, but they definitely understand. They definitely understand that now. And, and Satya has that religion in place. What he was able to do in building the relationship with Sam Altman and, and OpenAI wasn't one of the most amazing moves in, you know, in, that I've ever seen a leader do

• 47:20Speaker 01

  in, in, in the technology industry in my career. You know, if you'd asked anyone two years ago, or even a year ago, frankly, even a year ago, frankly, you know, where, where would Microsoft fit in the technology race for AI? Most people would have put them, you know, relatively low on the stack. They wouldn't have said, you know, that Microsoft is a leader. And now, you know, everyone is acknowledging them in a leadership role. And they really pulled the table, you know, he really, he really was able to change the game on Google. And, um, and I think it was Google's reticence to leverage some of this technology that, that won, and a little bit of conservatism that put them in this position. I think what he's doing, what Satya is doing across, across Microsoft and the apps is exactly the right thing to do.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  By working with OpenAI, they got a huge head start because they had access to these models, basically a full year before any of the rest of us did. And so, you know, that's put them in an incredibly strong position to release a whole plethora of products this year that we'll see, and I think we'll see some incredible new things coming from them. So I'm, I think Satya's done a great job.

• 48:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you have, do you have inside knowledge of what's coming? Can you share?

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Some of it, some of it I do then. And the things I do, I can't share because I do work with those guys. Most of, you know, I'm not as close to the office group. What I'm most interested in is what the office group is doing, to be honest. And that's mostly just personally.

• 48:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  What about an office is, is interesting. I mean, Google did just release, and I think this is amazing. I can't wait to use this. In Google Docs, apparently there's this button that you can hit. That's experimental now, but eventually it's going to roll out to everyone where you're like writing a document and it just finishes it for you. I mean, that's amazing.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Well, like the one thing that certainly what the kind of stuff I've seen in Microsoft announce, what I think is mind blowing is Teams will will do a summary of the meeting. You know, your meeting notes, it will write up your meeting notes and summarize the action items at the end of a meeting by taking the verbal, I mean, it's pretty remarkable. Taking, taking the voice, transcribing that into English text and then using, you know, using GPT to summarize it. It's a pretty amazing, pretty amazing thing. And so I look forward to seeing things like that, having been in so many meetings where note taking wasn't done or it was done incorrectly.

• 49:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I would love that, but it has to, Teams, it's gotta be faster. If Teams could be faster and put this into place, that would be interesting. But you put Teams next to.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Faster, I don't know what you, what do you mean by Teams?

• 49:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, to use Teams versus use Zoom, Teams is slow compared to Zoom. And I don't even like Zoom. Okay, anyway, last question for you. You wrote candidly about, and, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, but candidly about being pushed out as CEO of, of Snowflake because they wanted someone to take the company public. Talk a little bit about what happened and why you felt ready to write about it.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's been, you know, at this point, it's four years. It's a long, it's a long time. So, you know, it was, it was tough. It was a tough transition for me. You know, I mean, ultimately what happens is what always happens these things. We just disagreement between people. That's always the root of this. And in this case, I mean, the board at Snowflake, you know, had a real long-term relationship with Frank Slutman. And they saw what Frank could do in terms of taking companies public. And the, the board all wanted, would love, wanted to have Frank in that role. So that's what caused the transition, you know. But it was partially because there were issues from people issues between me and some of the board members and partially because the board really had a candidate that they could, that they could put in the role. It was a tough transition for me and it took me a while to, you know, to get fully back and, and doing things.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  But pretty quickly I started working with small companies. I realized that through that, that although I worked at, at a huge company, Microsoft for most of my career, I was actually doing entrepreneurial work while I was at Microsoft and I was often going to the new thing and building the new thing at Microsoft. And that's why I had connected with all these entrepreneurs around data and ultimately the datapreneurs. And so I realized that there was a good opportunity to help people in the early stages of companies. And that's what I've been doing mostly for the last four years. I'm on a handful of small private boards, a full handful, by the way, five of them. So they keep me pretty busy. And, and you know, and I'm, I still stay very connected with the industry. So yeah, that's what happened.

• 51:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  The book is The Datapreneur's The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future. It's available in all bookstores right now. So go check it out. Bob Muglia, thank you so much for joining. Really appreciate having you here.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Thanks. I really enjoyed the conversation.

• 51:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  I did as well. And great to finally get the, the true inside story of the, sort of the battle inside server and tools and the emergence of Satya. So.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Sorry about that.

• 51:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, no apologies necessary. We had a great podcast. So really appreciate that. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. Ranjan Roy and I will be back again on Friday to talk about the week's news. And you can stay tuned for our next flagship interview this upcoming Wednesday. I've got some really good ones to announce. And I'll do it. Well, let's try to aim for Friday. I'll do it on Friday. All right. Thanks, Nate Guatney for handling the audio. LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. And all of you, the listeners, we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 53:00Speaker 03

  In this life, you can't win.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  When the world gets you down.

• 53:04Speaker 03

  No!

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  Shwing!

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Even our news is uplifting.

• 53:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  We're not worthy!

• 53:23Speaker 01

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.