Microsoft Executive Says AI Is a "New Kind of Digital Species"
Futurism
TED2024 talk "What is an AI anyway?", Vancouver
“I think AI should best be understood as something like a new digital species... Now, don't take this too literally... but I predict that we'll come to see them as digital companions, new partners in the journeys of all our lives.”
Mustafa SuleymanApril 2024- What you'll lose0/5
Nothing taken.
- Condescension1/5
'Don't take this too literally.'
- Tone-deafness3/5
A new species, introduced at TED.
- Doom2/5
Our new companions, for better or worse.
- Hypocrisy0/5
Not yet; see 2025.
Full time6 pitchforksof a possible 25
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The occasion
TED2024 talk "What is an AI anyway?", Vancouver, April 2024.
Context
At TED2024 (April 2024; Futurism's piece of 2024-04-30 says "last week", so the exact day is not pinned down) Suleyman, then newly CEO of Microsoft AI, offered "a new digital species" as a metaphor for AI and predicted people would see AIs as digital companions. He added "don't take this too literally". The wording is confirmed on the TED transcript page (inside the page's embedded data) and on Futurism.
Crowd reaction
Critical commentary
Futurism wrote that the vision "needs some caveats": chatbots "have repeatedly proven to be factually unreliable" and it is "unclear whether AI programs will ever successfully mimic the human emotional experience", while calling the predictions "straight out of a sci-fi novel". Mild and from one outlet.