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After cementing himself as the leader of one of the top AI companies in the world, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has some biting criticism for his rival tech executives.<\/p>\n
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, Nadella raged that tech companies have been a little too honest in how they spin the trillion-dollar AI race \u2014 an industry dictated by a few major tech companies that have dragged the world into an AI financial bubble<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t say, hey, all white-collar jobs are gone and this could even be a weapon and we will use all the power to build data centers,\u201d Nadella explained, referencing certain tech executives<\/a> who\u2019ve bragged about AI\u2019s ability to automate office work (Microsoft\u2019s own AI CEO Mustafa Suleyma, it\u2019s worth noting, very recently claimed<\/a> that AI was on the verge of performing most \u201cprofessional tasks.\u201d)<\/p>\n Evidently, that end-of-the-office-work pitch \u2014 used by executives ranging from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman<\/a> to xAI CEO Elon Musk<\/a> \u2014 is now a little too harsh for Nadella, who himself is no stranger to defending controversial technology<\/a> from well-earned criticism.<\/p>\n Instead, the Microsoft CEO is now pushing an approach that factors in the common worker, criticizing those who get excited to announce AI-driven layoffs. \u201cNo, how about we think about reorganizing the jobs?\u201d Nadella told the WSJ.<\/p>\n The criticism comes as Microsoft\u2019s PR approach takes on an increasingly humanitarian hue. Last year, Microsoft took the unusual step of ending certain contracts<\/a> with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, citing concerns the country was using Microsoft\u2019s technology to wage its devastating war on Gaza (despite Nadella himself<\/a> spearheading the military partnership in 2021). Later in May, the head of the company\u2019s Israel branch was forced to resign<\/a> after facing internal scrutiny over certain business dealings with military officials.<\/p>\n While much of this backpedaling has been fueled by Microsoft\u2019s rank-and-file workers \u2014 who put executives under immense pressure<\/a> to cancel the company\u2019s military contracts \u2014 the ethical shift from company\u2019s leadership follows in the shadow of Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Anthropic won over some bleeding hearts when its high-profile spat<\/a> with the Trump administration appeared to paint the company as the \u201cethical choice\u201d for AI users. In reality, that was little more than window dressing, as it later came to light that the US military had been using Claude to select bombing targets<\/a> in the war on Iran.<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s approach follows the same playbook. If Nadella were genuinely concerned about AI\u2019s impact on working people, he has the power to rein the company\u2019s efforts in. Instead, he\u2019s simply taking a more pragmatic approach to public relations. As Nadella himself puts it: \u201cwe now have to do the hard work in earning the social permission.\u201d<\/p>\n