Microsoft president compares AI to invention of printing press

Microsoft President Brad Smith said Sunday that the development of artificial intelligence (AI) is “almost like” the invention of the printing press.

“Well, in a sense, it’s almost like the invention of the printing press that takes you all the way back to the 1400s,” he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” “It’s fundamentally an invention that can help us all do research, learn more, communicate more, sift through data better and its uses are almost ubiquitous.”

Smith said that AI can identify data patterns that humans alone may not be able to, adding that it can be used for many different purposes, including diagnosing diseases and locating people in a disaster. He added that AI is “already a part of our lives,” saying that it can do more to help humans do things.

“If you have a Roomba at home, it finds its way around your kitchen using artificial intelligence to learn what to bump into and how to get around it. So it isn’t necessarily as mysterious as we sometimes think. And yet at the same time, it is getting more powerful,” he said.

As the popularity of AI software has risen, lawmakers and technology experts have raised concerns about the use of the software. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a group of experts earlier this year called for a six-month pause in advanced AI development, warning that the technology could pose “risks to society.”

Smith on Sunday also warned that AI needs to be kept under “human control” to “keep it safe.”

“So whenever you have something that fundamentally can do good, but could also go and do harm, you put a braking mechanism in place,” Smith said. “You put a safety brake, an emergency brake. We should think about AI the same way, not because it’s on the verge of going and doing something that we’re going to be concerned about but because we should do this before it gets to that point. “