Microsoft using AI to empower people, transform world: Satya Nadella

India-born Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella today said his company is not pursuing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to beat humans at games but to empower people and organisations "to solve the most pressing problems" of society and economy to make the world a better place.

As the keynote speaker at the opening day of 'Microsoft's Ignite' conference, he addressed a packed crowd of over 23,000 attendees, primarily IT professionals.

"We are not pursuing AI to beat humans at games. We are pursuing AI so that we can empower every person and every institution that people build with tools of AI so that they can go on to solve the most pressing problems of our society and our economy," Nadella said.

"The question is, how can we use all we have in terms of computational power to solve this fundamental constraint? To make better sense of the world? That's the essence of what AI is. It's not about having AI that beats humans in games, it's about helping everyone achieve more - humans and machines working together to make the world a better place," he said.

He outlined the firm's four pillars to democratise AI: Agents, applications, services, and infrastructure at Philips Arena, just across the street from the Georgia World Congress Center.

"We're taking a four-pronged approach to how we think about Microsoft AI and how we pursue this bold ambition to democratise AI for all: We're going to harness artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how we interact with the ambient computing, the agents, in our lives," he said.

"We will infuse every application that we interact with, on any device, at any point in time, with intelligence. We'll make these same intelligent capabilities that are infused in our own apps - the cognitive capabilities - available to every application developer in the world," Nadella said.

Nadella said Microsoft is building the world's most powerful AI supercomputer and making it available to anyone, via the cloud, to enable all to harness its power and tackle AI challenges, large and small.

Features such as handwriting recognition in Windows 10, or the ability to use Hello to unlock a device are just some of Microsoft's recent AI projects, he said.

Nadella also mentioned how the company could use relationship data from LinkedIn, which it acquired in June.

'Microsoft's Ignite', the largest conference in the technology industry with a major focus on security, intelligence and the cloud platform that empowers IT professionals to lead digital transformation for their organisations.

The second annual conference from September 26-30 showcases the software giant's enterprise products and services, while providing valuable IT training. It also provides opportunities for IT professionals to get together for collaboration and networking.