Microsoft executive VP bets big on AI

The big picture: Microsoft is hosting an event Friday at its Redmond headquarters that will serve as both a party to mark the 50th anniversary of its founding and a launchpad for its newest features for Copilot.

• Guthrie, who is now Microsoft's executive VP of cloud and AI, told Axios that artificial intelligence is going to be "one of the most profound things in our lifetime — maybe several lifetimes."
• "Ultimately it's going to be bigger than the smartphone," he said. "It's going to be bigger than the internet."

Zoom in: For Guthrie, the big "aha" moment around AI came during an August 2022 dinner at Bill Gates' house, where Sam Altman and Greg Brockman from OpenAI demoed what would become GPT-4.

Catch up quick: ChatGPT came out in November 2022 and was based on GPT-3.5.

During that demo, Guthrie, Gates, CEO Satya Nadella and longtime Microsoft executive Rajesh Jha each took a turn trying to stump the AI model.

• Guthrie asked GPT-4 to give its take on various world leaders and was surprised at the level of nuance and detail it gave.
• "I would give it an A on an undergrad history or poli sci exam," Guthrie said.
• The AI program also successfully handled Gates' challenge to prove it could pass the AP Biology test.

But what really impressed the Microsoft execs was when Gates asked GPT-4 to pretend it was a doctor explaining a diagnosis to the parents of a sick child — and it offered not just the facts, but what appeared to be significant empathy as well.

• "That was the wild moment for Bill and the room," Guthrie recalled. "And we said, 'Whoa!' because it was a completely off-the-cuff question and a surprisingly in-depth answer that you just wouldn't expect from an AI experience."

Zoom out: Now in charge of the Azure servers that power ChatGPT and other OpenAI and Microsoft services, Guthrie has spent nearly 30 years at the company, which he first joined in 1996 as an intern after his junior year in college.

• That was just as the web was taking off. Indeed, his first job was in Microsoft's "internet division" — which Guthrie says sounds as quaint now as having an "electricity division."

Guthrie rose through the company's technical ranks and helped lead the shift from storing things on computers and local servers to operating from the cloud, a shift that some mocked at the time.

• "I remember when I took over Azure, I guess in 2011, so many people emailed me and said 'What are you doing? You're throwing away your career,'" Guthrie recalled.

Between the lines: Guthrie said what motivates him to stay at Microsoft today is the same thing that drew him there in the first place.

• "This notion that you could build something that would influence the whole world, I think, was compelling to me," he said. "Also the chance to work with people that were smarter than me, that I could learn from, and do it in a team environment also was very compelling."
• "That's also why I come to work still," he said.