• Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, took a swipe at the rest of the industry. A year from now, he thinks, GPT4 will be even better.
  • The South Asian country has become the second largest talent base for AI developers on GitHub. India has been making positive progress.

A sincere comment

Microsoft’s prescience and aggressive investments in artificial intelligence have propelled the software giant to become the world’s most valuable company. But Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s normally reserved chief executive, could not resist taking a swipe at the rest of the industry.

Speaking at a company event in Mumbai on Feb. 7, Nadella said: “We have the best model today… Even with all that hoopla, a year later, GPT4 is better.”

Nadella’s rare judgment came as he pitched Microsoft’s growing lineup of artificial intelligence products to the leaders of some of India’s biggest companies. During his 35-minute keynote, Nadella implored businesses to start exploring how they can deploy AI to boost productivity and improve their products, while urging them not to be left behind.

Also read: French AI startup Mistral shakes things up with surprise release of LLM that’s better than ChatGPT

India has struggled to catch up

Nadella, who was born in India, said the South Asian country has become the second largest talent base for AI developers on GitHub. Punit Shandock, who left the top job at AWS India last year to join Microsoft to lead the company’s India operations, added: “India is no longer incredible. India is beginning to dream big and pursue that dream like our lives depend on it.”

The company also announced it would provide 2 million Indians with access to training opportunities in AI skills by next year.
“This is the first time I feel there is no gap between the situation in India and the rest of the world. If anything, this place is forging its own path.” Nadella added.One of those unique products, Nadella later highlighted, is Karya, an “ethical data company” that creates datasets in multiple Indian languages to train AI models while providing employment and education for people in rural areas.