Lex Fridman PodcastKevin Scott: Microsoft CTO | Lex Fridman Podcast #30
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
100 min read · 20,303 words- 0:00 – 15:00
The following is a…
- LFLex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Kevin Scott, the CTO of Microsoft. Before that, he was the senior vice president of engineering and operations at LinkedIn, and before that, he oversaw mobile ads engineering at Google. He also has a podcast called Behind the Tech with Kevin Scott, which I'm a fan of. This was a fun and wide-ranging conversation that covered many aspects of computing. It happened over a month ago, before the announcement of Microsoft's investment in OpenAI that a few people have asked me about. I'm sure there'll be one or two people in the future that'll talk with me about the impact of that investment. This is the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on iTunes, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter, @lexfridman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N. And I'd like to give a special thank you to Tom and Ilanti Beckhausen for their support of the podcast on Patreon. Thanks, Tom and Ilanti. Hope I didn't mess up your last name too bad. Your support means a lot and inspires me to keep this series going. And now here's my conversation with Kevin Scott. You've described yourself as a kid in a candy store at Microsoft, because of all the interesting projects that are going on. Can you, uh, try to do the impossible task and give a, uh, brief whirlwind view of all the spaces that Microsoft is working in-
- KSKevin Scott
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... (laughs) both research and product?
- KSKevin Scott
If you include research, it becomes even, uh, even more difficult. So, so, like, I, I think broadly speaking, Microsoft's product portfolio includes everything from, you know, big cloud business, uh, like a big set of SaaS services. We have, you know, sort of the original, uh, or, like, some of what are among the original productivity, uh, software products that everybody uses. We have an operating system business. We have a hardware business, uh, where we make everything from, uh, computer mice and headphones to high-end, uh, high-end personal computers and laptops. We have a fairly broad-ranging research group where, like, we have people doing everything from economics, uh, research, so, like there's this really, uh, really smart, uh, young economist, Glen Weyl, uh, who, uh, like my group works with a lot, who's, uh, doing this research on, uh, these things called radical markets. Uh, like, he's written an entire, uh, entire technical book about, uh, about this whole notion of, uh, radical markets. So, like, the research group l- sort of spans from that to human computer interaction to artificial intelligence a- and we have, uh, we have GitHub, we have LinkedIn, uh, we have a search, advertising, and news business, and, and, like, probably a bunch of stuff that I'm embarrassingly, uh, not-
- LFLex Fridman
Forget, yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
... recounting in, in this, uh, list.
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, gaming too, Xbox and so on, right?
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah. Gaming, for sure. Like, I was, uh, I was having a super fun conversation this morning with, uh, with Phil Spencer. So, when I was, uh, in college, there was this game that, uh, LucasArts made called Day of the Tentacle that my friends and I, uh, played forever. And, like, we're, you know, doing some, uh, interesting collaboration now with, uh, the folks who made, uh, Day of the Tentacle. And I was, like, completely nerding out with Tim Schafer, like, the guy who wrote, uh, Day of the Tentacle, uh, this morning, just a complete fanboy, uh, which-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- KSKevin Scott
... uh, which, uh, you know, sort of, uh, it, like, happens a lot, uh, like, you know, Microsoft has been doing so much stuff, it's such breadth for such a long period of time that, uh, you know, like, being CTO, like, most of the time my job is very, very serious, and sometimes, like, I get to, I get caught up in, like, how, uh, amazing it is to be able to have the conversations that I have with the people I, I get to have them with.
- LFLex Fridman
You have to reach back into the sentimental... And what's the, the, the rad- uh, radical markets and the, and the ec- economics?
- KSKevin Scott
So, the, the idea with radical markets is, like, can you come up with new market-based mechanisms to, uh, you know, I, I think we have this, uh, we're having this debate right now, like, does capitalism, uh, work? Uh, like, uh, free markets work? Uh, can the incentive structures that are built into these systems produce outcomes that are creating sort of equitably distributed benefits for every member of society?
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
You know, and I think it's a reasonable, uh, reasonable set of questions, uh, to be asking. And so, what Glen... And, and so, like, you know, one mode of thought there, like, if you have doubts that the, that the markets are actually working, you can sort of, like, tip towards, like, okay, let's, uh, let's become more socialist, and-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
... uh, you know, like, have central planning and, you know, s- government or some other central organization is, like, making a bunch of decisions about how, you know, sort of work gets done, and-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
... uh, you know, like, where the, you know, where the investments and where the outputs of those investments get distributed. Uh, Glen's notion is, like, l- lean more into, uh, like, the market-based mech- mechanism. So, like, for instance, uh, you know, this is one of the more radical ideas. Like, suppose that you had a radical pricing mechanism for assets like real estate, where, uh, you were, you could be bid out of your position in, in, in your home, uh, you know, for instance.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Oh. Yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
So, like, if somebody came along and said, you know, like, "I've, I can find higher economic utility for this piece of real estate that you're running your, your business in, uh, like..."... then, uh, like, you either have to, you know, sort of bid to sort of stay or, like, the thing that's got the higher economic utility, uh, you know, sort of takes over the asset. Which would make it very difficult to have the same sort of rent-seeking, uh, behaviors that you've got right now because, uh, like, if you did speculative bidding, like, you would, you'd very quickly, like, lose a whole lot of money. And so, like, the prices of the assets would be sort of, like, very closely indexed to, uh, like, the value that they could produce.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- KSKevin Scott
And, like, because, like you'd have this sort of real time mechanism that would force you to sort of mark the value of the asset to the market, then it could be taxed appropriately. Like, you couldn't sort of sit on this thing and say, "Oh, like, this house is only worth 10,000 bucks," when, like, everything around it is worth 10 million.
- LFLex Fridman
That's really interes- so it's an incentive structure that, uh, where the prices match the value, uh, much better?
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
So, the, it, it...
- KSKevin Scott
And Glen does a much, much better job than I do at selling it, and I probably picked the world's worst example-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
... you know, and, and, and. But, like, it, and it's, it's intentionally provocative.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- KSKevin Scott
Uh, you know, so, like, this whole notion, like, I, you know, like I, I'm not sure whether I like this notion that, uh, like, we could have a set of market mechanisms where I could get bid out of-
- 15:00 – 30:00
That's easier to put…
- KSKevin Scott
comp- uh, like who work for those companies are getting compensated, uh, for their data contributions into the system. And so ...
- LFLex Fridman
That's easier to put a number on their contribution 'cause they're explicitly labeling data.
- KSKevin Scott
Correct.
- LFLex Fridman
But you're saying that we're all contributing data in different kinds of ways.
- KSKevin Scott
We are.
- LFLex Fridman
And it would b- it's fascinating to start to explicitly try to put a number on it.
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
Do you think that's ev- that's possible?
- KSKevin Scott
I dunno, it's hard. It really is. Because, you know, we don't have as much transparency as, uh, as I think we need, uh, in like how the data is getting used. And it's, you know, super complicated. Like, you know, we, we, uh, you know, I think as technologists sort of appreciate like some of the subtlety there. It's like, you know, the data, the data gets created and then it gets, you know, it's not valuable-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
... like, yeah, the, the data exhaust that you give off, uh, or the, you know, the explicit data that I am putting into the system isn't value, valuable, isn't super valuable atomically.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
Like it, it's only valuable when you sort of aggregate it together into, you know, sort of large numbers. This is true even for these, like folks who are getting compensated for like labeling things. Like for supervised machine learning now, like you need lots of labels to train a, you know, a model that performs well. And so, you know, I think that's one of the challenges. It's like how do you, you know, how do you sort of figure out like, because this data's getting combined in so many ways, uh, like through these combinations, like how the value is flowing.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, that's, that's fascinating. (laughs)
- KSKevin Scott
Tough. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Yeah, and it's fascinating that you're thinking about this. And I wa- I wasn't even going to this conversation expecting the breadth (laughs) of, uh, of research really that, uh, Microsoft broadly is thinking about. You are thinking about at Microsoft. So, if we go back to, uh, '89 when Microsoft released Office, or 1990 when they released Windows 3.0-
- KSKevin Scott
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... (laughs) how's the, in, in your view... I know you weren't there the entire, you know, the, through its history, but how has the company changed in the 30 years since, as you look at it now?
- KSKevin Scott
The good thing is it's started off as a platform company. Like, it's still a platform company. Like the parts of the business that are like thriving and most successful are those that are building platforms. Like the mission of the company now is... The m- the mission's changed. It's like changed in a very interesting way. So, you know, back in '89, '90, like they were still on the original mission, which was like put a PC on every desk and in every home. Uh, like and, and it was basically about democratizing access to this, uh, new personal computing technology which, when Bill started the company, integrated circuit microprocessors were a brand new thing, and like people were building, you know, home brew computers, uh, you know, from kits like the way people build ham radios, uh, right now. Y- and I- and I think this is sort of the interesting thing for folks who build platforms in general, Bill saw the opportunity there, and what personal computers could do. And it was like a, it was sort of a reach. Like you just sort of imagine like where things were...... you know, when they started the company versus where things are now. Like, i- in success, when you democratize a platform, it just sort of vanishes into the platform-
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- KSKevin Scott
... and you don't pay attention to it anymore. Like, operating systems aren't a thing anymore.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- KSKevin Scott
Like, they're super important, like, completely critical and, like, when, you know, when you see one, you know, fail, like, you, you just, you sort of understand. But, like, you know, it's not a thing where you're, you're not, like, waiting for, you know, the next operating system thing, uh, in the same way that you were in 1995, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Sure. That's true.
- KSKevin Scott
Like, in 1995, like, you know, we had Rolling Stones on the stage with the Windows 95 rollout.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- KSKevin Scott
Like, it was, like, the biggest thing in the world. Everybody would... They lined up for it-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
... the way that people used to line up for iPhone. But, like, you know, eventually, and, like, this isn't-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- 30:00 – 45:00
And it's fascinating because…
- KSKevin Scott
process to be a democratic thing, not a, you know, not- not some sort of weird thing where you've got a non-representative group of people making decisions that have, you know, like, national and global impact.
- LFLex Fridman
And it's fascinating because the digital space is different than the, the physical space in which nations and governments were established. And so, what policy looks like globally, what bullying looks like globally, what's healthy communication looks like globally is, is an open question.
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
And we're all figuring it- figuring it out together, which is fascinating.
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah. I mean, with, with, uh, you know, sort of fake news, for instance, and-
- LFLex Fridman
Deepfakes and f- fake news generated by humans?
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah. So, and, I mean, we can talk about deepfakes. Like, I think that is another, like, you know, sort of v- very interesting level of complexity. But, like, if you think about just the written word, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
Like, we have... You know, we invented papyrus, what, 3,000 years ago where we, you know, you could sort of, uh, put, uh, put word on, uh, on paper. And then, uh, 500 years ago, like, we, uh, we get the printing press, uh, like, where the word gets a little bit more ubiquitous. And then, like, you really, really didn't get ubiquitous printed word until the end of the 19th century when the offset press was invented. And then, you know, it just sort of explodes and like, you know, b- the cross product of that and the industrial revolution's need for educated citizens resulted in, like, this rapid expansion of literacy and the rapid expansion of the word. But, like, we had 3,000 years up to that point to figure out, like, how to, you know, like, what's, what's journalism? What's editorial integrity? Like, what's, you know, what's scientific peer review? Wh- and so, like, you built all of this mechanism to, like, try to filter through all of the noise that the technology made possible to, like, you know, sort of getting to something that society could cope with. And, like, if you think about just the piece, the PC didn't exist 50 years ago. Uh, and so in, like, this span of, you know, like, half a century, like, we've gone from no digital, you know, no ubiquitous digital technology to, like, having a device that sits in your pocket where you can-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
... sort of say whatever's on your mind to, like, what, what, what did Mary have in her, Mary Meeker just released her new, uh, uh, like, slide deck last week. You know, we, we've got 50% penetration of the, of the internet, uh, to the global population.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- KSKevin Scott
Like, there are, like, three and a half billion people who are connected now. So, it's like, it's crazy.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- KSKevin Scott
Crazy, we're like, inconceivable, like, how fast all of this happened. So, you know, it's not surprising that we haven't figured out what to do yet. Uh-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Exactly.
- KSKevin Scott
... but, like, we gotta, like, we gotta really, like, lean into this set of problems, because, like, we basically have three millennia w- (laughs) worth of work to do about how to deal with all of this. And, like, probably what, you know, amounts to the next decade worth of time.
- LFLex Fridman
So, since we're on the topic of tough t- you know, tough challenging problems, let's look at, uh, more on the tooling side in AI that Microsoft is looking at is face recognition software. So, there's, there's a lot of powerful positive use cases-
- KSKevin Scott
Yep.
- LFLex Fridman
... for face recognition, but there are some negative ones and we're seeing-
- KSKevin Scott
Yep.
- LFLex Fridman
... those in different, uh, governments in the world. So, how do you, how does Microsoft think about the use of face recognition software, uh, as a platform in-
- KSKevin Scott
Yep.
- LFLex Fridman
... governments and, uh, companies? S- yeah. How do we strike an ethical balance here?
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah. I think we've articulated a clear point of view. So, Brad Smith, uh, wrote a blog post, uh, last fall, I believe, that sort of, like, outlined, like, very specifically what, uh, you know, what our, what our point of view is there. And, you know, I think we believe that there are certain uses to which face recognition should not be put, and we believe, again, that there's a need for regulation there.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
Uh, like, the, the government should, like, really come in and say that, you know, this is, this is where the lines are. And, like, we very much want it to, like, figuring out where the lines are should be a democratic process, but in the short term, like, we've drawn some lines where, uh, you know, we push back against uses of face recognition technology. Um, you know, like, the City of San Francisco, for instance, I think has completely outlawed any government agency, uh, from using face recognition tech. Uh, and, like, that may prove to be a little bit overly broad. Um, but for, like, certain law enforcement things, like, you, you really... I, I, I, I would personally rather be overly sort of cautious in terms of restricting use of it until, like, we have, you know, sort of defined a reasonable, you know, democratically determined regulatory framework for, uh, like, where we, we could and should use it. And, you know, the, the other thing there is, um, like, we've got a bunch of research that we're doing and a bunch of progress that we've made on, uh, on bias, uh, there.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
And, like, there are all sorts of, like, weird biases that these models can have, like, all the way from, like, the most noteworthy one where, you know, you may have, um, underrepresented minorities who are, like, underrepresented in the training data and then you start learning, uh, like, strange things. But, like, there, there even, you know, other weird thi- like, we've, uh, I think we've seen in the public research, like, models can learn, uh, strange things, uh, like, uh, all doctors are men, uh, for instance. Uh, just-
- LFLex Fridman
That's
- 45:00 – 57:51
That's awesome. So, uh,…
- KSKevin Scott
what were information silos before they got woven together, uh, with a graph. Um, like, that is, like, getting increasing- with increasing effectiveness sort of plumbed into the, uh, into some of these auto response things, where you're going to be able to see the system, like, automatically retrieve information for you. Like, if, you know, like, I- I frequently send out, you know, emails to folks where I, like, I can't find a paper or document or whatnot. There's no reason why the system won't be able to do that for you. And, like, I think the, the... It's building towards, uh, like, having things that look more like a, like a fully integrated, uh, you know, assistant. But, like, you, you'll have a bunch of steps, uh, that you will see before you... Like, it, it will not be this, like, big bang thing where, like, Clippy comes back and you've got this, like, you know, manifestation of, you know, like, a fully, uh, fully powered assistant. So, I, I think that's, um, that's definitely coming out. Like, all of the, you know, collaboration and co-authoring stuff's getting better. Uh, you know, it's, like, really interesting. Like, if you look at how, uh, we use, uh, eh, the Office product portfolio at Microsoft, like, more and more of it is happening inside of, uh, like, Teams as a canvas, and, like, it's this thing where, you know, you've got... Collaboration is, like, at the center of the product, and, uh, like, we, we, we built some, like, really cool stuff that's... some of which is about to be open source that are sort of framework level things for doing, uh, for doing co-authoring. Uh-
- LFLex Fridman
That's awesome. So, uh, in... Is there a cloud component to that? So, uh, o- on the web, or is it, um... And forgive me if I don't already know this, but with Office 365, we still... the collaboration we do, if we do in Word, we still send the file around-
- KSKevin Scott
No, no.
- LFLex Fridman
... uh, with everybody. So, so this is-
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah, no, no. It, we, it... We're, we're already a little bit better than that.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
And like, you know, so, like, the fact that you're unaware of it means we've got a better job to do (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- KSKevin Scott
... like helping you discover, uh, discover this stuff. But yeah, I mean, i- it's already, like, got a huge, a huge cloud compo... And, like, part of, you know, part of this, uh, framework stuff, I think we're calling it... Like, I, I, like, we've been working on it for a couple of years, so, like, I know the, uh, the internal, uh, code name for it. But I think when we launch it at Build, it's called the Fluid, uh, Framework. Um, and, uh, but, like, what Fluid lets you do is, like, you can go into a conversation that you're having in Teams and, like, reference, like, part of a spreadsheet that you're working on-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
... uh, where somebody's, like, sitting in the Excel canvas, like, working on the spreadsheet with a, you know, chart or whatnot, and, like, you can sort of embed, like, part of the spreadsheet in the Teams conversation, where, like, you can dynamically update it, and, like, all of the changes that you're making to the-
- LFLex Fridman
Oh, connect.
- KSKevin Scott
... to this object are, like, you know, coord- and everything is sort of updating in, in real time.
- LFLex Fridman
That's brilliant.
- KSKevin Scott
So, like, you can be in whatever canvas is most convenient for you, uh, to get your work done.
- LFLex Fridman
So, I, out of my own sort of curiosity as an engineer, I, I know what it's like to sort of lead a team of 10, 15 engineers.
- KSKevin Scott
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
Microsoft has, uh, I don't know what the numbers are, maybe 50, maybe 60,000 engineers, maybe 40.
- KSKevin Scott
A lot of engineers. I don't know exactly what the number is. It's a lot. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. (laughs)
- KSKevin Scott
It's, it's tens of thousands.
- LFLex Fridman
Right. So, it's more than 10 or 15. What-
- KSKevin Scott
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
What, what, um... I mean, you've, uh, you've led, uh, g- different sizes, mostly large size of engineers. What does it take to lead such a large group into, um, eh, continued innovation, continued being highly productive, and yet develop all kinds of new ideas, and yet maintain... Like, wha- what does it take to lead-... such a large group of brilliant people?
- KSKevin Scott
I think the thing that you learn as you manage larger and larger scale is that there are three things that are, like, very, very important, uh, for big engineering teams. Like, one is, like, having some sort of forethought about what it is that you're going to be building over large periods of time. Like, not exactly, like, you don't need to know that, like, you know, "Oh, I'm putting all my chips on this one product, and, like, this is going to be the thing." But, like, it's useful to know, like, what sort of capabilities you think you're going to need to have to build the products of the future, and then, like, invest in that infrastructure, like whether...
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
And, like, I'm not just talking about storage systems or Cloud APIs. It's also, like, what does your development process look like? What tools do you want? Like, what culture do you want to build around, like, how you're, you know, sort of collaborating together to, like, make complicated technical things? And so, like, having an opinion and investing in that is, like, it just gets more and more important, and, like-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
... the sooner you can get a concrete set of opinions, uh, like, the better you're going to be. Like, you can wing it for a while, uh, at small scales, like, you know, when you start a company, like, you don't have to be, like, super specific about it, but, like, the biggest miseries that I've ever seen as an engineering leader are in places where you didn't have a clear enough opinion about those things, uh, soon enough, and then you just sort of go create a bunch of technical debt and, like, culture debt that is excruciatingly painful to, to clean up. So, like, that's one bundle of things.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
Episode duration: 57:43
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