Lex Fridman PodcastKevin Scott: Microsoft CTO | Lex Fridman Podcast #30
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
100 min read · 20,303 words- 0:00 – 52:45
Intro
- 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-
- 52:45 – 57:51
Next few decades for computing and technology
- LFLex Fridman
we define the future. So last question, what do you... Let's get philosophical maybe. Bigger than even Microsoft, what do you think the next 20, 30 plus years looks like for computing, for technology, for devices? Do you th- do you have crazy ideas about the future of the world?
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah, look, I think we, you know, we're entering this time where we've got, we have technology that is progressing at the fastest rate that it ever has, and you've got, and you got some really big social problems, like, society scale problems-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
... that we have to, we have to tackle. And so I, you know, I think we're gonna rise to the challenge and, like, figure out how to intersect, uh, like, all of the power of this technology with all of the big challenges that are facing us, whether it's, uh, you know, global warming, whether it's, like, the biggest remainder of the population boom is in, uh, uh, Africa, uh, for the next 50 years or so.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
And, like, global warming's gonna make it increasingly, uh, difficult to feed the global population in particular, like, in this place where you're gonna have, like, the biggest, uh, population boom. Um, I think we, you know, like, AI is gonna, uh, like, if we push it in the right direction, like, it can do, like, incredible things to empower all of us to achieve our full potential and to, um, you know, like, live better lives, uh, but, like, that also means focus, uh, on, like, some super important things, like how can you apply it to healthcare to-
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- KSKevin Scott
... make sure that, uh, you know, like, our, our quality and cost of and, and sort of ubiquity of health coverage is, uh, is better and better over time. Like, that's more and more important every day is, like, in the, uh, in the United States and, like, the rest of the industrialized world, so Western Europe, uh, China, Japan, Korea, like, you've got this population bubble of, uh, like, aging working, uh, you know, working age folks who are, you know, at some point over the next 20, 30 years they're gonna be largely retired, and, like, you're, you're gonna have more retired people than working age people.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- KSKevin Scott
And then, like, you've got, you know, sort of natural questions about who's gonna take care of, uh, all the old folks and who's gonna do all the work, and-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- KSKevin Scott
The answers to, like, all these sorts of questions like where you're sort of running into, you know, constraints of the world and society has always been what tech is going to help us get around this? You know, when I was a kid in the '70s and '80s, we talked all the time about population boom, population boom, like we're not gonna be able to feed the planet. And we were right in the middle of the Green Revolution where there was this massive technology-driven increase in crop productivity worldwide. And some of that was taking some of the things we knew in the West and getting them distributed to the developing world. And part of it were things like just smarter biology helping us increase-- and we don't talk about overpopulation anymore because we can more or less-- we sort of figured out how to feed the world. That's a technology story. And so I'm super, super hopeful about the future and in the ways where we will be able to apply technology to solve some of these super challenging problems. Like one of the things that I try to spend my time doing right now is trying to get everybody else to be hopeful as well because back to Harari, we are the stories that we tell. If we get overly pessimistic right now about like the potential future of technology, you know, we may fail to-- fail to get all things in place that we need to have our best possible future.
- LFLex Fridman
And that kind of hopeful optimism, I'm glad you have it because you're leading large groups of engineers that are actually defining-- they're writing that story. They're helping build that future, which is super exciting.
- KSKevin Scott
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
And I agree with everything you said except I do hope Clippy comes back.
- KSKevin Scott
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
We miss him. I speak for the people. So Kellen, thank you so much for talking today.
- KSKevin Scott
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Episode duration: 57:43
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