Kevin Scott: Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft, formerly SVP of engineering at LinkedIn and head of mobile ads engineering at Google; host of the Behind the Tech podcast.
What this episode covers
Kevin Scott joins Lex Fridman for a wide-ranging conversation about Microsoft's breadth as a platform company and the future of computing. He argues AI should be treated as a platform that democratizes value for millions of builders rather than concentrating power in a few companies, and discusses Microsoft Research projects on radical markets and 'data dignity' with Glen Weyl and Jaron Lanier. The discussion covers content moderation across LinkedIn and Xbox, face recognition ethics and regulation, and the threat deepfakes pose to trust, with cryptographic chain-of-custody offered as a possible defense. Scott also reflects on Microsoft's 30-year evolution, AI quietly infusing Office and Windows, and what it takes to lead tens of thousands of engineers. He closes on optimism that technology can tackle society-scale problems like global warming, aging populations, and healthcare.
Recommended on this episode
PowerPoint
Microsoft
“I generate a lot of graphics and images and I still use PowerPoint to do that it beats illustrator for me even professional”— Lex Fridman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Radical Markets
Glen Weyl
“Glenn Weil who like my group works with a lot who's doing this research on these things called radical markets like he's written an entire technical book about this”— Kevin Scott
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
“you've all her re book sapiens one of the central ideas in his book is that storytelling is like the quintessential thing for coordinating the activities of large groups”— Kevin Scott
Day of the Tentacle
LucasArts
“there was this game that Lucas arts made called day of the tentacle that my friends and I played forever”— Kevin Scott
HoloLens
Microsoft
“mixed reality like where it's getting traction right now where hololens is selling a lot of units is for these sorts of applications for these workers”— Kevin Scott
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft
“Microsoft Dynamics which some people might not think is the sexiest thing in the world but it's like helping people figure out how to automate all of their business processes”— Kevin Scott
Big reveals from this episode
- Recorded over a month before the public announcement of Microsoft's investment in OpenAI.
- Scott frames AI as a platform that must produce more value for builders on top of it than for Microsoft itself, citing Bill Gates's platform philosophy.
- Microsoft Research, with Glen Weyl and Jaron Lanier, is working on 'data as labor' / 'data dignity' to value individuals' data contributions.
- Microsoft has drawn lines against certain face-recognition uses and calls for democratically determined regulation (Brad Smith blog post).
- Microsoft uses GAN-generated synthetic visual data to reduce bias in its face-recognition training sets.
- Scott proposes crypto-signed content with a verified chain of custody as a way to combat deepfakes.
- Microsoft is about to open-source a co-authoring framework internally code-named Fluid Framework.
Worth remembering
- Microsoft Research employs economist Glen Weyl, who wrote a technical book on 'radical markets.'
- Scott geeked out with Tim Schafer, creator of the LucasArts game Day of the Tentacle, that morning.
- The Windows 95 launch featured the Rolling Stones and lines comparable to early iPhone launches.
- HoloLens has become the first computing device for technicians and factory workers who never used computers for their jobs.
- Ubiquitous printed word only arrived with the late-19th-century offset press, after 3,000 years of writing.
- Mary Meeker's deck cited ~50% internet penetration, roughly 3.5 billion connected people.
- San Francisco outlawed government-agency use of face recognition technology.
- Scott invokes Dunbar's number: engineering teams start to fail past ~120-150 people without shared goals.
- During the 1970s-80s overpopulation fears, the Green Revolution drove a worldwide increase in crop productivity.