Microsoft CEO encourages making AI useful lest people lose patience with energy cost (www.techradar.com)

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized the urgent need for AI technologies to deliver tangible societal benefits or risk losing public support. Speaking at Davos, he warned that if AI continues to be perceived as energy-intensive without clear improvements in areas like health, education, and productivity, public acceptance may wane. Nadella highlighted that the massive energy consumption associated with AI—especially during model training and inference—could lead to societal pushback, particularly if it begins to seem wasteful rather than essential. As AI evolves, Nadella's call for developers to focus on practical outcomes rather than just technological advancement underscores a pivotal moment for the AI/ML community. He argued that the benefits of AI should be clear and meaningful to warrant its extensive use of resources, cautioning that society's patience for "black-box" systems might soon reach its limits. This moment serves as a critical juncture, pushing for accountability and measurable impacts in AI development that extend beyond novelty into genuine enhancements of everyday life.