Executive Vice President of AI & Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft
Search every verified Kevin Scott interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Kevin Scott, Microsoft's Executive Vice President of AI and Chief Technology Officer, participated in a live conversation on June 1, 2026, in San Francisco, where he discussed what he described as a gap between AI hype and real-world impact. Scott argued that AI models are often more capable than the tasks they are used for in practice, a concept he referred to as "capability overhang." He stated that deployment challenges, such as legacy infrastructure, regulatory constraints, and organizational barriers, mean that scaling up AI models alone will not solve these issues. Scott said that "there is no silver bullet" and that addressing these problems will require "a bunch of technical work, a bunch of social work, societal work, a bunch of organizational work." In earlier remarks, Scott emphasized the need for AI to function as a platform that others can use to build businesses and solve problems, rather than being controlled by a small number of companies. He also reiterated Microsoft's position on facial recognition, stating that the company believes there are uses to which it should not be put and that government regulation is needed to define boundaries. Scott expressed optimism about the future of technology, saying he is trying to encourage others to be hopeful about applying technology to solve challenging problems.
“I think we have to think about AI that way. Like it has to be a platform that other people can use to build businesses to fulfill their creative objectives to be entrepreneurs to solve problems that they have in their work and in their lives. It can't be a thing where there are a handful of companies sitting in a very...”
“I think we've articulated a clear point of view. So Brad Smith wrote a blog post last fall I believe that sort of like outlined like very specifically 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...”
“It has been the case for several years now that the AI models are actually more capable than the things for which we are using them in the real world. That has gotten a little bit better in some places and actually a little bit worse in some other places. And one of the reasons is that just because an AI model is highl...”
“Just because you are using AI to create a lot of activity does not necessarily mean that the activity that you're creating is valuable.”
“Just because you are able to build systems that are autonomous, like they can do complicated things end to end, does not necessarily mean that we're going to be able to trust those things so that we can go use them.”
“These problems that I enumerated don't go away just as a function of scaling up an AI model. That there is no silver bullet that gets all of these things sorted out. And so it just means a bunch of technical work, a bunch of social work, societal work, a bunch of organizational work, a bunch of just sort of dealing wit...”
“One of the struggles that folks in my community have is the internet just doesn't work well. So you can't leverage AI if you can't connect to AI.”
“These demographic changes in the world will mean that you just don't have a big enough workforce to go do the work of the world, unless you have major breakthroughs in productivity and major breakthroughs in productivity, meaning technology. AI is currently the best shot on goal for productivity that we have.”
“If you don't have as many people to do the work and you have more people who are going to create new forms of work for society to take care of this elderly population that is growing very, very rapidly, something has to happen with the very nature of how you get work done and what productivity looks like in order for y...”
“I like a world where the capabilities of these platforms are out in the open — where it's not just one Silicon Valley company building this thing on their infrastructure with their smart people and then they decide what is going to get done with it, but it's out there for anyone who can go sign up for an API key and st...”
“And like one of the implications is if you don't have as many people to do the work and you have more people who are going to create new forms of work for society to take care of, like this elderly population that is growing very, very rapidly. Something has to happen with the very nature of like how you get work done...”
“So I just don't see how the demand for inference is going to go down.”
“The conversation was we need a billion dollars to turn over the next card. For us it seemed not a large amount of money to go run that experiment.”
“There are these nuggets that are out there right now that are extraordinarily valuable that if you just did the damned experiment — the cost of doing the experiments has never been cheaper. So do the damned experiments.”
“Pretty quickly it had saved about a billion dollars in operating costs at the company, and it was not by any measure technically the most complicated or interesting problem available to be solved at the time but it was a super impactful problem.”
Kevin Scott is the CTO of Microsoft. Before that, he was the Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations at LinkedIn.
On Monday, June 1, 2026 in San Francisco, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott joined a live conversation with Lectures on Tap, bringing together developers, founders, media, and technology leaders for an in-depth discussion on the future of artificial intelligence. In this talk, Kevin Scott explores what he calls a growing gap between AI hype and real-world impact and why there's an increasing tendency to confuse rapid advances in AI models with meaningful progress in deployment, organizational change, trust, and value creation. The lecture dives into key themes shaping the future of AI, including…
As Microsoft's chief technology officer, JP's guest on this week's episode of the #PositiveLeadership podcast thinks deeply about how technology can impact people's lives and benefit everyone. Host of the Behind the Tech podcast and author of Reprogramming the American Dream, JP talks to Kevin Scott, who takes us on a journey from rural Virginia to changing the world with AI.
Kevin Scott, Chief Technology Officer at @Microsoft , explores when AI runs everywhere, systems-not models-decide what’s possible. Related links: Explore the full agenda and watch all sessions → https://www.ciscoaisummit.com/ai-virt... Discover how Cisco is transforming industries with cutting-edge technology and business-driven innovation. Learn more: Cisco Official Site → https://www.cisco.com/?dtid=osclytb00... Cisco Products & Services → https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/prod... Cisco Solutions → https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solu... Contact Us → https://www.cisco.com/site/us/…
Kevin Scott, Chief Technology Officer at @Microsoft, explores when AI runs everywhere, systems-not models-decide what’s possible. Related links: Explore the full agenda and watch all sessions → https://www.ciscoaisummit.com/ai-virt... Discover how Cisco is transforming industries with cutting-edge technology and business-driven innovation. Learn more: Cisco Official Site → https://www.cisco.com/?dtid=osclytb00... Cisco Products & Services → https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/prod... Cisco Solutions → https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solu... Contact Us → https://www.cisco.com/site/us/…
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