Hi, Trevor. How are you? It's great seeing you.
Great to meet you. Likewise. Have a seat.
Welcome to Australia. Thank you so much. It's been fun. We've got lots to talk about. You've made a lot of announcements. I want to talk about AI, where it's at. I've got some fun things to show you, but just I want to start by thinking about Microsoft at this position in time. I was thinking about it during the week. We went from command prompt MS-DOS to Windows 3.11. This feels like a similar transition, you know, from being a software operating system company to being AI first. Is that a safe assessment?
Yeah, I mean I always sort of think about Microsoft's core identity is a platform and a partner company, right? I mean I look back and, you know, the anecdote I was sharing at the keynote even is the first time I was in Sydney doing some demos was, you know, you're trying to talk about Visual Basic applications inside of Excel that others can use to build applications, right? I mean that is at the core. So, even though yes, it is a shift, a massive shift, very different, it may feel like the internet or as you said, the move from DOS to Windows and maybe bigger even, quite frankly, but the core threadline for me is how have we enabled others to build more ambitious things than anything that we have built, right? That I think is the defining line of Microsoft.
It was interesting listening to your keynote earlier today and there was people behind me literally saying, 'Oh, that's cool.' And you know, there those kind of things under their breath. And that's a crowd of people who work in software and they're developing tools. For the average person in Australia, let alone around the world, is AI something that they should be worried about or concerned about?
I would say the most important thing for us, you know, collectively, both in the tech industry but in the broader society, is to make sure that the benefits of AI are really delivered to everybody, right? Because if we don't, then of course, it's not going to have the social permission. What does that mean? It means you want to be really a good users of water and energy to create AI that then is helping with education outcomes, health outcomes, public sector is becoming more efficient, the companies that are using AI are becoming more productive, they're driving economic growth that then is making its way to people's, you know, lives because that's the way permission is earned, right? Because I feel like at this point the narrative around AI is, you know, such, which I'm glad, where we're talking about both the benefits and the unintended consequences versus waiting. And that debate is a good debate to have versus just indexing on any one of them, right? Because just to say AI is all about sort of the fear of AI, that won't help because it's inevitable that this is a secular change. The question is how do we drive that change such that the benefits really are getting through to everybody.
Feels like a secular change and also a societal change. That's right. Which also brings up one of the other concerns I think in society, which is jobs. One of the most common questions I get when interviewed about it is, you know, but it's going to take jobs or cost jobs. How do you answer that to people in the general public about where jobs are going to go with AI?
Yeah, I mean I think the one thing is, you know, to start with, I think in recognizing even right now in the state of AI and quite frankly even for the foreseeable future is more about what I'll call task level automation inside of jobs, right? You know, yesterday I was talking to some local Australian startup doing a fantastic job of building a scribe tool for doctors. And one of the things he was describing to me was how much it's benefiting the physicians by reducing their paperwork burden and helping them spend more time with patients, right? So, that's the type of task that they did that AI does so that they can do the real job, which is take care of patients. And that's happening even in office work, right? When I think about even my own job, right? You know, was I meant to mostly triage email or can I do things where I can focus my attention on being able to really get the deep insights, pass better judgment on things that I need to do so and so on. So, I think that that's one aspect of it. But at the same time, I'm clear-eyed that that's why I think even the skills announcement we had, which is about how do we really make sure that as even new job opportunities get created and maybe in different forms, we have the skills required to be able to take those jobs.
And you've made a big commitment here in Australia to that skilling.
That's right. We have now, you know, committed to, you know, training more than 3 million people in Australia along with obviously all the other investments we're making around the data centers. So, big investment in skills for Australians and that's coming from Microsoft.
Is there a reason why Australia gets that investment? Is that an endorsement of our people or our industry?
For sure. I mean Australia is a very important market for us. And whenever I think about it, again, I go back to, you know, as a multinational company, how are we going to have a license to operate in Australia? It's primarily by making sure that we invest in this country, not only our own people but also our data centers and we're doing things like skilling and things that we're doing in cybersecurity with the Signals Directorate. These are all important investments ultimately to create local surplus, right? When that startup, when Australian Post can use this in order to be able to, you know, have accessibility be core to them and their co-pilot adoption or CBA uses it for their customer applications or what have you. And these are things ultimately that will drive our business.
And did you get a sense, you obviously met with the Prime Minister to make some of those announcements. Is the Australian government ready for AI? Are you helping them along the way or are they coming to you for help?
Well, first of all, I think in Australia, I would say the government has taken really a progressive approach to sort of making sure that they're thinking about what are the positives of AI, what are some of the things that they need to get ahead in terms of whether it's safety or whether it's around skills and what have you. And it's fantastic to see their adoption and thoughtfulness when it comes to AI. And also the human capital in Australia, right? Which is, as I said, is whether it's in these large-scale multinational companies that are operating or the startups that are getting born here and not only building for Australia but for the world, the high ambition here. This is the first time I'd say in the world and you see it in Australia that the rate of diffusion is such that there's no sort of I would say time lag between what may be happening on the West Coast of the United States or the East Coast of China and what's happening in Australia.
Now, I want to take a minute. You spent some time yesterday with a lot of Aussie businesses looking at how they're using AI. And I think the average Aussie, let alone average person in the world, thinks of AI as ask a question, get a more thoughtful answer. It's very basic from a couple of years ago. But there's a thing called agents. You know all this, but and you had the Commonwealth Bank talking about how they're using an agent in a live chat. So, what I did, I took Copilot Studio and I tried to create an agent for my family. So, three kids, my wife and I, and I thought about my busy life, my busy diary, and we have a shared family calendar. So, I wanted to demonstrate it to you if I could.
