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Satya Nadella stressed that companies should retain control over their own unique and tacit knowledge amid the AI race.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. (File Photo)
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has joined a growing group of artificial intelligence leaders calling for stronger safeguards and a more deliberate approach to developing increasingly powerful AI systems. Nadella said the pursuit of superintelligence must remain centred on helping humanity and ensuring that AI stays under human control.
AI vs Humanity
In a post on X, Nadella said the development of superintelligence must be guided by a basic principle: AI should help humanity and remain under human control. “Any pursuit of superintelligence has to be grounded in the core principle that if the AI we build is not helping humanity and under human control, it’s not worth pursuing,” he said.
At the same time, Nadella called for the benefits of AI to be expanded across countries, communities and companies. He said this would require a frontier ecosystem where both closed and open-source models can develop.
Nadella also stressed that companies should retain control over their own unique and tacit knowledge. According to him, every organisation should be able to build its own continuous learning loop or “hill climbing machine” without becoming dependent on a single model provider.
He said companies should also have the ability to embed their own knowledge into models and the weights they control.
‘Deliberate Pacing’ Needed
Nadella said Microsoft supports research, focus and “deliberate pacing” to ensure that alignment is properly built into AI development as a design goal. He also welcomed ideas such as “embedded evaluators” and wider efforts to develop mechanisms that can turn AI safety commitments into practical measures.
He argued that the development of advanced AI cannot be controlled by only a small number of entities. Instead, it should have broad representation across the AI ecosystem, countries and fields, including academia.
“This is the approach we are taking: broad access and choice at every layer of the AI stack; enterprise control of learning loops and models,” Nadella said.
He added that Microsoft’s first-party MAI models would also have a “Code of Conduct”, which the company would publish the following day for public consultation.
AI Industry Push For Safety
Nadella’s comments broadly align with a growing push within the AI industry for stronger oversight as AI capabilities advance.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently called on AI companies to “pace the frontier”, arguing that safety work needs sufficient time to keep up with rapid advances in model capabilities.
Amodei said Anthropic would provide third-party evaluators with ongoing, employee-level access to its systems. The evaluators would verify safety practices, report incidents and assess the alignment of models and training processes.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman backed the proposal, saying the company also needed to “pace the frontier”. He said independent evaluators with employee-like access were a good approach.
Elon Musk also endorsed Amodei’s position, while Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis said the direction was correct, although details still needed to be worked out.
The “AI vs Humanity” debate has sharpened in 2025–26 around two opposing views: whether advanced AI could become an existential risk threatening human survival or civilisation, or whether it should be treated as a transformative tool capable of addressing humanity’s hardest problems if it is governed properly.
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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that any pursuit of superintelligence must be grounded in the core principle that if the AI we build is not helping humanity and remaining under human control, it is not worth pursuing.
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Shuddhanta Patra is an Indian journalist with about nine years of experience in covering national politics, geopolitics, defence, diplomacy and international affairs. Her reporting focuses on South As…Read More
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