Tuesday, 4 August 2020 In the latest episode of Behind Business: KordaMentha Podcast, Real Estate Expert Berrick Wilson joins Scott Langdon to discussing the future of the retail sector and its many micro-markets, contending that struggling bricks-and-mortar discretionary brands need to re-define their purpose if they are to survive and prosper. Transcript James Manyika: I’m delighted today to be speaking with Kevin Scott, one of the leading technologists in the world. Kevin is the CTO and executive vice president of AI and research at Microsoft. Kevin has built and led technology teams at various places, starting at Google back in 2003, then at AdMob, back to Google, then at LinkedIn, and now at Microsoft. Kevin’s quite well-known in the industry as one of the people who builds the largest, most capable technology platforms and systems. I’m grateful to be having a conversation with him. I should add that Kevin has just recently published a new book titled Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley—Making AI Serve Us All [Harper Business, April 2020]. Welcome, Kevin. Kevin Scott: Thank you so much for having me, James. James Manyika: I’m delighted to have you. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for some time. I wanted to spend some time talking to you about what you’re working on right now. You’re building some of the largest, most complicated computer systems in the world, and much of that is being applied to AI systems. What are you most excited about right now in your work on AI? Kevin Scott: We’ve been working on many things over the past couple of years. As you mentioned, [that includes] these very-large-scale computing platforms for training a new type of deep neural-network model. Some people called it “unsupervised,” but we have taken to calling them “self-supervised learning systems.” I guess it’s just a coincidence, but before the COVID-19 pandemic, I spent the past handful of months focusing on the intersection between AI and the basic sciences. In particular, the intersection of AI and biology is really fascinating. We’re starting to do some foundational work there that is going to be useful for more than helping us resolve some of the challenges we’re facing right now with the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m hoping we’re going to see all sorts of fantastic, beneficial things happen after the COVID-19 crisis is over. James Manyika: We are going through this extraordinary COVID-19 moment. You mentioned that one of the things you’re excited about is the application of AI to tackle these healthcare and COVID-19-related issues. Say more about that. What are you seeing? How are you, your teams, and others applying AI to the COVID-19 crisis?