Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella doesn't seem to like that fans are being super mean to generative AI. Nadella took to his new website, sn scratchpad, to talk about artificial intelligence, how 2026 will be a "pivotal year for AI," and how people should stop saying AI "slop."
It should come as no surprise to anybody that Nadella is upset when people rightfully call the output from generative AI "slop." Microsoft is one of the tech industry's largest proponents of generative AI. They have forced it, under the name of Copilot, into too many areas of their operating systems, Edge browser, Bing search, and even their game development studios are using generative AI without any shame.
Nadella suggests that when it comes to artificial intelligence, we are soon to enter into "a phase of widespread diffusion." He continues on.
We are beginning to distinguish between 'spectacle' and 'substance'. We now have a clearer sense of where the tech is headed, but also the harder and more important question of how to shape its impact on the world.
We are still in the opening miles of a marathon. Much remains unpredictable.
We are still in the opening miles of a marathon. Much remains unpredictable.
Nadella would really like if everyone just moved beyond calling the output that AI regurgitates as AI "slop."
We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication and develop a new equilibrium in terms of our “theory of the mind” that accounts for humans being equipped with these new cognitive amplifier tools as we relate to each other.(...)
(W)e need to make deliberate choices on how we diffuse this technology in the world as a solution to the challenges of people and planet. For AI to have societal permission it must have real world eval impact. The choices we make about where we apply our scarce energy, compute, and talent resources will matter. This is the socio-technical issue we need to build consensus around.
(W)e need to make deliberate choices on how we diffuse this technology in the world as a solution to the challenges of people and planet. For AI to have societal permission it must have real world eval impact. The choices we make about where we apply our scarce energy, compute, and talent resources will matter. This is the socio-technical issue we need to build consensus around.
Microsoft just announced a further $23 billion for AI investments in December 2025.
Also is there really a "need to make deliberate choices on how we diffuse this technology in the world as a solution to the challenges of people and planet"? (Is his exclusive skill to use fancy words to fail at distracting and confusing his audience, and pray his completed academia hides his lack of intelligence and knowledge?) I thought using AI is the acceptance that we don't give a crap on how much energy it uses, how much cooling it requires to run data centres, and how production of computer hardware needs to ramp up to serve both the AI industry and the consumer market.
Also is Nadella and Level 5's CEO Hino best friends or something? Hino really killed all desire for me to buy the next Professor Layton. I miss that franchise, but now I don't want it back. Below is a Google translated version of Hino's message on Twitter that I won't bother linking to (especially with their new image edit option that uses and trains so much stolen art into Grok).