Big tech is panicking about AI and terrifying young workers, says Microsoft’s Brad Smith

A three-decade veteran of Microsoft is pushing back against what he describes as a culture of manufactured alarm inside the technology industry. Brad Smith, who serves as vice chair and president of the company, says influential voices in tech have been consistently wrong about the pace of disruption, consistently hypocritical about the solutions they propose, and consistently careless about the human cost of the panic they generate. His remarks, made from Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, arrive alongside a newly published paper on what artificial intelligence will actually mean for the workforce over the coming decades.