Microsoft says that it’s creating a new unit, the Advanced Planning Unit (APU), within its Microsoft AI business division that will help the company understand the societal, health, and work implications of AI the company hopes to build.
Microsoft AI, which encompasses Microsoft’s Copilot, Bing, and Edge products, is becoming core to Microsoft’s growth strategy — much to the chagrin of some shareholders. This week, the company reported that its capex for Q4 2024 topped $22.6 billion, a new record high, which CEO Satya Nadella said was necessary to meet demand for Microsoft’s AI and cloud offerings.
“As AI becomes more efficient and accessible, we’ll see exponentially more demand,” Nadella during the company’s Q4 earnings conference call on Tuesday.
The APU will operate out of the office of Microsoft AI’s CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, and combine “cutting-edge research” to “explore and articulate” a range of possible scenarios for the future of AI, according to job postings. The APU will also be charged with making product recommendations — and suggesting planning outcomes based on them — as well as producing a rolling program of events, publications, and other reports to “help further our understanding.”
Some members of the APU will be responsible for drafting briefs that get sent out to Microsoft product managers, devs, and executive teams, while others will assist with conference organization and drafting comms documents, per the postings.
In a series of posts on X, Suleyman said that the APU is looking to hire economists, psychologists, “and beyond,” as well as those with backgrounds in emerging fields such as quantum, nuclear, and silicon.
“We’re looking for [people] to capture this hyper-evolutionary space and let us know what’s happening and why it matters,” Suleyman said. “These roles are incredible, rare opportunities to dig deep and think imaginatively about AI, working from a vantage point at the cutting edge of AI science and product development.”
The formation of the APU comes shortly after Microsoft created a new internal dev-focused AI organization called CoreAI — Platform and Tools. A combination of the company’s existing Developer Division and AI platform teams, CoreAI effectively rejiggered Microsoft’s developer divisions to ensure AI remains a top priority.
In a memo published on Microsoft’s blog in early January, Nadella said that Microsoft’s focus for the coming year will be “[AI] model-forward” applications that “reshape all application categories.”
“As we begin the new year, it’s clear that we’re entering the next innings of this AI platform shift,” Nadella continued. “Thirty years of change is being compressed into three years!”
It’s not just Microsoft that’s reorganizing and hiring to study AI impacts and guide the tech’s development. OpenAI, Microsoft’s close collaborator and partner, brought on its first chief economist last October to lead research into how AI might influence economic growth and job prospects.
According to a recent study by the Brookings Institute, existing generative AI could disrupt at least half the tasks that more than 30% of all workers perform on a regular basis.
“Despite the high stakes for workers, we are not prepared for the potential risks and opportunities that generative AI is poised to bring,” the report’s co-authors wrote.
