Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posts an internal warning to employees about AI safety

Sep 15, 2026 07:01 AM - 1 hour ago 4

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images

In an soul memo, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella weighed successful connected the growing debate complete whether the AI manufacture is moving excessively fast.

Nadella said AI should stay nether quality control, endorsed broader third-party testing, and warned that companies must return clip to make the exertion safety, according to the memo, which was posted to a institution connection committee precocious Monday.

"As the stakes get higher, 1 should return each the clip they need," Nadella wrote. "If not you will anyhow suffer support to operate."

His comments travel dire warnings from immoderate AI researchers, who said past week that the exertion mightiness termination each humans.

This weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed slower AI improvement and said his institution would let extracurricular monitoring of its exemplary progress. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman concurred connected third-party monitoring and expressed support for slowing deployment erstwhile basal to guarantee alignment and safety.

Microsoft AI connected Monday released a draught of its 37-page codification of conduct for its "humanist" AI models. "Things we person worried astir for a agelong clip successful mentation person go very real," Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman wrote.

Read the afloat memo

"There was a batch of speech astir AI complete the weekend. As a level company, for america the attraction remains connected putting our attack into believe crossed 3 areas.

First, we request to beryllium clear astir the creation goal. As I shared, AI has to stay nether quality power and broadly use society. That intends building a frontier ecosystem wherever some closed and open-source models tin thrive, and being deliberate astir pacing erstwhile it comes to alignment. I deliberation of this for illustration testing. We each do deliberate pacing erstwhile it comes to pre-release R&D and testing. And having much outside/3P testing/testers is simply a bully thing. And arsenic the stakes get higher, 1 should return each the clip they need! If not you will anyhow suffer support to operate. That is really we activity each day. We will attack this pinch each the activity we are doing to guarantee observability astatine each furniture of stack and usage to enforce governance and containment. We will besides usage this arsenic the guideline to really we build our models. Mustafa published the "Code of Conduct" that underlies our ain first statement MAI models coming for nationalist consultation.

Second, for our customers, the cardinal is making judge they enactment successful power of their unsocial and tacit knowledge, truthful they tin build their ain continuous learning loop/hill climbing machine, without becoming limited connected immoderate 1 exemplary provider. This is really what Foundry enables, and location was a awesome demo showing really it makes long-running agents endeavor ready, pinch security, information guardrails, FinOps, etc. each built successful from the start.

And third, we person to gain the support to build the infrastructure that powers each of this by ensuring the benefits are felt locally. Our datacenter successful Quincy is astir apt the champion illustration of what it looks for illustration erstwhile we turn alongside a organization complete time, and Brad shared that communicative connected Sunday.

So really, it's 1 attack crossed 3 layers: really we build astatine the frontier, really we alteration our customers to enactment successful control, and really we make judge the economical benefits diffuse broadly crossed communities and countries.

And importantly, arsenic a institution we tin constituent to existent action down the words."

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