Shadow Ruler of Microsoft
Founder of Microsoft Bill Gates has not officially managed his brainchild for a long time, but continues to “pull the strings”, remaining in the shadow of the current top management, according to Business Insider. He’s behind Microsoft’s obsession with AI. It is quite possible that decisions regarding numerous prohibitions and restrictions for Russians come from him.
Cardinal grise with billions to his name
Bill Gates never left Microsoft and continues to lead the company, although the chair of its CEO has long been occupied by a completely different person. This is the opinion of Business Insider experts – they spoke with a number of knowledgeable Microsoft employees, and many of them confirmed that the corporation is moving in the direction that Bill Gates is pointing at it.
Gates is among the richest people on the planet. He stepped down as CEO of his corporation in 2010, handing over the reins to Microsoft veteran Steve Ballmer. At the beginning of 2014, Satya Nadella took the helm of the corporation; he had been working there since 1992. At the time of publication, he was still its CEO.
According to the publication, it is Bill Gates who is the initiator of Microsoft’s new strategy aimed at popularizing artificial intelligence and its implementation in almost all of the corporation’s products. Let us recall that in recent years Microsoft has become very close to the OpenAI company, which is behind the ChatGPT neural network and a number of other developments in the field of AI. Microsoft is very active in funding its activities.
According to Business Insider, one of Gates’ proposals was to create a new personal assistant, and this after a number of unsuccessful projects of this kind. Many still remember the virtual assistant “Clippy” – that same paper clip from the early versions of Microsoft Office, which was more annoying than helpful. Most users were in a hurry to disable it as soon as possible, so that it would not interfere with their work.
Another example is Cortana, which Microsoft created as Apple’s answer to Siri and failed miserably. According to two Business Insider sources at Microsoft, Gates handed over a note to the corporation’s management with a proposal to create a new assistant, which was perceived almost as “Gospel.” This is how Copilot was born – initially a programming assistant in the GitHub service, and now a full-fledged virtual assistant in many Microsoft projects, including Windows, where it replaced Cortana in August 2023.
How Gates promoted artificial intelligence
Having transferred the post of CEO, Gates ultimately remained on the board of directors of his corporation, although he planned to leave it back in 2014. One of the chairs on it belonged to him until the spring of 2021 – then Gates found himself at the epicenter of the scandal about which CNews wrote – his was caught having intimate relationships on the side, and this, in turn, led to the collapse of his marriage with Melinda Gates (Melinda Gates), which lasted for decades. But even after that, Gates continued to secretly lead Microsoft, Business Insider experts believe.
For example, in mid-2022, he privately proposed to OpenAI to create a neural network that could pass very difficult exams in basic disciplines. A little later, the GPT-4 neural network saw the light of day, the premiere of an early version of which took place over dinner at Gates’ house. Among the guests that evening, by the way, was the current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Gates was so amazed by what he saw that he soon advised Microsoft’s top management to use GPT-4 in the corporation’s products. Gates emphasized that a large language model trained on the entire public Internet could finally usher in the era of personal assistants. As you know, Microsoft took Gates’ advice – now OpenAI language models can be found even in the Bing search engine.
Not just artificial intelligence
Apparently, Gates, now 68 years old, continues to actively “pull the strings” at Microsoft that lead far beyond artificial intelligence. Most likely, the software corporation still largely depends on the decisions that the billionaire makes, and on the advice and suggestions that he expresses. “Satya (Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft – CNews note) and the entire senior management team rely very heavily on Gates. His opinion is sought every time we make major changes,” an unnamed senior executive told Business Insider.
According to the publication, personally Satya Nadella uses the advice and experience of Bill Gates. Business Insider’s interlocutors, for the most part, argue that the influence of the corporation’s founder currently extends “far beyond OpenAI.” In particular, Gates, according to them, is involved in the review of Microsoft products and the selection of new representatives of the corporation’s top management.
Don’t chip, at least block
What else Microsoft is doing at the behest or with the tacit consent of its founder remained unknown at the time of publication.
It may well turn out that it is in some way connected with the unprecedented level of pressure on Russians that Microsoft is currently exerting. Over the past two years, Microsoft has introduced a gigantic number of its own anti-Russian sanctions – citizens of the country are not allowed to update and test Windows or help in the development of ChatGPT , renew licenses, use its cloud services, and this is only a small part of the restrictions.
Bill Gates, given how much Microsoft depends on his decisions (according to Business Insider), could well be behind all the sanctions.
In 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, a conspiracy theory emerged that Gates wants to chip Russians (and citizens of other countries) through a COVID-19 vaccine. Then Gates made a statement that there was no talk of any microchips in vaccinations. As for the current publication by Business Insider that Gates has become the eminence grise of Microsoft, the billionaire has not yet commented on it.