Microsoft AI CEO explains why the economics of information are about to ‘radically change’

• AI will cut the marginal costs of producing information, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says.
• Suleyman predicts near-zero marginal cost for new knowledge production in 15-20 years.
• Suleyman believes these changes will mark a "true inflection point" in human history.

If the internet dramatically cut the costs of producing information, AI is bound to eliminate them.

That's according to Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI.

"The economics of information are about to radically change," Suleyman said in an interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin at the Aspen Ideas Festival this week. "In 15 or 20 years' time, we will be producing new scientific, cultural knowledge at almost zero marginal cost."

Marginal cost is the change in the total cost of production when the quantity is increased. By then, he added, information will also be open-sourced, which means it'll be available to everyone.

In Suleyman's view, that's a net positive because humans' core function is to produce knowledge, and AI is just going to "turbocharge" that.

"I think that is gonna be, you know, a true inflection point in the history of our species," he said, "because what are we, collectively, as an organism of humans, other than a knowledge, an intellectual production engine."

Suleyman has long been considered one of the top minds in AI. He co-founded DeepMind, an AI lab acquired by Google in 2010 that has made significant progress, particularly in healthcare. He joined Microsoft in March and has said his main goal is to "uplevel the quality of Copilot," which is the company's version of an AI assistant that works with business applications.