Microsoft vs. Apple: Satya Nadella Says AI-Focused Copilot+ PCs Beat Macs | WSJ

– Apple's done a fantasticjob of really innovating on the Mac, we are gonna outperform them. – So you feel like you've got Apple now. – We have a computer forpeople who love Windows that they can be very, very proud of. – Microsoft, CEO Satya Nadella is very excited abouthis new Windows computers because they're not justany Windows computers. Can we call 'em AI-puters?.

– (laughs) No, I like Copilot+PC. – Yes, these Copilot+PCs coming from Microsoft itself and others like Lenovo and Dell have been completely re-engineered for. – AI, AI, AI, AI, AI as a new input. – But what even is an AI computer? Microsoft's latest havenew chips and AI software that can do some cool tricks.

Without even needing toconnect to the internet. After talking to Nadella and seeing the newSurface devices in action, I'll say it looks pretty darn promising. – Here's the interesting thing, right? Which is, if you sort of take all of what we've been talking about with AI, it all came about becauseof abundance of compute, all primarily in the cloud, right?.

So, that's what createdthe GPT-4, for example, which essentially changed the world. Now, what happened in the cloud is going to come to the edge, and the edge that firstneeds to be reinvented before we talk abouteverything else is the PC. And so, that's sort of whatI think of as the AI PC or the Copilot+PCs. – Okay, translation fornon-computer scientists.

ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, those other generative AItools you've been using, the processing happens in thecloud, AKA some data center. Now, some AI processing willhappen right on your computer, what is called edge computing. To do this, Microsoft hadto add a new chip component. Pretend I'm not a computer nerd. What is an NPU? – It's a neural processing unit.

So, if you wanna build any AI application, you have to have an accelerator, just like we have in the cloud, to be able to run these matrixmath multiplications fast in order to drive AI features. And that's what the NPU does. – The NPU joinsthe CPU and the GPU in the Copilot+PCs. But here's the really exciting thing.

– Qualcomm's got a new processor, which we've optimized Windows for. The battery lab, I've been using it now. I mean, it's 22 hours ofcontinuous video playback. – These QualcommSnapdragon X series chips are based on ARM architecture. And here's another translation. These energy efficientchips are more like the ones in your smartphone than the Intel chips.

In your Windows laptop. A few years ago, Appletransitioned all its Macs from Intel chips. – To our own Apple silicon. – Those chips are based on ARM, and it made MacBooks really awesome. – We finally feel we havea very competitive product between Surface Pro andthe Surface laptops. We have essentially the best specs.

When it comes to ARM-basedsilicon and performance or the NPU performance. – Microsoft says the Surfaces are 58% faster thanthe MacBook Air with M3 and has 20% longer battery life. Intel will make Copilot PCs, but this is a move away fromthat once tight relationship. Which system do you use? – I use the Surface laptop.

– Have you heard the fan go on? – No. – See, this is what I'm really hoping for, a Windows PC that doesn't sound like it's going to outer space. (Satya laughs) – You have it, you got it. – Okay, but what new AI powers does the NPU unlock in Windows?.

– One of the dreams we've always had is how do we introduce memory, right? Photographic memory intowhat you do on the PC, and now we have it. So, it's called Recall. It's not keyword search, right? It's semantic searchover all your history. And it's not just about any document. We can recreate momentsfrom the past essentially.

– Here's how it works. Windows constantly takes screenshots of what's on your screen. Then uses a generative AImodel right on the device along with the NPU toprocess all that data and make it searchable, even photos. I got to try it out. I searched “brown leather bag.” It came up in visual search.

There's no place on this page that it says “brown leather bag.” It just knows because itsees this brown leather bag. There could be thisreaction from some people that this is pretty creepy. Microsoft is takingscreenshots of everything I do. – Yeah, I mean, that's why that it can only do it on the edge, right? So this is, you have toput two things together.

This is my computer, this is my Recall, and it's all being done locally, right? So that's the promise. So, that's one of thereasons why Recall works as a magical thing, because I can trust itthat it is on my computer. – You can also restrictRecall from taking screenshots of certain websites or appsor turn it off entirely. And it seems to me this whole next wave.

Of AI computing is gonna bebuilt somewhat around trust. If we're gonna have AI agents that go out and do things for us, why should people trustMicrosoft over another company? – And I think we are atthe very early stages of understanding how our relationship with AI agents should beshaped by us primarily because that's the onlyway to build trust. If somebody else, thisis not a vendor decision.

It's a personal, maybeeven spiritual decision of how we want to, andthat's why I don't believe there's just gonna be one, right? Because I may have multiple agents that I may want to delegatedifferent types of things to. – There's anotherAI feature called Co-creator that runs locally right on the device. – How do we really take good old paint and say, “Hey, I'm notjust painting myself,.

But I'm able to co-create with an AI.” – You put in a text prompt,”a Windows XP wallpaper with a big green mountain,” then start drawing and a stable diffusionimage generation model right on the device startsto generate an image based on your sketch. Yes, that's very good. There's local live translation, too.

It can translate live video calls or in-person conversations from 44 different languages into English. And it's fast. (woman speaking foreign language) Yeah, I have a dog. (woman speaking foreign language) Browser. All of this is poweredby small language models.

That are stored on the device. Large language modelslike chatGPT or Copilot still run in the cloud. In the coming weeks, Copilot will get openAI's latest GPT-4.0 model. – It's kind of like anew browser effectively. So, it's right there. It sees the screen, it seesthe world, it hears you. And so, it's kind oflike that personal agent.

That's always therethat you wanna talk to. You can interrupt it. It can interrupt you. – The new Surfaces willstart shipping in June, starting at 999. But I had a few morequestions about the future. AI is this new type of way ofinteracting with computers. Yet here you're releasing apretty traditional looking type of computer.

– You know, think aboutwhat we did back in the day when the internet happened. It sort of like, thebrowser was born on Windows and it went beyond Windows. That's, I think, what's gonna happen. That's why I think we want to make sure we build the Copilot+PC that's optimized for Copilot. But I fully expect theCopilot to be everywhere.

And the innovation of theinterface of your personal agent, how I interact with it,how it accesses memories, how it does actions isgonna be everywhere. It's gonna be ambient. – Where else could it go? – It'll go on the phone, right? I'll use it on WhatsApp. I'll use it on any othermessaging platform. It'll be on speakers everywhere.

So, in some sense, it'll be anywhere users want to interact with it with different modalities, right? If you take what GPTO showed and you combine it withCopilot as the interface, for us, that's the type ofmagic that we wanna bring. First to Windows and everywhere else. – What do you think about glasses? – Well, we loved glasses for a long time.

In fact, one of the thingsthat we will do with Meta is to take Copilot and really bring it to all ofthe work that they're doing. – Can we close our eyes together and we're gonna imagine the future of computing.- Okay. – What is the future that you see? – The future I see is acomputer that understands me versus a computer thatI have to understand.

– Okay, does it look like this? – It reminds me of XP. – This is what it turned it into. – Oh wow. – Could this be thewallpaper of the future PC? – It definitely can be. And you have the power to do it, Joanna. You can set your wallpaper on Windows. – Well, I wanna leave this with you.

And maybe you can make thisthe default in Windows 12. – Thank you so much.

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