The future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen and even learn.

As Irving Good realised in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve their design even further, triggering what Vernor Vinge called a ‚singularity.‘

We’re going to be able to ask our computers to monitor things for us, and when certain conditions happen, are triggered, the computers will take certain actions and inform us after the fact.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

You’ll see more and more perfection of that – computer as servant. But the next thing is going to be computer as a guide or agent.

Our role is to be a platform for making all of these apps more social, and it’s kind of an extension of what we see happening on the web, with the exception of mobile, which I think will be even more important than the web in a few years – maybe even sooner.

I’ve discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that’s already there.

Our strategy is very horizontal. We’re trying to build a social layer for everything. Basically, we’re trying to make it so that every app everywhere can be social, whether it’s on the web or mobile or other devices. So inherently, our whole approach has to be a breadth-first approach rather than a depth-first one.

Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it’s still being invented; we’re still trying to work out how it works. There’s a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn’t recognise. It’s time for the machines to disappear. The computer’s got to disappear into all of the things we use.

In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.

We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it.

Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.

We’re at a point now where we’ve built AI tools to detect when terrorists are trying to spread content, and 99 percent of the terrorist content that we take down, our systems flag before any human sees them or flags them for us.

I do think there should be some regulations on AI.

Progressively saved by the machine from the anxieties that bound his hands and mind to material toil, relieved of a large part of his work and compelled to an ever-increasing speed of action by the devices which his intelligence cannot help ceaselessly creating and perfecting, man is about to find himself abruptly plunged into idleness.

Perhaps one day we will have machines that can cope with approximate task descriptions, but in the meantime, we have to be very prissy about how we tell computers to do things.

Humans are unbelievably data efficient. You don’t have to drive 1 million miles to drive a car, but the way we teach a self-driving car is have it drive a million miles.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, and he’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.

Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.

The computer can’t tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows.