Microsoft’s Copilot chief opens up about the AI future he fears most

As the technology industry debates the existential risks of artificial intelligence, Microsoft‘s Copilot boss says the biggest concern is making sure the technology’s benefits spread broadly rather than consolidating into a handful of companies.

Jacob Andreou, Microsoft’s executive vice president of Copilot, told Business Insider in an interview the AI risk that Microsoft spends most of its time thinking about is what it calls “diffusion,” or making AI widely available to people and businesses throughout the economy.

“How do we take raw intelligence and turn it into something that can be a true rising-tide benefit to people in their personal lives, and then certainly to the people that make up all of these corporations, and the broad economy?” Andreou said. “In a world where we fail to accomplish that diffusion, I do worry about what it looks like as value and as the economy centralizes into, like, a couple companies.”

A polarizing debate over…