MSDW Podcast: Measuring Microsoft's AI push with Steve Mordue

This episode is sponsored by Forceworks.

Microsoft has revealed a broad range of plans to bring generative AI to businesses. The Copilot brand now spans productivity tools, collaboration, and business applications, and their Azure OpenAI Service  will offer any developer new ways to incorporate the technology into their own offerings.

Our guest, Microsoft MVP and Forceworks CEO Steve Mordue, has been thinking about the impact AI will have on investments in developers and the development of custom applications. He wrote about Microsoft's enthusiasm for no-code/low-code citizen developers and why that view could be as unrealistic as the myth of the so-called full-stack developer. Microsoft's Copilot investments could expose the weak points in how customers use Power Platform or how they customize their business applications more broadly, Steve says. He even offers a few guesses at what could come next as Microsoft and others in the generative AI market accelerate their efforts.

Show Notes:

• 2:00 - Did the velocity of ChatGPT's uptake surprise Microsoft
• 4:00 - The challenge of making generative AI useful and not generic
• 5:30 - Roles that AI will impact heavily, according to Microsoft executives
• 7:30 - The value of AI tools for end users compared to developers
• 10:00 - Has no-code-low-code and the push for more citizen developers helped Microsoft customers?
• 14:30 - Progress at Forceworks on their services as a subscription model
• 17:30 - What could come next in the generative AI space at Microsoft and with competitors

References:

• The Forceworks subscription model
• Steve's blog post: The Myth of the Full Stack Developer