“We have no global growth, we need AI” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

According to Satya Nadella, the chief executive officer at Microsoft, the world needs technological breakthroughs like the emerging artificial intelligence (AI) industry to kick start weak economic growth. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Nadella disproves the claims that AI would speed up wealth inequality and in its place said that it could be a very important driver of growth. "One of the things I am grounded in is the overall world GDP (gross domestic product) growth is not stellar," he said at a panel at the event in Switzerland recently.

"It's not like we actually have economic growth today. So we actually need technological breakthrough, we need AI," he added.

Nadella then went on explaining that it was a critical challenge for tech companies to make sure that AI led to comprehensive enlargement rather than just lining the pockets of the rich. He further added that Microsoft has developed some innovations in the space and told the audience that his company was creating tools that would enable people to create this next technological revolution.

In a question about the fears that AI could lead to job losses, he responded "We should do our very best to train people for the jobs of the future," He noted that Germany - following its reunification - was a perfect example of how a workforce had retrained and adapted to the modern world.

"In our case for example, one of the things that excites me about LinkedIn is to create that economic graph which is ... which is a real-time feedback loop between skills, jobs and people, so that the economic opportunity for every individual can be maximized," he added.

"Our responsibility is to have the AI augment the human ingenuity and augment the human opportunity. I think that's the opportunity in front of us and that's what we have got to go to work on"