Moore’s Law has been overtaken by scaling laws, according to which the power of technology is doubling every six months.
This is the word from Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, who says this empirical law refers to technology overall – including compute power and how we use data and algorithms.
He explains that the increase in technology value manifests in three ways: a better computing interface thanks to natural language; better reasoning abilities; and more context and memory.
“This builds out a very rich AI and agentic world,” Nadella says. These can be personal, team or organisation agents, while others can augment business processes.
“The question is how do we parlay this technology into the most important mission as company: to empower people with things they couldn’t do previously. This is the ultimate test: can we use this technology to have a profound impact on human life?
Our mission is to help every person to achieve more, make businesses more productive, and achieve better health and education outcomes.”
Microsoft is building AI and the agentic world via three platforms: Copilot as the user interface for AI; the Copilot and AI Stack to help users build their own; and a new set of Copilot devices.
Nadella today announced a new range of autonomous agents, as well as new tools to help users build their own.
Jared Spataro, chief marketing officer: AI at Work at Microsoft, elaborates that the ability for uses to create autonomous agents with Copilot Studio will be in public preview next month.
Meanwhile, 10 new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365 will build capacity for sales, service, finance and supply chain teams.
“Earlier this year, we announced a host of powerful new capabilities in Copilot Studio, including the ability to create autonomous agents,” he explains in blog post. “Next month, these capabilities are shifting from private to public preview, allowing more customers to reimagine critical business processes with AI.
“Agents draw on the context of your work data in Microsoft 365 Graph, systems of record, Dataverse and Fabric, and can support everything from your IT help desk to employee onboarding and act as a personal concierge for sales and service.”
Autonomous agents enable customers to move from legacy lines of business applications to AI-first business process, he adds.
“AI is today’s ROI and tomorrow’s competitive edge,” Spataro says. “These new agents are designed to help every sales, service, finance and supply chain team drive business value — and are just the start. We will create many more agents in the coming year that will give customers the competitive advantage they need to future-proof their organisation.”
Among the 10 autonomous agents launched today are a Sales Qualification Agent, a Supplier Communications Agent, and Customer Intent and Customer Knowledge Management Agents.
“As agents become more prevalent in the enterprise, customers want to be confident that they have robust data governance and security,” Spataro says. “The agents coming to Dynamics 365 follow our core security, privacy and responsible AI commitments.
“Agents built in Copilot Studio include guardrails and controls established by maker-defined instructions, knowledge and actions. The data sources linked to the agent adhere to stringent security measures and controls – all managed in Copilot Studio. These include data loss prevention, robust authentication protocols and more.
“Once these agents are created, IT administrators can apply a comprehensive set of features to govern their use.”