Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott speaking in May 2025.
Speaking on Monday night at a Build event, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott said one of the difficulties with new AI tools is “how do we figure out how to make these capabilities more valuable” so that people will actually use them.
“Pure human psychology … is throttling things,” Scott said.
In other words, people need proof that this new way of doing things is better than the way they’re used to. That’s particularly so when it comes to agentic AI, which he said requires a lot of trust.
“We need to think really quite hard about what does it mean to build trustworthy software,” Scott said, adding that not until people trust the software will they hand over control of their devices to an autonomous assistant.
And last, he said that creating a tool with artificial intelligence doesn’t automatically make it useful.
“Just because you are using AI to create a lot of activity does not necessarily mean the activity you’re creating is valuable,” he said, referencing a “meme chat app” he created solely to irritate his children.
