Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls Cricket Australia tech solution ‘one of the most empowering things’

THE people who gave the world the annoying Clippy digital assistant and took the Start menu out of Windows 8 are now part of the solution to turn around the dismal recent performances of the Australian cricket team. Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella today told a group of software developers in Sydney of how this visit to Australia had given him the chance to walk on the hallowed turf of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. “It’s been one of the dreams all of my life,” the Indian-born head of the software giant said. “And I know it’s not the best day to talk cricket in Australia.” Nadella talked about the massive data-crunching analytics system that is being trialled by Cricket Australia this summer with that will be able to make data-driven recommendations on when players needed to be rested from games to avoid injury. “I was glad to see how Cricket Australia plans to use machine learning,” he said at the Microsoft Australia Developer Conference. “Cricket is one of the richest sports when it comes to using machine data. But how could you harness the power of data to even start having a more intelligent informed conversation about performance of teams, performance of players?” Nadella said the technology being used by Cricket Australia was the same as being used by robotics and health care companies. “The idea that developers can bend the curve even with cricket performance is perhaps one of the most empowering things I have seen in my life,” he said. Nadella talked about the importance of “democratisation” in the age of artificial intelligence and super computers. He announced the super computers used by the likes of Elon Musk that would be opened up in December for small start-ups and developers to use. “We are in fact building the world’s first AI super computer,” he said. “That to me is perhaps on the thing we will look back, five years, ten years from now and look at the applications and say “how was that feature even possible.” “It’s a supercomputer that’s available to every developer.”