Raise Your Level of AI Ambition - Microsoft's AI Strategy for Developers with Jay Parikh

Fresh out of the studio, Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President of Core AI at Microsoft, joins us to explore how Microsoft is fundamentally transforming software development by placing AI at the center of every stage of the development lifecycle. He shares his career journey from scaling the internet at Akamai Technologies during the dot-com boom, to leading infrastructure at Facebook through the mobile revolution, and now driving Microsoft's AI-first transformation where the definition of "developer" itself is rapidly evolving. Jay explains that Microsoft's Core AI team, is moving beyond traditional tiered architecture to a new paradigm where large language models can think, reason, plan, and interact with tools—shifting developer time from typing code to specification and verification while enabling parallel project execution through specialized AI agents. He highlights how organizations like Singapore Airlines cut project timelines from 11 weeks to 5 weeks using GitHub Copilot and challenges both individuals and enterprises to raise their level of ambition: moving from being amazed by AI to being frustrated it can't do more, while building cultural experiments that unlock this exponential technology. Closing the conversation, Jay shares what great looks like for Microsoft's Core AI to enable AI transformation for every organization around the world.

"There's this set of people that are using these AI-powered tools and they're like, 'Wow, that's amazing!' Stunned as to how incredible the response is from AI. Then there's another set of people that have these experiences when they work with AI—they’re frustrated with it because they're just like, 'Why can't it do this for me yet?'And they're pushing the envelope of what this LLM or what this system can do, what this tool can do. If you are in the former group, then you need to raise your level of ambition. You need to delegate harder things to it. And if you're in the second group, then you need to learn more about how these things work." - Jay Parikh

Episode Highlights:
[00:00] Quote of the day by Jay Parikh
[01:00] Introducing Microsoft's Core AI strategy and transformation
[02:34] Career philosophy: pursuing hard problems and discomfort
[04:08] Core AI team's mission: empowering every developer
[06:00] Reinventing the entire software development lifecycle
[09:17] Parallel projects and agents transforming development workflows
[12:12] AI first strategy across Microsoft's product ecosystem
[15:37] GitHub platform beyond code: context and orchestration
[20:33] Building AI platforms: lessons from scale experience
[21:00] Two mindsets: amazement versus frustration with AI
[22:15] Raising ambition and pushing AI tool boundaries
[25:00] Enterprise adoption challenges: tools and cultural transformation
[28:00] Learning loops: shrinking circles to accelerate growth
[31:00] Alignment without tight coupling across global teams
[36:56] Concrete trends: use tools, understand model development
[40:27] Responsible AI and security built from start
[43:30] Asia innovation: two thirds of developers here
[46:19] Raising ambition to unlock human creativity collaboration
[48:35] Goal: AI transformation for every global organization

Profile: Jay Parikh, Executive Vice President, Core AI, Microsoft

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayparikh/

Podcast Information: Bernard Leong hosts and produces the show. The proper credits for the intro and end music are "Energetic Sports Drive." G. Thomas Craig mixed and edited the episode in both video and audio format.