"AI moving in the right direction," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tells CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella answered questions on a wide-range of subjects including his views on AI and whether humans were in control and if it was moving too fast.

"Yes, if anything, it is moving fast, but moving in the right direction," says Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., during an interview. (Bloomberg)

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in his interview today with CNBC co-anchor "Squawk Box", Andrew Ross Sorkin spoke at length about the direction that artificial intelligence technology is taking and the role of Microsoft in it and whether humans are in control.

On the extent to which the technology has reached people's lives, Nadella told Sorkin that "AI is already there at scale. Every newsfeed, every social media feed, search (as we know of it before Chat plus search), they are all AI."

On whether the technology was moving fast, he said, "So, I think we are now moving from an era of auto-pilot AI to one of co-pilot era. Yes, if anything, it is moving fast, but moving in the right direction."

Emphasising that the tech innovators are in full control, Nadella added, "It is moving fast where humans are more in control. Humans are in the loop, versus being out of loop."

With numerous experts expressing their opinions about either going slow on AI or simply stop work on it all together, Nadella said, “I feel that it is more important to capitalise on this technology, its promise and productivity.”

On Tesla CEO Elon Musk's claim that Microsoft 'directly controls' OpenAI now, which was founded as a non-profit, Nadella said, “That is factually not correct. OpenAI is very grounded in their mission and being controlled by a non-profit board. We have a non-controlling interest in it. We have a great commercial partnership and I am hoonestly very comfortable in partnering with a capped-profit company that has a mission of fundamentally pursuing this very powerful technology.”

On regulating AI, Nadella said, "It would be good for companies. We do not have to wait for regulations." He added that what was currently happening was good and that regulators know what they are doing.

When Sorkin asked if a small player can win today in the AI field, Nadella said that it was not a “given that Microsoft and Alphabet will be the only games in town.”