Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has warned that unless AI delivers clear social and economic benefits, the industry risks losing public support for the vast amounts of energy required to power the technology.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has warned that the technology industry risks losing “the social permission” and the right to consume vast amounts of power if artificial intelligence (AI) fails to deliver meaningful real-world benefits.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Nadella said AI must justify its growing energy footprint by improving outcomes across society, from healthcare and education to government efficiency and business productivity.
He said: “We will quickly lose even the social permission to take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens.
“If these tokens are not improving health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness.”
The comments come as AI systems place unprecedented strain on global infrastructure.
Data centres powering large language models are driving sharp increases in electricity and water demand, while competition for components such as memory and GPUs has pushed up hardware prices worldwide.
Nadella argued that continued investment in AI depends on whether the public sees tangible value rather than abstract technical progress.
On the supply side, the Microsoft boss said governments and industry must work together to build what he described as a “ubiquitous grid of energy and tokens” – effectively expanding power generation and compute capacity to meet demand.
But he stressed that infrastructure alone will not be enough.
Nadella said he believes the next challenge lies with adoption, as companies, workers and institutions must actively integrate AI into daily workflows to unlock productivity gains.
He likened AI literacy to spreadsheet skills, arguing that workers who can effectively use AI tools will become more valuable in the job market.
He said: “People need to say, ‘I pick up this AI skill, and now I’m a better provider of some product or service in the real economy.’”
As a concrete example, Nadella pointed to healthcare, where AI-powered transcription and record-keeping could reduce administrative burdens on doctors, allowing them to spend more time with patients while improving billing accuracy and system efficiency.
Microsoft CEO says companies will lose ‘the social permission’ to use energy if AI proves worthless
