Microsoft’s CEO has issued a warning about the future of AI, saying the technology risks losing public support if it fails to deliver benefits that justify its growing energy demands.
As AI continues to grow, concerns around electricity usage, data center expansion, and environmental impact have intensified.
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, has now addressed this issue, stating that enthusiasm for AI is not guaranteed and that public tolerance depends on whether the technology produces real-world outcomes and not just future promises.
Microsoft CEO says AI needs to deliver clear benefits
Speaking at the 56th World Economic Forum on January 20, 2026, Nadella made it clear that the usefulness of AI will ultimately decide whether society continues to accept the cost of powering it.
“I think we as a global community have to get to a point where we are using this to do something useful that changes the outcomes of people, communities, countries, and industries. Otherwise, I don’t think this makes much sense,” said Nadella.
He then pointed directly to energy consumption as a potential breaking point for public trust if AI fails to prove its value.
“In fact, I would say we will quickly lose even the social permission to actually 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 across all sectors, small and large, right?”
Nadella’s comments carry added weight given Microsoft’s central role in the AI boom, with the company pouring billions into OpenAI and rapidly expanding its global data center footprint to support tools like ChatGPT and Copilot.
This statement also follows hot on the heels of comments from Microsoft’s AI boss, Mustafa Suleyman, who suggested that everyone will have a deeply personal AI companion within the next five years.
