Quote of the day by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman: “Power is the ability or capacity to do something…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a distant idea discussed only in research labs and technology conferences. It has quietly entered everyday life, essentially shaping how people work, communicate, learn and make decisions.

You can see AI in smart recommendation engines on streaming platforms to tools that help write emails and analyse business data. Yet for all its growing influence, public conversation about AI remains surprisingly difficult to follow. Terms like “Artificial General Intelligence,” or AGI, dominate headlines and debates – even though no such system actually exists yet. The gap between what AI can do today and what people imagine it might do someday has made the subject feel intimidating for most people.

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI and co-author of the widely read book The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and Our Future, has offered a definition of power that, when placed alongside the story of AI, suddenly makes everything sharper and more real.

Quote of the day by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman

“Power is the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way;…to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. It’s the mechanical or electrical energy that underwrites civilization. The bedrock and central principle of the state.”

What the quote means in simple terms

On the surface, Suleyman's words are about power in its broadest sense, which may be political or social. But when read carefully, the words map almost perfectly onto what AI is actually becoming in the world.

“The ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way” implies what AI systems are being built for. They act. They process, generate, analyse and respond. They do things, often faster and at a scale no human team could match.“To direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events”: This implies what AI is already doing, right now. It is influencing what news people read, what products they buy, what medical diagnoses are made, and what content goes viral.

Apart from assisting human decisions, AI is increasingly shaping them.“The mechanical or electrical energy that underwrites civilization”: Electricity changed the world we see today and now AI runs on electricity, servers and infrastructure, is poised to change the world again. But more than that, it is quietly becoming the operating layer beneath modern industry, government, healthcare, and finance. It is becoming part of the infrastructure of civilisation itself.Suleyman is not just defining power. He is, perhaps deliberately, describing where AI is headed — and where, in many ways, it has already arrived.Suleyman’s message is direct: power is not about what something is called. It is about what something can do, what it influences and what depends on it. Power, by Suleyman's definition, is visible. It can be seen in results, in decisions, in outcomes. And by that measure, AI already has a great deal of it.

Why definitions of AI often create more confusion than clarity

For years, debates about AI have circled around the idea of Artificial General Intelligence, which is a system that can do anything a human mind can do. It is a compelling concept, but it is also entirely theoretical. No such system exists. No one knows exactly what it would look like, how it would work, or when — or whether — it will ever arrive.The problem with organising public understanding of AI around AGI is that it sets the wrong standard.

It asks people to measure today's AI against a hypothetical future version, which inevitably makes current AI seem limited or preliminary. This is misleading in a way that matters. Today's AI systems are not rough drafts. They are shaping economies, influencing information, assisting in medical care and transforming industries.

Suleyman’s definition of power corrects this. It does not ask how smart an AI system is compared to a human being but how much it can do, how much it can influence, and how much the world now depends on it.

By those measures, the conversation changes significantly.

Examples how AI is changing industries

When power is defined as the capacity to act and to influence outcomes, AI's current role becomes much clearer. Consider what AI systems are already doing across different parts of life.In healthcare, AI tools are analysing medical scans and identifying patterns that even experienced radiologists can miss. They are helping hospitals predict which patients are at risk of deterioration before symptoms become obvious.

They are accelerating drug discovery by modelling molecular interactions at a speed no human team could replicate.In finance, AI is monitoring transactions in real time, flagging potential fraud within milliseconds. It is managing investment portfolios, assessing credit risk, and making decisions that affect whether individuals and businesses can access capital.In media and communication, AI is deciding what content millions of people see every day.

The algorithms powering social media feeds, news aggregators, and video recommendation platforms are AI systems and their influence on public opinion, consumer behaviour, and even political views is enormous and largely invisible.In government and public administration, AI is being used to process applications, manage logistics, and in some countries, assist in law enforcement and surveillance. The implications for civil liberties, accountability, and democratic governance are only beginning to be understood.

A shift in how the world is starting to think about AI

Public conversation about AI is changing. For a long time, it was dominated by speculation — about superintelligence, about existential risk, about a distant future in which machines surpass human capabilities entirely. That conversation has not disappeared, but it is being joined by a more grounded discussion about what AI is doing right now, and what that means for economies, institutions and individuals today.Suleyman's perspective has been part of driving that shift. By insisting on capability, on real-world function, on the value of what AI actually does rather than what it might someday become, he has helped move the conversation toward something more useful and more honest.