Generative AI has been making strides of late that have some experts seriously debating an impending dawn of superintelligence. What does that look like in your everyday Word doc or Outlook inbox?

As Microsoft’s new chief product officer of experiences and devices management, Aparna Chennapragada’s job includes translating the latest advances in AI into products and features that offices use every day.

At the HumanX conference in Las Vegas, Tech Brew caught up with Chennapragada about her plans for the new role, what “agent” actually means, and whether AI is coming for your job.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You started in your current role at Microsoft just a few months ago. What were your priorities coming in?

I would say three things: The most important one and the one that I’m most obsessed about is this vision of, ‘How do you reinvent work, AI first? Productivity at work, AI first.’ The second one is…people talked about this whole consumerization of enterprise in the past, but I think it gets real now. Because I think with AI for the first time, the tech that adapts to us versus the other way, and so you don’t expect a different kind of experience in consumer versus enterprise. So I do think that bringing that consumer sensibility into making products is the second part of the charter. And then the third one: What is the product development process that is AI-forward and model-forward?

Keep reading here.—PK

The White House recently declared a national emergency around the country’s aging and unreliable grid infrastructure. Gecko Robotics is betting that its fleet of wall-climbing robots, drones, and robot dogs might be part of the rescue effort.

The Pittsburgh-based startup just inked a $100 million deal with national power operator North American Energy Services (NAES) that will deploy Gecko’s robots to help modernize power plants across the country. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro also lent his support in a press conference announcing the partnership, which has the option of growing up to $250 million depending on demand.

“To me, it is critically important that we get this done, and that we’re able to take [Gecko’s] idea and grow it into the national leader that is building robots for one of the nation’s largest energy suppliers, NAES,” Shapiro said in the press conference. “And I gotta tell you, this is really incredibly important work right now.”

The deal comes as the country faces a rush of new power demand driven in part by massive growth in AI data centers and ongoing electrification efforts. But experts say America’s aging power and electrical grid infrastructure is hardly up to the task in its current form.

“This is a critical moment for energy in America; I truly feel this cannot be overstated,” NAES CEO Mark Dobler said during a press conference. “Coming from someone who’s been in this sector for over 30 years, demand growth in the near future will be unprecedented.”

Keep reading here.—PK

The letter that 21 House Republicans sent to the Ways and Means Committee in defense of energy tax credits on Sunday wasn’t built in a day; it’s “part of the momentum” that solar advocates have been working to build in meetings with members of Congress over the last few weeks, Jon Powers, president of clean energy investment firm CleanCapital, told Tech Brew.

It all started before the 2024 election, when Powers said the clean energy industry “became way more organized than they have in the past and were engaged in really advocating for [their] policies and [their] politics,” specifically energy tax credits and the Inflation Reduction Act, regardless of the incoming administration.

“We need[ed] to tell our story as an industry better,” Powers, who previously worked as the chief sustainability officer under President Barack Obama, said. “When the president gives an executive order on American energy dominance, how do we make sure that we’re part of that story?” (The order excluded many types of renewable energy from its definition of energy.)

The Solar Energy Industries Association organized a group of more than 150 clean energy executives, including Powers, to meet with members of Congress on Capitol Hill in February.

Keep reading here.—TC