How a Tech CEO is Thinking About AI: Vision, Challenges, and Opportunities

In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) stands as the most transformative force impacting industries, businesses, and daily life. Few leaders embody the intersection of deep technical expertise and visionary leadership as clearly as Lisa Su, Chair and CEO of AMD (Advanced Micro Devices). Over the past decade, Lisa Su has propelled AMD from a competitive semiconductor company to a global leader in high-performance and adaptive computing, powering innovations in AI, gaming, automotive, data centers, and more.

In this article, we explore Lisa Su’s insights on the future of AI, the balance between innovation speed and responsibility, how AMD is navigating the semiconductor industry, and why diversity and sustainability are critical to thriving in this new era. Her pragmatic optimism and strategic approach provide a blueprint for harnessing AI’s potential while mitigating risks.

AMD’s Evolution: From Semiconductors to AI Powerhouse

AMD is fundamentally a semiconductor company, but under Lisa Su’s leadership, it has sharpened its focus on building bleeding-edge technology that powers high-performance computing and adaptive computing. This means creating chips and processors that deliver exceptional compute capability for a wide range of applications.

AMD’s products are at the heart of many sectors:

• Data centers and cloud computing: AMD chips power large-scale enterprise and cloud infrastructures.
• Embedded devices: From automotive systems to industrial equipment, aerospace, and test devices.
• End-user devices: Personal computers, notebooks, desktops, and gaming consoles.

What ties all these markets together is the focus on high-performance computing, which has become increasingly vital with the emergence of AI and machine learning workloads.

Lisa Su highlights that AMD’s heritage and expertise in high-performance computing positioned the company to seize the exciting opportunities AI presents today. Before AI became a mainstream buzzword, AMD was already focused on pushing the boundaries of computing power.

Why AI Is a Superpower in Technology

Artificial intelligence is not a new concept, but the last 15 to 16 months have marked a watershed moment with the advent of generative AI technologies like ChatGPT. Lisa Su describes AI as a “superpower,” the most important technology breakthrough in the last 50 years.

AI’s true power lies in its ability to augment human capabilities across a broad spectrum of activities:

• Accelerating business processes: From product development to marketing and customer engagement.
• Enhancing personal productivity: AI tools can assist individuals in creating content, coding, and managing workflows.
• Transforming critical sectors: Particularly healthcare, where AI can speed up disease research, diagnostics, and patient care.

Lisa emphasizes that AI is no longer confined to specialized labs or large enterprises; it is bringing powerful computing capabilities “closer to home,” enabling everyone to practice AI in their daily lives. This democratization of AI opens new doors for innovation and efficiency.

Transformative AI Use Cases That Excite Lisa Su

Among the many AI applications, Lisa Su is particularly enthusiastic about healthcare. She envisions AI accelerating:

• Disease research: Speeding up the discovery of new treatments and understanding of illnesses.
• Diagnosis: Helping doctors make more accurate and timely diagnoses.
• Patient care: Enhancing how medical professionals monitor and treat patients.

Alongside healthcare, Lisa points to AMD’s internal use of AI to revolutionize chip design. AI helps shorten chip development cycles dramatically—from months or weeks down to days—enabling faster delivery of high-quality, cost-effective products to market.

Finally, she notes the personal productivity gains AI tools offer, which many individuals are already experiencing through AI-powered assistants and copilots.

Balancing Optimism with Pragmatism: AI’s Risks and Responsibilities

While Lisa Su is a techno-optimist, she acknowledges the technology is far from perfect and still in its early stages. AI systems sometimes produce erroneous results, which necessitates careful deployment and oversight.

She stresses that leaders must actively engage in learning how to harness AI’s power responsibly, protecting against potential downsides while maximizing benefits. This involves:

• Implementing responsible AI governance structures, such as AMD’s Responsible AI Council.
• Protecting intellectual property for the company, customers, and partners.
• Fostering open dialogue and learning within organizations and across the industry.

Lisa believes that AI will not simply replace jobs wholesale but will instead augment human work, making employees more productive. Leadership’s role is to guide this transformation thoughtfully, ensuring employees are brought along rather than left behind.

Speed vs. Caution: The Need for Fast Experimentation

One of the biggest challenges with AI is balancing the speed of innovation with the need for caution. Lisa Su advocates for fast experimentation and implementation rather than slowing down progress.

AMD’s approach includes piloting AI applications in various workflows to identify those with the highest return on investment and lowest risk. For instance, their chip design processes have benefited immensely from AI, reducing time-to-market and improving quality.

Rather than fearing the unknown, Lisa encourages companies to experiment extensively, learn quickly, and share insights with peers to accelerate responsible AI adoption.

Practical Advice: How Businesses Can Start Using AI Today

Many organizations struggle to move from curiosity about AI to practical application. Lisa Su offers clear guidance on how to begin integrating AI into business operations:

• Identify “copilot” opportunities: These are AI tools designed to assist employees in specific tasks, such as coding, testing, marketing content creation, or customer engagement.
• Use AI to accelerate workflows: AI can help get closer to answers faster, with human experts performing the final validation and refinement.
• Conduct pilots and experiments: Test AI applications in controlled environments to evaluate their effectiveness and adapt models to specific business contexts.
• Be cautious with fully autonomous AI decisions: In areas where AI provides critical answers, extensive testing and validation are required to ensure reliability.

Lisa also notes that AI adoption varies by business and requires training models on company-specific data to uncover meaningful trends and predictive insights. This customization is key to unlocking AI’s full potential.

Leveraging AI for Real-Time Business Intelligence

Responding to a question about how AI can enable real-time data mining and trend analysis, Lisa explains that AMD is actively working on predictive analytics to improve sales forecasting and market responsiveness.

Although each business’s data and needs differ, AI can reveal patterns and trends that help companies pivot quickly to emerging opportunities or resolve issues proactively. This capability is increasingly critical in a fast-moving global economy.

Strategic Focus: Prioritizing What AMD Does Best

Lisa Su credits much of AMD’s success to a disciplined focus on core strengths. When she became CEO nearly ten years ago, she recognized that the company had more opportunities than resources and leadership bandwidth to pursue them.

AMD chose to concentrate on high-performance computing, deliberately stepping away from sectors like mobile phone chips where other companies dominated. This focus has paid off, placing AMD at the forefront of the semiconductor industry’s most exciting growth areas: HPC and AI.

Competing with Industry Giants: The Importance of Vision and Big Bets

In a sector dominated by players like NVIDIA, AMD competes by focusing on building great products and anticipating where technology will be three to five years in the future. Lisa Su emphasizes the need to place big bets on promising technologies and invest heavily in research and development.

She expresses excitement about AMD’s decade-long investment in AI compute technology, which uniquely positions the company to meet the surging demand for AI processing power worldwide.

Making AI Accessible: Costs, Adoption, and Democratization

One common concern is the cost of AI technology and whether it will be accessible beyond large corporations. Lisa Su explains that while training the largest AI models can be extremely expensive, there are increasingly affordable options for fine-tuned models and inference tasks.

AMD is working to reduce the cost of AI computations significantly over the next few years, making the technology more accessible to a broader range of users and companies.

Ultimately, the decision to adopt AI comes down to evaluating the return on investment and focusing on areas with the greatest productivity enhancements.

Global Challenges: Navigating Supply Chain and Geopolitics

The semiconductor industry faces complex supply chain challenges and geopolitical tensions, including trade restrictions. For example, China’s recent prohibition on AMD and Intel chips in government computers was anticipated by AMD and has been factored into their planning.

Lisa Su stresses the importance of maintaining deep partnerships worldwide, including with startups, large companies, and regional players, to navigate these complexities and continue delivering technology globally.

Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in Tech Leadership

As one of the most prominent women leaders in technology, Lisa Su reflects on the industry’s ongoing challenges with gender equity. She acknowledges that the tech sector still lacks enough women and emphasizes the importance of diversity—not just gender but diversity of thought and experience—for building the best products and businesses.

Lisa advocates for creating opportunities for women and underrepresented groups, giving them exposure to the industry and chances to demonstrate their capabilities.

Welcoming New Talent: The Value of Fresh Perspectives

AMD has more than tripled its workforce in the last decade, growing from about 8,000 employees to over 25,000. Lisa highlights the critical role of diversity of perspective and the value new graduates bring.

Rather than hiring for narrowly defined skills, AMD looks for great thinkers, problem solvers, and lifelong learners who can adapt and grow. This approach fuels innovation and helps AMD stay at the cutting edge.

Key Leadership Lessons from a Decade at the Helm

Reflecting on her nearly ten years as CEO, Lisa Su shares that setting ambitious long-term goals is paramount. AMD grew from a $4 billion company in 2015 to over $22 billion in revenue recently. Achieving such growth required clear milestones to measure progress and maintain focus.

Lisa stresses the importance of long-term strategic thinking combined with near-term execution, a balance that ensures sustained company success.

Staying Informed: What a Tech CEO Is Reading

When asked what she is reading now, Lisa Su reveals that she is an avid user of online platforms like Reddit and X (formerly Twitter). These platforms provide her with real-time information and diverse perspectives, helping her stay on top of global trends and industry developments.

AI and Sustainability: Driving Efficiency and Reducing Power Consumption

Sustainability is a growing priority for AMD, and Lisa Su explains that advances in semiconductor technology directly contribute to more sustainable computing. Newer chips deliver higher performance at lower power consumption, helping reduce the environmental footprint.

AI itself can accelerate sustainability efforts by enabling faster, more efficient problem-solving that uses less power overall. However, the rise in computing demand also means more energy consumption, so balancing innovation and sustainability remains a focus.

Conclusion: Embracing AI with Vision, Responsibility, and Diversity

Lisa Su’s leadership at AMD exemplifies how a company can thrive at the intersection of technology innovation and responsible management. Her insights into AI highlight both the enormous opportunities and the critical need for vigilance, experimentation, and ethical governance.

From accelerating healthcare breakthroughs to revolutionizing chip design and enhancing personal productivity, AI is reshaping the world. AMD’s strategic focus, commitment to diversity, and sustainability efforts position it to lead in this exciting era.

For businesses and individuals alike, Lisa’s advice is clear: embrace AI boldly but thoughtfully, invest in learning and experimentation, and build diverse teams to unlock the full potential of this transformative technology.