Microsoft Says AI Can Help Companies Improve Without Lock-In

At the Open Source Summit, Microsoft executive Ryan Waite described artificial intelligence as part of a learning loop that can help businesses improve. In a keynote titled “From Open Source to Agentic Systems: Building the AI Native Era,” Waite said AI can process vast amounts of information and generate insights, while people contribute context and judgment.

Employees can use that context to turn insights into knowledge, which can add to an organization’s collective expertise over time. Waite said companies should keep control of that knowledge because it is based on their data and people, and avoid becoming dependent on a single AI provider.

Companies may start with proprietary frontier models for tasks they do not yet understand well. As they learn more about those tasks, they may be able to switch to specialized models that are smaller or cheaper, or to open-weight models they can run themselves. Waite said organizations should be able to move between models rather than become trapped with one model because it holds their accumulated knowledge.

He also said businesses should retain control over where AI workloads run, including sovereign infrastructure governed by local regulations, on-premises systems, or public cloud environments. Waite pointed to open-source technologies as a foundation for that flexibility.