Suff Syed: In An AI-Powered World, Be An Outlier
Suff Syed believes creativity is a mindset, not solely a skill set. Images c/o Suff Syed.
Suff Syed, head of design at Microsoft Research, woke up at 3:45 a.m. this morning. He begins the day with a bit of gratitude, catching up on his reading list, and working on the most important thing or idea he has to come up with today. At 6 a.m., he wakes up his son, makes his breakfast, and spends the morning hours with him. The early starts aren’t unusual for Syed, who generally goes to bed around 8 p.m. (though last night Ripley launched on Netflix, so he stayed up watching that for a bit).
Working at Microsoft, a company that is at the precipice of computing driving the current wave of AI, Syed is currently fixated on three big challenges. First, how do we get ‘Agentic AI’ to work in no-code environments so people can direct AI to do more complex things over an extended period of time? Second, how do we get humans to spend less time asking AI questions, and help them partner with a more ‘Proactive AI’, which can orchestrate activities and outcomes in safe and meaningful ways? Third, how do we build a more ‘Personal AI’? Models today are trained on the world’s knowledge that comes with its own biases and worldview. How do we switch that so personal AI can represent an individual’s context, goals, and values?
Growing up in Bengaluru, India in humble circumstances, Syed dreamt of one day joining Microsoft. But his father had other plans and wanted Syed to become a cardiologist. When Syed told his dad he would pursue computer science in college, his dad was so upset he didn’t talk to Syed for the next two months. During his engineering studies, Syed quickly realized every student within India’s esteemed programs would either graduate as an engineer or a doctor. This led Syed down a path to seek something unique, leading him to the world of design at a time when no design roles or ecosystem existed within India.
This represented what has become a fundamental part of Syed’s career — the need to always stand out from what others are doing, whether it was choosing a non-traditional career path in India, or thinking about design, technology, and creativity in new ways. Here, he shares how creative professionals can embrace AI technology to shift the paradigm, why creativity is defined by a mindset and not a role, how the challenges in his childhood shaped him, and why being an outlier is a good thing.
Suff notes that an AI tool like Microsoft Copilot can help humans do a lot — bingo! — but to get its full effect we must rethink how we work. Image c/o Microsoft.
How do you think about creativity in your work and role?
People are not creative based on their title or role, but by their mindset. They tend to employ a whole new way of thinking about the world. For me, being creative is being able to uniquely observe a perspective and worldview that many people assume is the standard and then come back and say, “No, actually here is a whole new way of thinking about it that reframes the thing in its entirety.”
There has been a lot of prediction doom about how AI technology will destroy creative jobs. But you have indicated that it can open up new opportunities. How can we best take advantage of these possibilities?
Creatives and designers have always been excellent at predicting the future, but not necessarily creating or inventing it. We’ve now reached a point in our craft where understanding deeply technical concepts is imperative, and will allow us to make our work better.
Here is an example: I just finished The Three-Body Problem book series by Liu Cixin. The author writes a first-contact story formed around scientific, technical, political, and philosophical concepts that are taught in graduate programs. As a writer, it is impossible for anyone to create such beauty through their words without a strong grasp of these subjects, and the output speaks for itself. I would like designers who work in AI or with AI to understand these frameworks more intimately rather than superficially designing around it. You cannot differentiate your work anymore without demonstrating this knowledge. The rules of the game have simply changed.
Syed’s report “The End of Design” highlights how designers must rethink their craft and reimagine their work for a new future.
What must change and evolve?
If we want to evolve as designers and creatives, we have to be comfortable with the medium that we’re designing for. And it's not arranging pixels. It’s not arranging flows. It's not building the user experience. I’d argue AI will soon be able to do all of this. It’s breaking the user experiences of today by delving deeper into the technical architectures of how these things work so that we can build entirely new paradigms.
It is futile to compete with advances in computing and AI. I still hear a lot of chatter around “AI won’t be able to replace my craft”, etc. GPT can already pass several competitive exams and when you look at examples like Sora, we’re already seeing a very new kind of creative taking shape. So it’s only a matter of time. Instead of pushing against AI, I’d advise people to embrace it, tinker with it, and dive deep into being able to direct the output from these systems in ways never possible before. The most successful designers in the near future will be those who can build their personal AI to replicate a quality of craft most cannot. We’re already seeing a distinction between artists who are leveraging AI and creating breakthrough work. We will soon become “directors” of these systems cementing the human-AI collaboration.
Agentic AI will soon begin to work and take on much of the heavy lifting doing long-running jobs for you. This will inadvertently push everybody to be more reflective with their work and realistically ask the question: What do I uniquely bring to the table that others powered by the same AI cannot?
Much has been said about AI, and yet it feels like there is something missing from the conversation. What is one thing people are missing or aren’t discussing enough?
There is a fundamental shift in thinking that needs to happen across the people who are building with AI today. We're still slapping this new technology into existing tools, creating this frankenstein’d model where the old tool that hasn't changed in the last two decades is on the left, and the new AI functionality is on the right. This is generally what happens when a new computing platform is introduced into the world. We move into the '“adjacent next” stage of technology where the beginning is messy. It takes a while for people to eventually realize they need to reinvent the whole paradigm and don’t need the clunky tool on the left anymore, but rather, an entirely new thing. We still haven't seen much of this new thing yet.
Suff was raised in a warm and loving family in his native India.
Tell us about your childhood in Bengaluru and how that shaped you.
My earliest childhood memory was waking up at 4 a.m. every morning. My parents fell in love and got married at a time when it was a taboo. Their families disowned them so it was very much hand-to-mouth for us. Our first home was a small studio on the outskirts of Bengaluru. My dad, who no longer was part of his family’s business and had to build his own business that took him over a decade. He’d leave the house at 4 a.m. Mom would cook meals for the entire day and drop me off at the bus stop at 6 a.m. She’d tell the nearby vegetable vendor to look after me until the school bus arrived at 7 a.m. For almost an hour, I’d stand there in the cold under the supervision of this kind vendor. Back then people trusted each other implicitly. I was told early on, “focus on education and everything else would fall into place.” The pursuit and curiosity of knowledge was drilled into me. There was no time for play, and it would often be looked down upon.
What was your school experience like and what impact did that have on you?
I went to a school where kids would be dropped off in expensive cars. The school had a quota for students from families below an income threshold. My parents would walk 10 miles every single day to make sure I got into this school. Everything centered around getting the best education. It was the only way to success and my parents knew that. I obviously did not fit in and dreaded going to school daily. This got worse as I entered senior years. I got bullied a lot. In seventh grade, our class read the works of Shakespeare and one day about 40 boys from my class chased me around the school because I was supposed to be Julius Caesar. I remember hiding in bathrooms and other places throughout the day, so they wouldn’t find me. Finally, they caught me, dragged me to the middle of a field, and kicked me around. Even my own extended relatives didn’t believe I’d make anything of myself.
Suff’s school experience played a pivotal role in his chidhood.
Being constantly on the backfoot and speaking only when spoken to, it took me many years to finally become comfortable in my skin. The only way I’ve managed to do that is by standing out as much as possible. I explicitly refuse to follow the beaten path, sometimes, even unnecessarily so. I have a great disdain for the normal. That seemed to have worked in the long run because I carved myself into a pretty niche area where my multi-disciplinary skills are the thing that has created a unique advantage in my career.
This Fortune cover had a big impact on a young Suff who dreamed of working for Microsoft.
When did you realize what you wanted to do for your career?
I remember this quite vividly picking up a Fortune magazine featuring Bill Gates. The only people who graced magazine covers were celebrities and athletes, and here was this scrawny dude wearing glasses. I was eight-years-old. I convinced my dad for the next six months to put me into the nearby National Computer Training Center. I learned every language I could from BASIC to C and C++. I couldn’t even tell you what a computer did back then, but because this was in the pursuit of education, my parents didn’t mind the 150 rupees they had to part with every month. I’ve got to give them a lot of credit. Also to myself, for having either the foresight or the pure dumb luck to have been able to see this path for myself. Eventually that led me to a computer science engineering degree, and then when I realized everyone from India was either a doctor or an engineer, I was yet again, quite deliberate in standing out. That journey led me to pursue human-computer interaction and design. At a time, when design wasn’t even a thing in India.
Was it always your dream to work at Microsoft?
Yes. At 12, I told my dad my ambition was to come to Redmond and work at this company called Microsoft. That took two decades after graduation. When you move countries — as I did from India to the UK and now the U.S. — you are locked into companies with visa restrictions. In 2019, while I was Head of Product at Publicis Sapient, I finally got my green card thanks to my wife who wasn’t born in India. Had it not been for her, the Microsoft dream probably would have never happened. When I got my green card, I picked up the phone and called Albert Shum, CVP of Design at Microsoft. We met for coffee two weeks later at Ralph’s in New York. I interviewed in Feb 2020 and then the pandemic hit. Eventually, in October 2020, I got the offer and joined Microsoft Research. I love that quote that goes, “If you find yourself high enough in life, it’s your job to send the elevator down.” Many people have been kind to me and I make it a point now to pass that on.
Today, I find myself at the precipice of computing at a company that is driving the new wave of AI. There is magic in the universe that has led me to where I am, manifested only because a child dared to dream. And while this journey has been nothing short of wonderful, I know deep down, I have to continue standing out. More so now than ever before. To not just stay relevant, but thrive in this new future we’re about to witness.
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