Microsoft VP Amanda Silver Discusses the Transformative Impact of AI on Software Development

Amanda Silver, a seasoned professional at Microsoft with 24 years of experience, is at the forefront of developing innovative tools for artificial intelligence (AI). Her focus on agentic systems points to an exciting platform change in education and software development / live-site operations. These systems promise to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and streamline processes, but…

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Microsoft VP Amanda Silver Discusses the Transformative Impact of AI on Software Development

Amanda Silver, a seasoned professional at Microsoft with 24 years of experience, is at the forefront of developing innovative tools for artificial intelligence (AI). Her focus on agentic systems points to an exciting platform change in education and software development / live-site operations. These systems promise to enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and streamline processes, but their deployment has not progressed as swiftly as anticipated.

In recent years, Silver has dedicated her efforts to building tools that leverage AI capabilities in ways that could revolutionize the tech industry. Agentic systems are at the forefront of her work, enabling powerful, context-sensitive reasoning across an entire codebase. With this new added capability, developers and organizations alike are able to modernize their codebases with unprecedented ease.

Agentic systems provide an impactful counterbalance. Better yet, they can cut the time required to bring a codebase up to date by 70 to 80%. This major time savings expedites the process for advancing updates and new features. In turn, users and stakeholders alike reap the rewards to a great extreme.

Silver admits that the deployment of agentic systems hasn’t gone according to initial plans. These systems are being folded into current systems, but the process is slow. In particular, the tech community anticipated the adoption going a bit faster than it has. Despite these challenges, the prospect of significant benefits still fuels enthusiasm and investment in this technology.

Silver’s work goes further than just more-advanced updates, though she’s working on how agentic systems can improve live-site operations. These systems are invaluable when diagnosing live operations issues, allowing for a more proactive approach to problem solving. Conceivably, agentic systems could totally address these concerns today on their own without a human in the loop. This automation offers a substantial relief to operations teams’ burden. In turn, they’re able to focus on more strategic initiatives rather than getting mired down in day-to-day fire-fighting.

The potential implications of agentic AI extend to the issue of cost. By automating a wide array of activities involved in running software, organizations can drastically reduce their run costs. Silver adds that agentic AI can have a huge impact on the support aspect. At the same time, it can improve legal discovery, further demonstrating its adaptability to solve varied business challenges.

Despite the many advantages these systems deliver, Silver is quick to point out that they usually need to have a “human-in-the-loop.” This requires that although agentic systems might do a lot of tasks autonomously, human oversight is still very important in specific scenarios. This hybrid design makes sure complex decisions or nuanced situations are still guided by the appropriate level of human judgment.

Amanda Silver is passionate about her work at Microsoft. She’s deeply interested in how introducing agentic systems can radically change the nature of both software development and live-site operations. Her insights are an encouraging sign that recognition is really growing in the tech community that deploying AI should happen by embedding it in everyday processes.