Saaid Khan

Career

Khan holds the title of VP of Gaming AI at Microsoft. He is described as a Pakistani tech leader who went from LUMS to become a Microsoft vice president. Khan is a former employee of Meta, Careem and Groupon. Khan has said Careem saw an opportunity in ride-hailing. [1]

Views on AI and programming

Khan has cited a Microsoft chief technology officer saying that the new programming language will be English. He has said people must define the problem, and that this can be done in English. Khan has said it has become essential to start with the problem, and that in his career people have mostly started with solutions rather than problems. He has said people should identify a problem and then list its possible solutions. Khan has also said people implement ideas without asking why they are doing so. [1]

Khan has said people need to understand what AI can and cannot do, and that better questions to AI lead to better answers. He has described AI as an abstraction layer over all of the technology. Khan has said people do not necessarily need to know programming to get something done. He has said AI will permeate across industries and will let people do what they want without involving other people. Khan has also said people can drive value by integrating AI into their own domains. [1]

Khan has said tech accounts for less than 15% of total university graduates, and that people are still questioning whether this is only the domain of tech people. He has said he expects AI to be an opportunity for non-technical people. Khan expects non-technical people to do more with AI than technical people in the next five to seven years. He expects them to bring big ideas that they can execute without the complexity of technical work. Khan has said this technology cycle will affect the next decade, and that people have established that AI is real and that its impact is real. He has said extreme views on AI are usually wrong. [1]

Views on jobs and business models

Khan has said jobs will change in nature rather than disappear, and he expects a large number of new jobs to emerge. He has said he does not think headcounts will go down, and that people will have more to do and be more productive. Khan has said AI will take over repetitive tasks that humans do, and that people must recognise when a task is repetitive. He has used video writing as an example of repetitive work. Khan has said that once AI can do video editing, people can tell it how to edit, and that his fear is that lower-value work such as video editing will be disrupted. [1]

Khan has guessed that the business model of systems companies will be disrupted. He has said selling one accounting software product several times is a business model in trouble. Khan has said individual projects will no longer be enough on their own. He has also said companies taking on individual projects will be disrupted and must get in front of the disruption. [1]

Views on remote work and freelancing

Khan has described a model of individual talent being employed directly by companies globally. He has said these people are not freelancers and started their careers with an employer, and that he is talking about remote jobs, not freelancing. Khan has said freelancing is basically individualism and that money coming into a system needs to circulate. He has said freelancing empowers many people. Khan has said some systems should have 5,000 employees but have 5,000 freelancers instead. [1]

Khan has described the arbitrage model as one where an intermediary gatekeeps the opportunity and takes a chunk. He has said an intermediary could institutionalise its work and give talent a pathway. Khan expects the language barrier to end within roughly five to seven years, and he has mentioned people who talk to ChatGPT only in Urdu. He has said opportunity has become democratised and roadblocks have largely ended. [1]

Views on Pakistan

Khan has said India has brought back people who now help local talent. He has said Pakistan needs this, and that it comes only when institutions and standards are built. Khan has said this change has to be institutionalised properly, that institutions need to be formed to take advantage of it, and that processes need to be put in place. He has also said it is not easy to set up a company in Pakistan. [1]

Advice on careers and learning

Khan has described the usual path as school at five, university at 18 and a job at 22. He has said he is not saying university is unimportant, but asks what it is for. Khan has said upskilling is becoming decentralised and no longer tied to working for one big company, and that education and upskilling are all available now. He has said that if AI does most of the work, human interaction is what is left of a job. [1]

Khan has said people should be intentional about all the decisions they make, and that if things are changing, people need to be very intentional about them. He has said people must challenge conformity to the norm, and that asking these questions helps a person understand themselves better. Khan has said people should ask what they are passionate about and which problems they want to solve. He has said that to succeed, a person must define a pathway for themselves, and he has advised setting a goal for the next year. [1]

Khan has said early-career people need to optimise for learning, and that early motivation should be learning rather than money. He has said a job taken only for the money may last one year, and that people should think beyond the immediate gains in front of them. Khan has promised that people who learn properly will make up for it later in their careers. He has advised people to invest in themselves and their skill set, and has said respect comes from substance, not from material things. Khan has said that once a person commits to something, they should finish it properly, and that ambition means giving up some of one's hours. He has also said a person will make sacrifices when it is their priority, and has argued that earnings are often shaped by how people work, not by skill. [1]

Appearances

Frequently asked questions

References

1. The new programming language is English . Thought Behind Things , 2026-01-07.