When AI leaders talk about each other, it's usually corporate speak and carefully calibrated compliments. But Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft (MSFT) AI, got refreshingly blunt in a recent Bloomberg interview about the people shaping artificial intelligence.

Reality-Bending Bulldozers

Suleyman keeps in regular contact with the usual suspects: Sam Altman at OpenAI, Dario Amodei over at Anthropic, and Demis Hassabis running Google DeepMind. But when the conversation turned to Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, Suleyman didn't hold back.

"He's kind of got superhuman capabilities to bend reality to his will," Suleyman said, describing Musk as a "bulldozer" who somehow manages to pull off things that should be impossible.

Betting Big on Altman

Suleyman had equally strong praise for OpenAI's Altman, particularly his aggressive push to scale up data centers despite the financial strain. Yes, OpenAI is burning through cash and faces massive obligations, but Suleyman thinks Altman could end up being remembered as one of the defining entrepreneurs of this generation. That's quite the endorsement from someone who co-founded DeepMind.

Speaking of DeepMind, Suleyman also praised his former co-founder Hassabis as an exceptional scientist and polymath who's made enormous contributions to AI research. Despite now competing in the same space, the two apparently stay friendly and exchange messages about their respective wins.

The Superintelligence Warning

These compliments come with a caveat, though. Suleyman has been vocal about his concerns regarding the AI industry's trajectory, particularly the race toward autonomous superintelligence. He's argued that shouldn't be the goal at all, mainly because aligning such systems with human values presents challenges we're not ready to solve.

Meanwhile, Microsoft itself has been putting serious money behind these AI ambitions. The company recently announced a historic expansion in Canada, committing billions to new infrastructure and digital sovereignty projects. CEO Satya Nadella has also emphasized that the AI sector needs multiple winners to thrive, warning against winner-take-all scenarios that lead to a "road to nowhere."

So there you have it: superhuman bulldozers, billion-dollar bets, and warnings about building machines we can't control. Just another day in the AI industry.