As a young boy, Nando de Freitas was always captivated by the way machines behaved, while growing up in Harare, Zimbabwe. From studying electrical engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa to the academic halls of Cambridge and ultimately to Silicon Valley, the birthplace of artificial intelligence, his youthful curiosity has taken him across continents.
Today, as the Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft and a former Senior Director at Google DeepMind, de Freitas is not just building the future of AI, he’s also challenging the rules that govern it.
A Silent War in the AI World
The battle for supremacy in artificial intelligence is now intense, genuine, and taking place in boardrooms rather than being only theoretical. The competition for the best minds is fierce and involves companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI. Reports of companies paying researchers to do nothing for a year in order to keep them out of the competition have exposed an unsettling fact for innovation: AI talent is extremely limited.
This quiet, costly strategy is enforced through non-compete agreements, contracts that prohibit employees from working for rival firms or starting their own ventures for months or even years. A recent Business Insider investigation revealed that Google DeepMind has taken this to an extreme, offering generous salaries to AI scientists on “garden leave” while barring them from contributing their talents elsewhere.
Nando Speaks Out
In a rare display of frankness, de Freitas has been active on social media over the past weeks. In a series of scathing tweets, he revealed how many former DeepMind workers had contacted him, feeling nervous, unhappy, and unsure about their future, due to contracts that prevent them from performing meaningful work.
“These contracts do not protect innovation,” he twitted. “They suffocate it.”
A Son of Africa, A Voice for the World
De Freitas’s African roots remain central to his story. At the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, he studied control systems technology that would later inform some of the world’s most advanced machine learning architectures. And as the tech industry grapples with inclusion, his voice reminds us that global innovation should not be confined to corporate borders or geographic ones.
“I am where I am because someone believed in me and gave me freedom to explore,” he often says in interviews. “We need to create systems that do the same for others, whether they’re from Harare or Helsinki.”
What’s at Stake?
The AI boom is still in its early stages. But already, some of its most brilliant contributors are being told to sit on the sidelines, paid generously, yes, but creatively compromised. What could be lost in this silence? A new research breakthrough? A startup that might have transformed medicine or climate science? A young African innovator who never sees their idea realized?
As de Freitas continues to speak out, he forces us to confront a question: Are we building an AI future that values control over creativity?
In our exclusive podcast episode with Nando de Freitas, we go beyond the headlines, exploring his African upbringing, his leadership in global AI, and why he believes it’s time to rethink how we treat those who build our most powerful technologies.
🎙️ Recorded in Accra, Ghana, at University of Ghana – Deep Learning Indaba 23'
Nando De Freitas On His Path To AI Discovery
