Artificial intelligence is striking fear in many, but could actually create a “utopia” of more, and more satisfying, jobs, maintains Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO.

Everyday people and business leaders alike dread that AI could attain super-human intelligence and overtake mankind, Fortune reports.

“Runaway AI, if it happens, is a real problem,” Nadella says. But if it is kept in check and properly managed, it could help societies create better futures, he says.

“It’s utopia,” he says.

The AI race is on, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched last year — and Google, Microsoft and China search engine Baidu all furiously working on versions of their own. Fortune thinks 2023 could be an AI inflection point, much like how search engines transformed the Internet.

OpenAI founder Sam Altman is, no surprise, a big supporter of computer-driven intelligence: “I think the good case [for AI] is just so unbelievably good that you sound like a crazy person talking about it,” Altman said at a venture capitalist symposium last month.

But even Alman admits: “The worst case is lights-out for all of us.”

Nadella believes that dystopian, worst-case scenario can be avoided — if “humans unambiguously, unquestionably are in charge.”

In the best-case scenario, he says, AI “creates more — both satisfaction in current jobs and net new jobs” by removing the tedious and the mundane off of human shoulders.