Microsoft CVP thinks we'll be ditching mice and keyboards in a future version of Windows in favor of AI chats — "The world of mousing around and typing will feel as alien as it does to Gen-Z to use MS-DOS."

What might Windows 12 or even Windows 13 look like? Microsoft CVP David Weston has some ideas, and they strongly revolve around AI.

What will the future of Windows look like? Like it or not, AI will undoubtedly have a major role to play.

In a new video, Microsoft CVP for Enterprise and OS Security David Weston was asked to predict what Windows might look like by 2030, with a focus on an enterprise and security landscape.

Like it or not, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and other AI technologies are upending the world. Microsoft itself is thought to have laid off thousands on the pyre of its AI initiatives this year, and other CEOs are ringing alarm bells over what AI might mean for employment and society at large.

Weston echoed these concerns a bit. In the interview, he notes how AI agents will potentially reduce robotic "toil work" employees have to engage with today, freeing them up to do more "creative" and human tasks. Future "security experts" you hire might actually simply be AI agents, that talk, behave, and interact as a human employee would.

"In 5 years I strongly believe you'll be able to hire a security expert, but actually under the hood, it's an AI agent. The way you interact will be a lot like you do with humans today. You'll talk to them in Microsoft Teams, they'll join meetings, you'll send them emails and assign them tasks," Weston continued. "So in your daily work life, that will set folks up to do less of what we call the "toil work," the work we don't love today, and allow you to focus on what humans are good at. Ideation, creativity, vision, connecting with humans on what products are necessary. These agents will be net amplifiers, and will enable us to do things we could only dream of just a few years ago.

David Weston thinks that future versions of Windows, maybe even Windows 12 itself, will radically change our perceptions of interaction and inputs. Weston says that today's world of "mousing around and typing" will feel as alien to future generations as MS-DOS does to Gen-Z.

"I think we will do less with our eyes and more talking to our computers," Weston explains. "And I truly believe that a future version of Windows, and other Microsoft operating systems, will interact in a multi-modal way. The computer will be able to see what we see, hear what we hear, and we can talk to it and ask it to do much more sophisticated things. I think it will be a much more natural form of communication. The world of mousing around and typing, will feel as alien as it does to Gen-Z to use MS-DOS."