Microsoft unveils $25M plan to use AI for disabilities
seattle — Microsoft is launching a $25 million initiative to use artificial intelligence to build better technology for people with disabilities.
CEO Satya Nadella announced the new “AI for Accessibility” effort as he kicked off Microsoft’s annual conference for software developers. The Build conference in Seattle is meant to foster enthusiasm for the company’s latest ventures in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, internetconnected devices and virtual reality.
Microsoft competes with Amazon and Google to offer internet-connected services to businesses and organisations.
The conference and the new initiative offer Microsoft an opportunity to emphasise its philosophy of building AI for social good. The focus could help counter some of the privacy and ethical concerns that have risen over AI and other fast-developing technology, including the potential that software formulas can perpetuate or even amplify gender and racial biases.
In unusually serious terms for a tech conference keynote, Nadella name-checked the dystopian fiction of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, declared that “privacy is a human right” and warned of the dangers of building new technology without ethical principles in mind.
“We should be asking not only what computers can do, but what computers should do,” Nadella said. “That time has come.” — AP