Using AI to advance the health of people and communities around the world | Microsoft on the Issues

Posted on January 29, 2020 by Herbert Dupree

The health of people and communities around the world has been improving over time. For example, the steep decline in child and maternal mortality is a key indicator of positive momentum.

However, progress has not been equal across the globe, and there is a great need to focus on societal issues such as reducing health inequity and improving access to care for underserved populations. While researchers work to unlock life-saving discoveries and develop new approaches to pressing health issues, advancements in technology can help accelerate and scale new solutions.

That is why we are launching AI for Health, a new $40 million, five-year program to empower researchers and organizations with AI to improve the health of people and communities around the world. The program is underpinned with a strong foundation of privacy, security and ethics, and was developed in collaboration with leading health experts who are driving important medical initiatives. AI for Health is the fifth Microsoft AI for Good program, a $165 million initiative to empower researchers, nonprofits and organizations with advanced technologies to help unlock solutions to the biggest challenges facing society today.

The AI for Health initiative will focus on three key areas:

Quest for discovery. Accelerating medical research to advance prevention, diagnoses and treatment of diseases
Global health insights. Increasing our shared understanding of mortality and longevity to protect against global health crises
Health equity. Reducing health inequity and improving access to care for underserved populations

AI for Health is a philanthropic initiative that complements our broader work in Microsoft Healthcare. Through AI for Health, we will support specific nonprofits and academic collaboration with Microsoft’s leading data scientists, access to best-in-class AI tools and cloud computing, and select cash grants.

I am honored to lead AI for Health as part of my mission at Microsoft to fuse AI and data to address the world’s greatest challenges. As a tech company, it is our responsibility to ensure that organizations working on the most pressing societal issues have access to our latest AI technology and the expertise of our technical talent.

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Six principles to guide Microsoft’s facial recognition work

Posted on December 19, 2018 by Herbert Dupree

In his recent speech at the Brookings Institution, Brad Smith talked about the urgent need for governments to adopt laws to regulate facial recognition technology. The recommendations, outlined in an accompanying blog post, frame a broader journey we as a society must take to address important questions about the technology while it is still in its infancy before it’s too late to put the facial recognition genie back in its bottle. He also introduced the principles that will guide Microsoft in how we develop and deploy facial recognition technology. The principles are:

Fairness. We will work to develop and deploy facial recognition technology in a manner that strives to treat all people fairly.

Transparency. We will document and clearly communicate the capabilities and limitations of facial recognition technology.

Accountability. We will encourage and help our customers to deploy facial recognition technology in a manner that ensures an appropriate level of human control for uses that may affect people in consequential ways.

Non-discrimination. We will prohibit in our terms of service the use of facial recognition technology to engage in unlawful discrimination.

Notice and consent. We will encourage private sector customers to provide notice and secure consent for the deployment of facial recognition technology.

Lawful surveillance. We will advocate for safeguards for people’s democratic freedoms in law enforcement surveillance scenarios and will not deploy facial recognition technology in scenarios that we believe will put these freedoms at risk.

We explain these principles in more detail here. Our goal is to make these principles operational by the end of March 2019. But even as we implement them, we do so knowing that the issues are novel and complex and that we still have much to learn. We fully anticipate the principles will evolve over time based on our experience, the experience of others, and the ongoing conversations we will have around facial recognition technology with customers, public officials, technologists, academics, civil society groups, and multi-stakeholder organizations such as the Partnership on AI. We remain committed to continuing these critical conversations, to advocating for laws that keep pace with the inevitable advances of this technology, and to sharing what we learn.