Age of Intelligence Democratizing AI to empower individuals, organizations and society towards fulfilling the promise of holistic growth
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Age of Intelligence Democratizing AI to empower individuals, organizations and society towards fulfilling the promise of holistic growth
Table of Contents Executive Summary .......................................... 5 The promise of AI is holistic growth .......................................... 6 Why now and what is Microsoft doing .......................................... 8 Microsoft AI .......................................... 9 Leading your organization into the AI era .......................................... 12 Every application .......................................... 12 Every business process .......................................... 14 Every employee .......................................... 18 AI for India .......................................... 20 AI for good .......................................... 22 Responsible AI .......................................... 24 Conclusion: Where do we go from here... .......................................... 27
Executive Summary
This is an unprecedented moment largest population in the world, India has
in human history. Technologies are a significant stake in the AI revolution. A
emerging and affecting our lives in the whole generation of Indians are coming
Fourth Industrial Revolution in new and online for the first time, getting access
unanticipated ways. This is a new era to information and services delivered
that builds and extends the impact of via smart phones, and participating in
digitization. Artificial intelligence is not the ecosystems enabled by Digital India.
new to us. It’s only in recent years that The government has outlined priority
AI has made such impressive progress, sectors of the economy in the National
primarily driven by exponential increase Strategy for Artificial Intelligence and
in computing power, vast amounts of data has adopted a three-pronged approach
and notable breakthroughs in algorithms. – undertaking exploratory proof-of-
concept AI projects in specific areas,
In this paper, we present an industry point crafting a national strategy for building
of view on the ‘age of intelligence’ that a vibrant AI ecosystem and collaborating
we are embarking upon, wherein we will with experts and stakeholders. In
experience intelligence in every facet of addition, towards social and inclusive
our lives: in the products and services we growth, India will need to close the skills
use, how we communicate and relate to gap and enhance employability through
each other, how organizations function concerted government and industry
and collaborate, and how society and partnerships, such as NASSCOM’s Future
countries evolve. Skills initiative.
We believe that the promise of AI is As with any transformative technology,
holistic growth. AI will radically transform AI comes with challenges and a shared
industries, enable governments, empower responsibility. ‘As computers behave
individuals and address some of society’s more like humans, how will they impact
toughest challenges. Breakthrough real people?’ It is critical to address this
innovations will accelerate the digital question head on with a set of ethical
transformation of organizations, result principles. Microsoft has offered a
in radically new business models, framework for Ethics of AI that includes
and potentially disrupt industries. AI fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and
offers the opportunity to increase accuracy, inclusiveness, transparency
the functionality of every application, and accountability. Every individual,
accelerate application development at organization and ultimately society will
scale, create compelling interfaces that need to engage towards a trusted and
interact with users in natural ways. Across principled approach to AI, to realize the
industry verticals, AI will enable every technology’s full potential.
business process to enhance customer
engagement, optimize operations, and In Mahatma Gandhi’s words, “The future
improve products and services. AI will depends on what we do in the present.” It
empower every person with knowledge is upon us to seize this moment in India’s
and tools to foster innovation and economic evolution and harness the
collaboration across the enterprise. power of Artificial Intelligence to solve our
most pressing social and environmental
AI adoption in the country is currently challenges, empower our people to access
at an inflection point. As the fastest resources that offer prosperity and health,
growing economy with the second and strengthen our vibrant democracy.
Age of Intelligence | 5
The promise of AI is
holistic growth
I strongly believe that great technologies often utilize AI only in limited instances.
embed themselves into our lives and These single-use cases only scratch the
disappear into the fabric of society. A surface of the potential of AI. The real
few decades ago, telecommunications power of AI is in its ability to holistically
had us in awe; today it’s indispensable. transform the enterprise and redefine
Artificial intelligence is beginning to shift business in ways beyond our present
the way in which we relate to the world frames of reference.
around us. It is already transforming
the way we work and do business. A Each organization needs to define its
recent study by PwC calculated that “tech intensity” – a simple product of
global GDP will increase by 14% by 2030 combining two capabilities: the adoption
because of AI adoption, contributing of technology platforms available at scale
an additional $15.7 trillion to the global and the specific knowledge and assets
economy (PwC, 20171). In the next five that the organization brings to create
years, senior executives across the globe their own distinctive domain advantages.
expect AI to have a positive impact on To make both happen, organizations
growth (90%), productivity (86%), and need a long-term strategy, and a strategic
job creation (69%) in their country and technology partner that goes beyond
industry (Economist Intelligence Unit, providing discrete solutions. As AI
20182). And this growth isn’t limited to implementation continues to expand, this
specific industries; any organization in partnership must be capable of meeting
any industry, especially those with very the needs and concerns of the enterprise,
large amounts of data, can use AI for such as security and scalability. It must also
creating business value. ensure that everyone in the organization,
regardless of technical expertise, is able to
With such enormous potential, it is leverage the power of AI for productivity,
no wonder that all enterprises are collaboration and growth.
ramping up their investments on AI.
However, there are challenges. Everyone At Microsoft, our ambition is to help
acknowledges that AI has broad realize a human-centered approach
transformative potential, but enterprises to AI for every country in which we
struggle to translate this potential into operate, every customer we support
tangible advantages. Some of the key and every community we serve. We are
obstacles to organizations’ progress with establishing Microsoft as the leading AI
AI include the requirements to establish partner to customers, governments and
a strategy and goals, justify and secure communities through constructive policy
investments for projects. Without a advocacy, technology innovation and
comprehensive strategy, enterprises key enabler programs that are critical
6 | Age of Intelligence
to economic growth of countries. In transform society. This is central to our
India, we are laying the foundation for mission of empowering every person
this ambition by building upon four key and every organization on the planet to
pillars, namely achieve more.
1. Enabling transformation across
industries: Leverage AI technologies
to create breakthrough innovations
and accelerate digital transformation,
focusing on industries critical to the
country’s economic growth.
2. Forging coalitions for innovation:
Engage with government, industry,
academic and civil society stakeholders
to create a collective approach to AI.
Enable the government to better serve
the needs of its citizens through AI. “AI is going to be one of the trends that is going to be the next
3. Building a future-ready workforce: big shift in technology. It's going to be AI at the edge, AI in
Empower individuals, across all the cloud, AI as part of SaaS applications, AI as part of in fact
demographics, with the skills for an
AI-enabled world. Enable economic
even infrastructure. And to me, to be the leader in it, it's not
growth and innovation through enough just to sort of have AI capability that we can exercise
development of future-ready - you also need the ability to democratize it so that every
talent pipelines.
business can truly benefit from it. That to me is our identity
4. Creating sustained societal impact: around AI."
Apply AI technologies to address
pressing societal challenges, including Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft3
environmental sustainability,
accessibility, and humanitarian action.
At Microsoft, AI is not a product or a
set of technologies. AI is our vision for 1 https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/data-and-analytics/publications/artificial-intelligence-study.html
2 https://eiuperspectives.economist.com/technology-innovation/intelligent-economies-ais-transforma-
empowerment – for every developer to tion-industries-and-society
innovate, every organization to redefine 3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/06/04/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-on-the-extraordi-
industries and every individual to nary-potential-of-ai/#45fe0076162f
Age of Intelligence | 7
Why now and what is
Microsoft doing
AI has been a field of research and About a decade ago, there was an
application for several decades now. explosion of innovations in the field of
Early on, AI applications were very neural networks with the advent of what
narrow and limited due to lack of is termed as ‘deep learning’. Coupled with
large-scale computing power, lack the availability of vast compute power
of large-scale data, and rudimentary in the cloud, and web-scale data, deep
tools. This made AI applications very learning solved many problems that were
expensive, highly customized for every previously intractable. Very quickly, deep
situation, and not portable. Hence, the learning has become a rapidly adopted
use of AI was very limited. technology to implement AI for a variety
of business applications - in healthcare,
The advent of the Internet allowed the agriculture, technology, gaming, enter-
collection of large-scale data that enabled tainment and science.
training of more impactful and general-
purpose machine learning algorithms. This is a unique time in the history of
Web search is perhaps the first example technology, and particularly AI, where
of a really large scale AI application that computational power, ability to collect
enabled advances in the field–including data, and tools to develop sophisticated
better algorithms, testing of new AI models are available to anyone, in any
approaches, development of large-scale application area. In some sense, people
data collection systems, data processing who have had a history with AI over the
to feed the “build-train-evaluate” loop past couple of decades are in a “pinch
of developing AI, and more importantly, me to see if this is not a dream” moment.
the processes and tools to do all these This availability of “on-tap” capability
in a scalable manner. creates the opportunity for a fundamental
Microsoft’s Advances in AI
Object recognition Speech recognition Machine reading Machine translation
Human parity Human parity comprehension Human parity
2016 2017 Human parity March 2018
January 2018
8 | Age of Intelligence
change in society in just about any field. a. Empowering developers to
innovate: A strong developer
For over 30 years now, Microsoft has ecosystem is vital to unlocking new
led research in Aritficial Intelligence. experiences by infusing AI into
The group’s research has culminated existing applications or creating
in multiple breakthroughs in AI, altogether new applications.
resulting in computers achieving
human parity4 across domains of b. Empowering organizations to
vision, speech, machine reading, redefine industries: Organizations
and translation. can redefine industries by creating
innovative customer experiences
With advancements in computer vision, through AI, transforming their
computers can see, understand and products, optimizing their operations
comprehend the world. This capability or empowering their employees.
is already helping workers to be more
productive, doctors to diagnose better
or companies to identify defects and
improve safety on the shop floor. Human
like speech recognition capability coupled
with highly advanced translation between
languages are enabling people across
the world to communicate with each
other even when languages are different.
Speech recognition and conversational
technology are enabling better customer
service through automation. Human level
reading comprehension enables search
engines to answer difficult questions that
users have, from complex documents
from the web.
Microsoft AI
Microsoft AI is a vision of empowerment.
It is not a product in a box – it is
fundamentally much more than that, and
encompasses three core aspects:
Age of Intelligence | 9
c. Empowering people to transform release - Bing, Dynamics 365, Office
society: AI has tremendous potential 365, SwiftKey, Skype and Cortana.
to tackle our societies’ greatest Microsoft AI is also deeply integrated
challenges. Our vision is to empower in the backend services to protect
people to leverage AI to positively your data and persona in the cloud.
transform society. Intelligent security graph is a prime
example which identifies potential
Within the next decade, rapid advances vulnerabilities across all services using
in cloud, data and algorithms will firmly insights from trillions of signals from
find their place in every enterprise. devices running Windows, Office 365,
AI-powered devices, bots and software will Bing, Xbox, and Azure, globally.
likely need minimal human intervention
or supervision, with intelligent services 2. Platform: In our mission to empower
enabling seamless automation. others, Microsoft is democratizing AI.
Intelligence will be ubiquitous and Microsoft is making the technology
available ‘on-demand’ via intuitive user used in building its own AI applica-
interfaces. Microsoft is empowering this tions available on Azure to empower
by infusing intelligence into our Products, developers and institutions in solv-
Platform and Business Solutions: ing their most difficult problems. AI
platform is a set of tools, services and
1. Products: Instilling intelligence into infrastructure that enable customers
our products has been a key priority and partners to build their own AI
for Microsoft. The interfaces already solutions, even as they infuse intelli-
provide insights, suggestions and gent interfaces and machine learning
possible next action based on your into their existing solutions.
usage pattern or your personal
design preferences. These solutions a. Infrastructure: Customers can
are embedded in every product we take the infinite scale of
10 | Age of Intelligencecomputing resources on – just with a few lines of code. For
Azure and then incorporate instance, a developer can with few
AI using data platforms like lines of code, implement human
Azure Data Lake or Cosmos DB. parity voice recognition using the
Microsoft is also working on Cognitive Services Speech API for
new-age infrastructure using his/her application.
reprogrammable chips or Field
Programmable Gateway Arrays, c. Tools: The Microsoft AI Platform
(FPGAs), which significantly comprises of tools and solutions
improve the training and inference which developers or data
speeds for deep learning models. scientists can use for creating new
interfaces, algorithms or machine
b. Services: Microsoft Cognitive learning models. The tools
Services offer the largest include developer studios as well
breadth of AI services in the as most of the popular industry
industry. These are fundamental frameworks (first party as well
AI building blocks that enable third party).
applications with the same world-
class AI capabilities that Microsoft 3. Business Solutions: Microsoft has
uses for developing its products- built a host of purpose-built, easy-
vision, speech, language, to-use solution templates and
knowledge, and search. Microsoft accelerators for each industry vertical.
has over a million developers The objective is to provide ready
worldwide that are using our guidance and solutions for businesses
cognitive services to infuse AI to adopt in their journey towards
into their products and solutions transformation.
The Microsoft AI platform
Services Tools
Infrastructure
4 Microsoft’s Advances in AI from https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/
Age of Intelligence | 11Leading your organization
into the AI era
Organizations today find the need to results could mislead. It is imperative
harness the power of data within their that data is primed, cleaned, categorized,
organizations to get actionable insights tagged and detected for anomalies to
and solutions which can provide the edge avoid misleading insights. This process
over competition. With the accessibility by itself is extremely complex and time
of cloud computing, the ubiquitous -consuming but it provides AI its true
availability of parallel processing power and purpose.
power, near free data storage, and an
exponential increase in digital data, AI is An organization can achieve far more with
finally starting to deliver real-life benefits a comprehensive AI strategy rather than
to early adopting companies. With incremental changes through isolated use
this, AI has moved beyond technology cases. To make this happen, organizations
experimentation to real world business need a comprehensive solution map
scenarios across industries. to bring AI in every application, every
business process and every employee.
Some of the key industry sectors such It must also ensure that all employees,
as Automotive, Financial Services, regardless of technical expertise, are able
Healthcare and Manufacturing have to benefit.
already started adopting AI to tap
opportunities they were not seeing Every Application
before. AI is also getting embedded into
the fabric of an organization’s functions Quickly and easily develop
such as human resources, marketing, intelligent applications
and customer services. to create engaging user
experiences and surface
One of the clearest use cases for unprecedented insights
AI is creating business applications
with intelligent capabilities. Most One of the clearest use cases of AI is
organizations are changing their creating business applications with
applications to have better interfaces intelligent capabilities. Use of AI in
with cognitive capabilities or building all applications is rapidly increasing; by
new solutions with predictive analytics 2021, 75% of commercial enterprise
and machine learning capabilities. At the apps will use AI (IDC, 20175). AI offers
same time, organizations are spending tremendous opportunity to increase
money and effort in labeling the data the functionality of existing business
and priming it for more accurate analytics applications and turn them into tools for
and insights. Data is the foundation for more effective customer engagement
intelligence. Without clean data, the and employee productivity. However,
12 | Age of Intelligencemost organizations’ app developers do enable developers to harness intelligence
not have the AI expertise needed to make with massive datasets on a platform
this a reality. with comprehensive support. And our
enterprise-grade AI infrastructure runs
To help developers integrate AI into every AI workloads anywhere at scale.
application, Microsoft provides them the
tools needed to build the next generation To further simplify the creation of
of smart applications where their AI solutions, Microsoft also offers a
enterprise data lives-in the intelligent comprehensive set of flexible and
cloud, on-premises, and on the intelligent trusted AI services. Trusted AI services
edge. By putting the reins of innovation accelerate the development of AI
in the hands of each developer, they can solutions - from pre-built APIs, such as
then build intelligent apps that can see, Cognitive Services and Conversational
hear, speak, understand, and interpret AI with bot tools, to platforms for
user needs. building custom models such as Azure
Machine Learning Studio.
For developers to build intelligence
across every application, a With Cognitive Services, developers can
Comprehensive AI platform is required. make their applications more intelligent
The platform should enable developers and engaging by infusing them with
and data scientists build intelligent cognitive capabilities. These services are
apps. This is complimented by software high quality RESTful intelligent APIs for
services providers in creating tools Vision, Speech, Language, Knowledge
and services that make AI integration and Search. With just a few lines of
in an organization faster and easier. code, developers that are new to AI can
For example, Microsoft has developed infuse their applications with cognitive
PowerApps for Dynamics 365, a powerful capabilities to communicate with users 25% of all customer service
tool that enables faster innovation with a in a natural language, identify relevant and support operations will
point-and-click approach to app design. content in images and recognize users
Similarly, Azure AI platform features by voice. integrate virtual customer
modern AI tools and services designed to assistant or chatbot tech-
help developers and data scientists create The platform generally expands itself
AI solutions easily, while maximizing with specialty environments meant for
nology across engagement
productivity. Users can choose from data science and deep learning with channels by 2020, up from
a large selection of templates or start custom model preconfigured for more
less than 2% in 2017
from a blank canvas to build a custom elaborate data preparation and data
app based on the Common Data Model. analytics as required. (Gartner, 20186)
Popular deep-learning frameworks
Age of Intelligence | 13Every business process efficiency in their internal processes
in pursuit of “improving customer
Enhance every business experience”. All business processes and
process with intelligence their efficiency can be categorized in one
to expand customer of the three stages of journey namely
engagement, optimize “reporting to prediction”, “prediction to
operations, and improve decision” or “decision to action”.
products and services
To take a few examples, the following
Over the last several decades, the functions, across industry verticals,
advent of the internet has completely are innovating with AI on specific
redefined business processes. From sales workloads to improve their efficiency
and marketing to customer support, and effectiveness:
the way customers do business today
would be nearly unrecognizable to Marketing
the enterprises of a few decades past
- and the result has been dramatic Artificial Intelligence and machine
increases in productivity and output. learning is increasing emphasis on the
To say that AI will have a similar impact entire customer journey. It can provide
is no overstatement. marketeers a more comprehensive
view of their customers by connecting
AI enables organizations to take better- the dots across all their devices and
informed decisions by making it easy to revealing how their needs are changing.
derive insights from data, helping them AI can also quickly identify patterns
expand customer engagement, optimize among customers to provide insights
operations, and improve offerings. into the best way to approach them at
Reimagining business processes with AI each stage of the customer journey. So
also makes work more efficient, saving here are a few areas where AI can help
employees time so they can focus on bring immediate change:
higher priorities.
Elevating the customer experience: By
Customers continue to move away from making marketing more personalized,
the priority of “cutting costs” to improving Artificial Intelligence is transforming
INSIGHTS IS A JOURNEY
14 | Age of Intelligencemarketing into something that people simplify menial tasks and help buyers to
truly enjoy. work fast and work smart in the future.
Powering customer decisions: AI can Some scenarios which are worked upon
help make better recommendations are as below:
for customers whenever or whichever
way they touch or interface with Automation of error-prone menial
the organization by whatever we know procurement tasks: AI adoption will lead
and specifically they allowed us to know. to greater automation of menial tasks,
making them actionable quicker than
Talent and Human Resources multiple days. It could be automation
of invoices processing or comparison of
Managers and HR have a difficult purchase orders or supplier contracts.
task to identify the pulse of the With Computer Vision, invoice
organization and the employees. processing has become more accurate
Bad attrition rates affect an organization and helps reduce the administrative
negatively and it doesn’t help to find out burden on employees.
an employee is unhappy only at the time
of resigning. Most of these signals are Contract lifecycle solutions: Renewals,
already available in the organization and expiring contracts, and scope of
are generally missed. engagements in an organization are
extremely sensitive and very difficult to
Here are few areas AI is helping in HR: keep track of. With Computer Vision and
Search, a large part of documentation is
Employee retention and prediction: With digitized, cross referenced and potential
all signals available from employee pitfalls can be flagged.
interactions across internal systems,
feedback from various sources, appraisal Artificial Intelligence is currently being
systems and market analysis, it is possible discussed in nearly every domain of
to detect employee needs. Such analysis science, engineering and business.
gives room to HR professionals to be Currently, the most vibrant part of AI,
proactive and resolve the root cause of machine learning, is tightly coupled to
the issues instead of responding to issues the availability of relevant data sets within
as they occur. industries. It is critical to partner with
technology innovators within industries Narayana Health is looking
Smarter talent acquisition: Candidate to create AI solutions that meet vertical- at new avenues to optimize
screening is another task that can be specific needs. Here, we will look at a few its operations and augment
easily automated using AI. Through of the most powerful scenarios where
machine learning, more online data can AI has already made an impact across patient care with technology.
be collected and parsed such as from specific industries: One of the ongoing projects
social media, previous online job records, being piloted internally is
and educational qualifications that will Healthcare
then enhance the ranking system of to use Artificial Intelligence
candidates for recruiters to pick from. In the health domains, there is an to decipher X-Rays to point
abundance of data in a variety of out any irregularities from a
Procurement formats. However, the quality of and
accessibility to these data resources normal X-Ray, which would
AI could change procur-ement models, remains a significant challenge help doctors save time.
Age of Intelligence | 15worldwide. Health data has privacy Financial Services
requirements associated with it, making
its collection, sharing, aggregating, or This is a time of transformation for
analyzing particularly cumbersome the financial services industry. With
compared to other types of data. In technological advances, cultural shifts,
addition, health data is expensive to cybersecurity threats, and regulatory
collect initially, so it tends to be tightly changes, there’s a pressing need for banks
guarded once it is collected. Further, to rethink the way they work. Banks are
the lack of interoperability of electronic now competing with a growing number
health record systems impedes even the of cloud-native industry disruptors and
simplest of computational methods, as a result, customer expectations are
and the inability to capture relevant shifting. Today only 24% of customers
social and environmental information report that they believe their bank
in existing systems leaves a key set understands their current goals (NIIT,
of variables out of data streams for 20177). This is compounded by the
individual health. Due to the sensitive risk of financial crime: in the last 24
nature and special legal protection of months, 56% of financial institutions
health data, countries are still evaluating have experienced consumer fraud and
how to balance multiple fundamental 41% have experienced cybercrime (PwC,
rights simultaneously, like data 20188). Innovative new capabilities,
protection and healthy living. enabled by the financial services-ready
cloud, are helping banks to meet these
Here are some ways we are integrating AI challenges and transform their business
into healthcare: for the better. Such capabilities include:
Personalized medicine: Analytics-driven Next Best Action (NBA): AI-powered
individualized treatment plans based on a NBA solutions use sophisticated rules,
patient’s genetic makeup, medical history, analytics, and algorithms to better
lifestyle, and more - made possible predict customer needs and in turn
through advances in genomics and offer more relevant actions and
intelligent analysis of massive amounts of promotions, leading to improved wallet
healthcare data. share and loyalty.
Healthcare Bot service: A cloud- Risk analytics and fraud prevention:
based solution that enables healthcare Machine learning makes more accurate
Future Generali India Life organizations to build and deploy risk, fraud, and customer models
compliant, virtual health assistants that possible, enabling financial services
Insurance Co. Ltd.’s REVA can provide users with conversational institutions to spot hidden risks and
chatbot caters to most and engaging access to the most relevant decrease operating costs.
customer requests on its and accurate healthcare services and
information. Manufacturing
website. The chatbot has
improved its customer Inner eye: A Microsoft research project The rise of digital technology and IoT has
relationship score while that is exploring state-of-the-art machine provided manufacturers with vast stores
learning technology to build innovative of data that reflect operational efficiency
reducing calls and time to tools that automatically analyze 3-D and business performance. More than
settle claims. radiological images. half the manufacturers with revenues
16 | Age of Intelligenceexceeding $1 billion have invested over Governments Piramal Glass implemented
$100m toward smart factories, and they Real Time Manufacturing
are seeing an average productivity gain of Governments are under pressure to Insights (RTMI) using
nearly 20% (Capgemini, 20179). Gleaning create more effective citizen services.
useful insights from this data is essential In particular, there is a lot of room for Azure IoT Hub to make its
for manufacturers who often operate on growth in providing citizens with digital production lines paperless
thin margins and are increasingly looking government services. Increasingly, with dashboards accessible
for value-added services-especially citizens want to use mobile devices to
field service-to differentiate themselves. access government services. At the same on smartphones, laptops
AI is empowering manufacturers to time, governments are fighting to control and even large displays
create more with their data, leading to costs and ensure security and privacy. on the factory floor. With
advancements in: As a result, AI tools enable governments
to connect with their citizens more real-time alerts, RTMI has
Predictive maintenance: Estimate the effectively, eliminate waste, and protect reduced cost of ownership
remaining useful life for machines and sensitive information. Two key areas for by 70%, improved employee
their components, enabling maintenance these innovative AI initiatives are:
technicians to be proactive about repairs productivity by 25% and
and reduce costly downtime. Smart cities: Intelligent technology decreased defects by 5%.
designed to tackle common challenges
Performance improvements: Anticipate such as fee and toll management, traffic
the risk of production disruptions, optimization, and sustainability.
bottlenecks, and safety risks in real-time,
highlighting problems before they occur. Citizen services: Tools designed to provide
Andhra Pradesh govern-
citizens with easier access to consolidated
Retail government services through tracking, ment had piloted a project
search, and conversational bots. using AI and ML for analyz-
In retail, customers have an increasing ing school drop-out rates,
expectation for personalized experiences Education predicting future drop-outs
that demonstrate an understanding of the
customer as an individual. A large percent Technology is creating unprecedented and enabling preventive
of consumers expect brands to provide opportunities to connect students to action. Powered by Azure
personalized service to customers. AI is the world around them and help them machine learning and the
enabling retailers to tailor their offerings realize their full potential. Teachers,
cloud, a new app is predict-
more precisely to customer demand with administrators, and technology
services such as innovators are collaborating to solve ing which students are most
some of the most pressing challenges likely to drop out of school.
Sales personalization: Intelligence applied in education through AI. These The scalable tool process-
to customer history enables retailers to collaborations have produced:
es complex data sets that
deliver customized experiences, offerings,
pricing, and planning-modernizing the Accessibility in the classroom: AI-powered include details about enrol-
online and physical buying experience. tools-such as real-time lesson translation ment, student performance,
for students that speak a different gender and socio-economic
Dynamic pricing & planning: Forecasting language and narration of surroundings
demographics, school infra-
models predict demand for different for students who are blind-enable teachers
products, providing greater confidence for to make the classroom more accessible. structure and teacher skills to
pricing and stocking decisions and reducing find predictive patterns.
losses from overstocks and out-of-stock. School-wide AI insights: Deep analytic
Age of Intelligence | 17insights into student success and risk and PDFs, or may even be redundant, or
across entire schools or school districts obsolete. Without usable data across the
help educators make informed decisions enterprise, most organizations are limited
on how to improve student outcomes. to employing AI on specific siloes of
structured information.
Every employee
Instead of developing AI applications that
Foster innovation and can only perform niche tasks, technology
collaboration across the today is helping enterprises organize
enterprise by placing AI in the their structured and unstructured data
hands of every employee into a single, searchable knowledge
base enriched with relevant external
AI has the capacity to empower all data. AI capabilities run on top of
employees to achieve more, not just data to understand the content and
highly skilled technical workers. Apart infer relationships, turning data into
from generating higher business value, knowledge and ensuring that the user
AI augmentation is expected to recover receives the most relevant information.
billions of hours of worker productivity. Serving as a strategic foundation for
This human-AI partnership combines the current and future AI initiatives, this
strengths of both computers and humans knowledge base is also understandable,
to drive this unprecedented value across consumable, and searchable by AI
every industry. Enabling every employee models and can enable enterprises to
to become a 'citizen data scientist' is integrate AI in every aspect of their
crucial to realize the full potential of business. From this centralized resource,
Artificial Intelligence. Only then can the employees can search and explore
whole organization glean new insights, previously unavailable enterprise
make better decisions, and perform information, enabling them to be more
complex analysis using AI. efficient and impactful.
We believe there are three imperatives to Enrich employee experiences with
provide any employee with the ability to searchable knowledge: With a
explore, derive insights, and create new comprehensive AI platform, enterprises
knowledge from vast amounts of data: can build rich experiences on top of
turning disparate data into knowledge, their enterprise knowledge, either by
Partnering with Microsoft, enriching employee experiences with infusing it into existing productivity and
UST Global was able to searchable knowledge, and driving business applications or by creating
innovation with democratized AI. new applications powered by AI, like
combine their disparate data
conversational agents. For example, the
into searchable knowledge, Turn disparate data into knowledge: next generation of conversational agents
helping them improve First, we need to convert an enterprise’s can pull information from knowledge
siloed and chaotic data into information corpus to answer specific business
customer experiences, provide
employees can easily access. AI is only as questions, such as “Which customers are
their employees with more powerful as the data it’s built on. While within a 10-mile radius of the airport?”
actionable customer insights, most enterprises have amassed huge Access to knowledge democratizes AI
quantities of data, it often resides in experiences and provides powerful new
and expand the capabilities
siloed systems, like marketing and finance connections to employees.
of their AI-powered digital systems. Moreover, most of this data is
assistant. either unstructured, like video files, images, Consider the following illustration of the
18 | Age of Intelligencesearchable knowledge base in action: Lisa, AI capabilities, not only can they ask the
a marketer, needs to find an advertising important questions, they can also very
agency to use for an upcoming campaign. quickly extract relevant insights applicable
Typically, identifying an agency with the to the task they are trying to complete.
right capabilities would require relying From highly technical employees to non-
on colleagues for recommendations and technical business users, we are placing AI
spending hours reviewing past records, in the hands of every employee and giving
agency websites, web results, and the them the power to transform how they
agency’s previous work. Lisa would work and think in more innovative ways
have struggled to piece together this than ever before.
information, manually combing through
countless sources of data, never certain if In word processors and presentation
she had all the right information. tools, employees are able to develop
documents and presentations in less time
With an AI-infused knowledge base, Lisa with automated design capabilities, which
can search “Find me advertising agencies” provide design tips and writing assistance.
and a ranked list of agencies her company Employees are able to streamline emails
used in the past will populate. Curious and calendars with features that help filter
about her colleagues’ experiences, she out the noise and surface the most relevant
selects two agencies that her company information, so they don’t miss what’s
has previously used and types a new important. In spreadsheets, intelligent
query into the search bar: “Find me Teams capabilities have been a part of the
threads that mention these agencies.” Her experience for years. Features like advanced
search yields dozens of Teams threads. data transformation and flash fill have
Keen to quickly identify which agency her helped users perform and derive value from
colleagues have had the most positive their data. With continued advancements AI platforms help employees
sentiment about, she applies a sentiment in AI technology, spreadsheets are connect with each other, find
analysis AI model. She can now use introducing more advanced AI features examples of great work, and
more advanced queries like “Show me that help employees unlock new insights
Teams threads with negative sentiment from raw data sets in just a few clicks by spark new ways to innovate
for Agency A” or “Show me the trend of highlighting relevant patterns. and boost creativity.
sentiment for Agency B.”
Instead of searching for hours with
potentially less informed results, users
like Lisa can now easily perform complex
analysis with AI tools and quickly find the
information that matters most to them.
Creating knowledge bases is just one way
we are revolutionizing how employees
search, find, and explore information.
5 https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS43185317
Drive innovation with democratized AI: To 6 https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-02-19-gartner-says-25-percent-of-customer-
truly enable employees to become citizen service-operations-will-use-virtual-customer-assistants-by-2020
data scientists, technology is enabling 7 http://www.niit-tech.com/sites/default/files/Whitepaper%20-%20BFS%20-%20Delivering%20Personal-
ized%20Digital%20Banking%20Experience_ed....pdf
them with an easy way to run AI models
8 https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/forensics/global-economic-crime-and-fraud-survey-2018.pdf
on top of enterprise knowledge. When 9 https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/smart_factories-how_can_manufacturers_real-
employees are empowered with these ize_the_potential_of_digital_industrial_revolution.pdf
Age of Intelligence | 19AI for India
India offers every indication of becoming The AI strategy for India published by NITI
“digitally ready,” with new technology Aayog is comprehensive and addresses the
enablers developing at a rapid pace scale, challenges, needs and aspirations
in the market. Cell phone penetration, unique to India. The strategy outlines
reduced data costs, and the focus on sectors of the economy where AI can play
making India a digital economy are a significant role in bringing India to the
combining to extend connectivity and forefront of the AI revolution. The report
services to underserved segments of the has also defined the role of different
population10. The opportunity for top stakeholders and the government in
line growth is enormous with growing this journey. The technology industry
internet penetration in the country. The needs to actively engage to realize India’s
rapidly declining cost of data services has aspirations in AI, given that many of the
also resulted in significant increase in use initiatives outlined need technology as
of the internet. the backbone to achieve scale, efficiency
and sustainability. Cloud infrastructure
With a focus on digital inclusion, the and rapid deployment of intelligent cloud
government is aggressively pursuing a services will play a key role in driving AI
Digital India program that includes a set adoption in the country.
of APIs that address identity, payment
and consent, collectively known as India One of the challenges involved in
Stack11. India Stack’s vision is to drive implementing Artificial Intelligence in
presence-less, paper-less, cash-less and India is that AI-ready talent is in short
consent-based service delivery that can be supply. Industry, policy-making bodies,
leveraged by an ecosystem of businesses, and the government must therefore
startups as well as the government to work closely with academia to create
deliver innovative services for citizens. opportunities that will engage the
next generation of AI professionals.
Nearly 1.2 billion Indians are now enrolled Additionally, it is predicted (by NASSCOM,
under Aadhaar, the country’s bio-metric 201712) that a startling 46% of the Indian
based digital identity program. Aadhaar workforce will be engaged in entirely new
serves as the basic building block for jobs that do not exist today or jobs that
access to government services. Building have radically changed skill sets. With
on Aadhaar are a set of public utilities and this, the need for data analysts, machine
software standards likee-signature (eSign), learning and AI specialists is also expected
electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC), to increase along with the demand for
digital locker, and a consent layer (through new-age jobs across all sectors. Hence
which individuals can control who has re-skilling will have to become an
access to their data and information). integral part of the overall AI for India
20 | Age of Intelligencestory. Today, the Indian Government, in the language of their choice. Today,
private enterprises, learning platforms, Microsoft has voice recognition and Presenceless layer
Where a universal biometric
and universities are readying initiatives translation services for key Indian
digital identity allows people to
to train people at scale in AI and ML to languages available on Azure, and is participate in all services from
address this looming skill gap. working to bring these services to all anywhere in the country
major Indian languages.
Another challenge in India relates to
inclusion. India’s linguistic diversity and There are various examples where these
literacy results in a “digital language initiatives have already begun and policy
barrier”, with services not being easily think tanks and research organizations Cashless layer
Where a single interface to all
accessible to all citizens. AI is expected such as NITI Aayog13 (National Institute
the country’s bank accounts
to play a key role in removing this barrier, for Transforming India), iSPIRT, and and wallets helps democratize
by enabling voice recognition, text to iCRISAT are very emphatic in creating payments
speech and translation for all key Indian and adopting frameworks which could
languages. Once that is available, all accelerate AI-led digital transformation
services can be offered to all citizens, across sectors.
Paperless layer
Where digital records move with
an individual’s digital identity,
eliminating the need for massive
amount of paper collection and
storage
Consent layer
Which allows data to move
freely and securely to democra-
tize the market for data
10 http://niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/Strategy_
for_New_India.pdf
11 https://indiastack.org/about/
12 Future of Jobs in India: A 2022 Perspective, 2017
13 http://niti.gov.in/
Age of Intelligence | 21AI for good
AI can be a powerful tool for increasing breakthroughs that make the workplace
access to information, education, more inclusive, providing equal access
employment, government services, as to information through innovations in
well as social and economic opportunities. vision, speech, and machine reading, and
There are no limits to what people helping people with disabilities gain more
can achieve when technology reflects independence to perform daily tasks
the diversity of everyone who uses it.
Enterprises should play an active role to AI for Humanitarian Action
ensure that these new technologies are
applied responsibly and inclusively. Over Persistent humanitarian crises caused
the past 18 months, Microsoft has been by natural and man-made disasters,
investing in AI for Good programs that oppression and other emergencies have
lower the barriers of entry to cloud and AI plagued our world for as long as time
technologies through grants, education, itself. And while global relief organizations
research, and strategic partnerships. scramble to respond to these events,
their work is often reactive and difficult
AI for Accessibility to scale. We believe that technology,
like Artificial Intelligence (AI) combined
Microsoft’s AI for accessibility with cloud technology, can be a game
program promotes inclusion through changer, helping save more lives, alleviate
intelligent technology. We are focused suffering and restore human dignity
on empowering organizations and by changing the way frontline relief
developers to harness AI to amplify human organizations anticipate, predict and
capabilities for people with disabilities. better target response efforts. In 2018,
The program focuses on driving in conjunction with the United Nations
A new way of seeing
Seeing AI is a free app designed to help the low vision
community better see the world around them. This ongoing
research project harnesses the power of AI to describe people,
text, and objects.
Learn about Seeing AI
22 | Age of IntelligenceGeneral Assembly meeting, Microsoft AI for Earth
announced AI for Humanitarian Action14,
a new $40 million, five-year program. AI for Earth puts Microsoft cloud and AI
The initiative will harness the power of AI tools in the hands of those working to
to focus on four priorities – helping the solve global environmental challenges.
world recover from disasters, addressing Through grants that provide access
the needs of children, protecting refugees to cloud and AI tools, opportunities
and displaced people, and promoting for education and training on AI, and
respect for human rights. Our AI for investments in innovative, scalable
Humanitarian Action program is part of solutions, AI for Earth works to advance
Microsoft’s AI for Good suite – a growing sustainability across the globe. The
$115 million, five-year commitment to program focuses on four key areas vital to
work to unlock solutions to some of creating a sustainable future – agriculture,
society’s biggest challenges. water, biodiversity, and climate change.
Gramener wins ‘Data Science for Social Good Award’ and
Microsoft AI for societal impact award
Gramener and Microsoft AI for Earth help Nisqually River
Foundation automate identification of fish species.
14 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-for-hu-
manitarian-action
Age of Intelligence | 23Responsible AI
As we look to a future powered by a makes policymakers, industry, academia,
partnership between computers and and the public-at-large uneasy.
humans, it’s important that we address
the underlying ethical challenges head- An important reason why human
on. Designing trustworthy AI requires beings operate in the physical world
creating solutions that reflect ethical with confidence and trust is because
principles deeply rooted in important there is a broad consensus about
and timeless human values. It's quite what kinds of behavior are considered
easy to get swayed by technological responsible and acceptable. In general,
advancements and immediate returns this consensus grows out of norms that
in business. However, few ethical values are implicitly understood, consistently
need to be embedded in every activity applied in everyday social interactions,
or decision-making process while using and reinforced in laws. As we get more
Artificial Intelligence. into the digital world, there is reason
enough to see that the same level of
At Microsoft, we have defined a framework trust and confidence needs to be built.
for Ethics of AI that includes six values - Given below are what we believe to be
fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and fundamental principles that need to
accuracy, inclusiveness, transparency, and guide the development of AI:
accountability. This framework is meant to
guide the cross-disciplinary development Fairness: It is essential that AI does not
and use of Artificial Intelligence. limit opportunities for anyone-fairness
is the foundation for treating people
We have seen that AI has the capacity to with dignity and respect. If AI systems
impact human life in a multitude of ways, provide guidance on medical treatment,
by driving efficiency and effectiveness, loan applications or employment, for
or through automation. AI systems are example, they should make the same
also increasingly being used to make recommendations to everyone with
consequential decisions that affect similar symptoms, financial circumstances
people-decisions that humans would or professional qualifications. When
have made in the past. For example, an developing these systems, developers
AI system might largely replace a loan should be sensitive to situations
officer in deciding whether a person is where societal or other biases may get
creditworthy, or it may screen a group of incorporated into either the training data
job applications to determine the most or the algorithms. We thus need to ensure
qualified candidate. The automated that AI is fair and not programmed to
nature of these important considerations make biases or discriminatory decisions
24 | Age of IntelligenceThe ethics of AI
Fairness Reliability & Safety Privacy & Security Inclusiveness
Transparency
Accountability
that we have prohibited human beings will be stored securely, used safely, and to
from making. a good end. It is essential that AI systems
comply with applicable privacy laws, on
Reliability & Safety: AI systems should the collection, use, and storage of data.
perform reliably and safely. The The systems must be designed to protect
complexity of AI technologies has fueled personal data from bad actors who may
fears that AI systems may cause harm in steal private information or inflict harm
the face of unforeseen circumstances, otherwise.
or that they can be manipulated to act
in harmful ways. Trust in AI systems Inclusiveness: AI systems should benefit
will depend on whether they can be everyone and address a broad range of
operated reliably, safely and consistently human needs and experience, inclusively.
even under unexpected conditions, These technologies can be a powerful
especially for applications in fields tool for people who are disabled (e.g.,
such as transportation, healthcare, and visual, hearing, mobility, speech, or
financial services – where consequential cognitively impaired), enabling them to
decisions are involved. gain access to opportunities that they
may not have had before, in education,
These systems need to demonstrate employment, government services,
that they can be depended upon to thereby improving their overall health,
make appropriate recommendations socioeconomic situation, and quality of
in as many circumstances as possible. life. However, if the process of building
Designing appropriate AI behavior in a these tools and/or solutions excludes
very broad set of circumstances raises people and/or data from diverse
many challenging issues that are actively backgrounds and abilities, there is an
being researched. inherent risk of bias creeping in.
Privacy & Security: AI systems need a lot Underlying the four preceding values are
of data for training, including data that two foundational principles: transparency
concerns people. For example, we can’t and accountability.
predict who is at a higher risk for cardiac
related diseases unless we have a large Transparency: As AI systems are
amount of data about a wide variety of increasingly involved in decisions that
people who have had prior cardiac related influence people’s lives, enabling people
diseases and information that includes to understand how these systems
their age, gender, etc. People will not want operate and providing a mechanism for
to share their data if they don’t believe it accountability are essential to building
Age of Intelligence | 25trust. Many of the advanced machine review boards can provide oversight
learning techniques such as deep neural and guidance on which practices should
networks function essentially as “black be adopted during development and
box” systems that even data scientists deployment of AI systems. Additionally,
can’t fully understand. We believe that while designing systems, there are
a meaningful approach to enabling possibly four key questions that we
transparency is to explain everything should ask to ensure that inconsequential
that we can about the system end-to- harm does not occur:
end. For example:
In the end, as any other technology, AI
• Description of the data that was used holds great opportunities, but at the
to train and test the system same time throws up several concerns.
Governments, society, academia and the
• What procedures were used to verify industry-at-large need to come together
data quality and completeness? to build regulations, which ensure
that AI is used responsibly. Making
• What types of data will continue to be AI trustworthy can be realized only if
used once the system is deployed? we work closely with the government
policymakers to help structure the
• What are the criteria used in algorithm narrative and regulations of what is right
selection? and what is wrong. This cannot be done
in isolation because over-regulation may
• How are the outcomes verified and impinge on the innovation and value
tested for potential bias? that AI can bring to society. Thus, in India,
we need to work closely with bodies
Accountability: People who design and such as NITI Aayog, MeITY, Department
deploy AI systems must be accountable of Science and Technology as well as
for how their systems operate. To establish academic institutions to help frame the
norms and best practices, we can draw guard rails of where and how AI should
upon experience in other sectors such be used to instill trust and responsibility
as healthcare and privacy. Internal in AI-based systems.
Question Description
System Purpose Will the technology be used to augment the abilities of
individuals and result in a positive impact on people and
society?
Technology Capability Are the AI technology and people capable of performing
the tasks that the AI system should do?
Quality & Reliability Will the technology be effectively designed, operated
and maintained by a responsible party? Will it continue
to perform the way it is supposed to over time under
different situations?
Sensitive Uses Is the system in a sensitive category which may have a
broad impact on people and society? Will it inadvertently
deny people services, cause harm and/or risk their
personal freedom?
26 | Age of IntelligenceYou can also read
