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 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 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 even infrastructure. And to me, to be the leader in it, it's not AI-enabled world. Enable economic 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 , 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 empowerment – for every developer to 2 https://eiuperspectives.economist.com/technology-innovation/intelligent-economies-ais-transforma- 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, 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 will Bing, , 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 Intelligence computing 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 | 11 Leading 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 Intelligence most 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 nology across engagement AI solutions easily, while maximizing with specialty environments meant for 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 6 app based on the Common Data Model. analytics as required. (Gartner, 2018 ) Popular deep-learning frameworks

Age of Intelligence | 13 Every 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 Intelligence marketing 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 | 15 worldwide. 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 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 Intelligence exceeding $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 | 17 insights 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 combine their disparate data innovation with democratized AI. new applications powered by AI, like 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 customer experiences, provide siloed and chaotic data into information corpus to answer specific business 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 and expand the capabilities quantities of data, it often resides in experiences and provides powerful new 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 Intelligence searchable 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 | 19 AI 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 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 Intelligence story. 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 | 21 AI 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

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22 | Age of Intelligence General 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 | 23 Responsible 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 Intelligence The 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 | 25 trust. 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 Intelligence Conclusion: Where do we go from here…

The last few years have seen Artificial Extreme classification is a rapidly Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning growing research area focussing on (ML) inexorably increase their impact multi-class and multi-label problems across all facets of our daily lives. From involving an extremely large number of interacting with smart chatbots much labels. Many applications have been found like we do with humans, including mixing in diverse areas ranging from language multiple languages as we would in normal modelling to document tagging in NLP, human conversation, to assisting farmers face recognition to learning universal by making agriculture-related predictions feature representations in computer that result in yields, AI is seeing useful vision, gene function prediction in applications everywhere. bioinformatics, etc. Extreme classification has also opened up a new paradigm Aiding and enabling this rapid spread of for ranking and recommendation by AI is the widespread access to technology reformulating them as multi-label and computing through affordable learning tasks where each item to be devices such as smartphones, which ranked or recommended is treated as a today provide a plethora of applications separate label. Such reformulations have aimed at enhancing convenience and led to significant gains over traditional decision making. And of course, these collaborative filtering and content- devices also generate massive amounts of based recommendation techniques. data that is fed back into ML algorithms Consequently, extreme classifiers have to make them more efficient, optimised been deployed in many real-world and personalised to the user. applications in industry. This is an area of research that is being pioneered by MSR However, there is much to be done in the India. We originated this sub-field, and field of AI to make its benefits available have built a community around it - for across a broad swathe of applications and the past few years, workshops in extreme to society. Microsoft Research India has classification are being held in top ML several ongoing efforts to shape the future conferences such as NeurIPS and ICML, of AI. We have an interdisciplinary team and we are leading this community. with expertise ranging over algorithms, machine learning, systems and human- AI at the edge. ML and AI have computer interaction, and our innovations traditionally been thought to require span algorithms, systems and applications. Internet-scale computing resources to We list a few specific directions below: be effective. Devices at the edge, such as sensors, have typically been seen AI at Internet Scale, and AI at as instruments to transmit data to the the Edge cloud, where the AI and ML systems will

Age of Intelligence | 27 make intelligent decisions based on the already established multiple projects data. However, there are many scenarios in this area. 99DOTS is a low-cost where one may not want to communicate engagement tool using basic mobile constantly with the cloud for reasons of phones and augmented packaging privacy or conservation of battery power. for patients taking anti-Tuberculosis Or, access to the Internet may simply not medication. Each day, patients send be available. How does one then deliver a free call to a number revealed by the power of ML in these scenarios? MSR the packaging after dispensing its India has devised ML algorithms that can medication. Based on their adherence run on these resource-poor devices that and connection to the Hub, programs often have as little as 2 KB RAM, and deliver can differentially treat patients and accuracy levels comparable to algorithms escalate cases of non-adherence. that run on cloud-based infrastructure. 99DOTS has reached over 200,000 AI at the edge can revolutionise the way patients till date, and is being deployed we see and implement AI today. Our work in 7 countries around the world. We are here has received wide acclaim through now starting to use the data from this publications in top ML conferences experience, and are building ML models (NeurIPS and ICML). We are working with to predict patients who have a high risk the community to define new end-to- of non-adherence to the medication end applications that are made possible regime, so that healthcare workers can through these breakthrough algorithms. pay more attention to such patients.

AI and Systems: how they can We are also investigating innovative make each other better ways to provide employment to the underserved communities, such as ML and systems innovations reinforce through dignified digital work that can each other. ML innovations such be done on basic smartphones. One of as deep neural networks need our other projects, HAMS, involves the new systems innovations to deal with use of ML and AI to try and make Indian the billions of training sets that are used roads safer by building systems that can to train such models. Conversely, large effectively monitor how safely the driver scale system design and engineering, is driving, whether he or she is fatigued, can greatly benefit from using ML-based or paying attention to the road and so on. predictive analytics in all aspects of the development and deployment cycle. In addition to advancing the state-of- We are doing highly innovative work the-art, we work with the start-up and at the intersection of AI and systems, academic communities to leverage AI for through projects such as Astra, Gandiva positive social impact. We are committed and Sankie. to working with the government and the broader community to craft a future AI and Society driven by AI and ML, one that is inclusive and can work towards solving tough and At MSR, we strongly believe that AI and challenging problems that emerging ML can play a pivotal role in how we deal and diverse economies like India are with problems in health, urbanization, currently facing. education, agriculture, etc. We have

28 | Age of Intelligence Authors

Anant Maheshwari President, Anil Bhansali Corporate Vice President and Managing Director, Microsoft India Development Centre Sriram Rajamani Distinguished Scientist and Managing Director, Microsoft Research Sundar Srinivasan General Manager (AI & R), Microsoft India Development Centre Rohini Srivathsa National Technology Officer, Microsoft India Aparna Gupta General Manager, Commercial Software Engineering, Microsoft India Jitesh Shetty Customer Success Lead, Microsoft India Keshav Dhakad Assistant General Counsel- Corporate, External & Legal Affairs, Microsoft India Ashutosh Chadha Group Director Government Affairs and Public Policy, Microsoft India Ravi Sudhakar Kambhampati Data & Artificial Intelligence Product Marketing Lead, Microsoft India Thiru Thirumalai-Anandanpillai Principal Group Program Manager (AI & R), Microsoft India Development Centre Prashant Gupta Director Cloud + AI, Microsoft India(R&D) Pvt. Ltd

Published: February 2019

Microsoft Disclaimer This publication is based on and contains information which have been sourced by Microsoft, in good faith, from publicly available information and reports. To the extent this publication is based on or contains information emanating from external sources, Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy or completeness of the information and any discrepancy of the information with more updated data or data from alternate sources is totally unintentional. In the event of any discrepancy of any information contained in this publication, please do contact us at [email protected].

Age of Intelligence | 29 Note