NEW DELHI: A day after committing $3 billion investments in India for AI and cloud, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Wednesday said that it is imperative to ensure security, privacy, and trust in tech platforms and solutions as artificial intelligence plays an increasingly active role across govts and businesses as well as individuals.
Speaking at the ‘Microsoft AI Tour’ here, Nadella – who met PM Narendra Modi on Monday – said that while cutting-edge technology is leading to efficiencies and benefits, it is equally important to build guardrails and safety protocols to make the systems safe and secure. “The unintended consequences cannot outperform the benefits.”
He said there is a need to build trust around the platforms and their usage. “Tech now is so important and so ingrained in our daily lives and in our society and in our economy that you really need to be sure that there’s trust around it. And that means we have a set of principles — whether it’s on security, privacy, or safety – and we translate those principles into actual capabilities.”
Nadella said there is a need to constantly upgrade the trust factor in the systems as AI-led solutions percolate societies at large. “You have to sort of test yourself on whether you are moving state-of-the-art on safety, security, privacy and trust at the same rate as (the growth in) capability… I think it is the core learning even for our sector. And that’s something that we’re very, very grounded on.”
He said that Microsoft is building capabilities to ensure that there’s “more trust” in all its tech systems.
Speaking about the company’s role in India, Nadella said Microsoft’s solutions are leading to building efficiencies in Indian economy, businesses, and governance. “That means small businesses here are getting more productive, the public sector is getting more efficient. Large companies out of India are becoming globally competitive…
At the end of the day, our mission is to empower every person and every organization. That means we have to bring world-class technology and innovation here and ensure that people are able to build value-add on top of it, (and) intensely use it.”