Microsoft is launching a 25-million US dollar initiative to use artificial intelligence (AI) to build better technology for people with disabilities.

CEO Satya Nadella announced the new “AI for Accessibility” effort as he kicked off Microsoft’s annual conference for software developers. The Build conference in Seattle is meant to foster enthusiasm for the company’s latest ventures in cloud computing, AI, Internet-connected devices and virtual reality (VR).

Microsoft competes with Amazon and Google to offer Internet-connected services to businesses and organizations.

The conference and the new initiative offer Microsoft an opportunity to emphasize its philosophy of building AI for social good. The focus could help counter some of the concerns on privacy and ethics that have arisen over AI and other fast-developing technology, including the potential for software to perpetuate or even amplify gender and racial biases.

In unusually serious terms for a tech conference keynote, Nadella name-checked the dystopian fiction of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, declared that “privacy is a human right” and warned of the dangers of building new technology without ethical principles in mind.

Read the full memo:http://www.vondanews.com/microsoft-launches-million-us-dollar-program-to-develop-ai-for-people-with-disabilities/

nice move