Microsoft launches AI for Earth to give $2M in services to environmental projects

After helping to launch the Partnership on AI with Google, Facebook and others; and doubling down on AI research, today Microsoft unveiled a new initiative that points to how it plans to target specific verticals in what can potentially be a very nebulous field -- while also raising the public image of AI as some grow concerned about the implications of its encroaching influence. The event was led by Harry Shum, Microsoft's EVP of its AI and Research Group, along with Emma Williams, GM of Bing Studio; Chris Bishop, Distinguished Scientist and Laboratory Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge; and Eric Horvitz, technical fellow and director of Microsoft Research Labs. Microsoft's R&D labs in Cambridge, UK (the first Microsoft set up outside of the US) are 20 years old this year, and Microsoft is unveiling some other new programs in the area -- including a new Microsoft Research AI group; a new "Aether Advisory Panel" (an acronym for "AI and Ethics in Engineering and Research") that will report directly to senior management; a new partnership with the Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab; and a few new experimental products that are using AI, such as a new PowerPoint Presentation Translator. This is an interesting and important twist on the AI challenge: many worry about how AI will replace humans, and/or will quietly help evade ethical and privacy oversights -- "societal angst" as Microsoft's Emma Williams, the GM of Bing Studio and its "EQ Expert", put it (EQ: emotional quotient).