When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella visited New Zealand three years ago, it was an event on the tech calendar. Friday's Translator announcement made his latest visit a cultural milestone. More than 1000 industry leaders and media filled the room at Auckland's Eden Park where Satya announced the addition of te reo Māori to Microsoft Translator, alongside the 60 languages already supported by the free application. The move will enable anyone around the world to translate text to and from te reo Māori. At a time when just 3 per cent of Kiwis speak te reo Māori, yet Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is calling for 1 million additional speakers by 2040, it's crucial that people have the tools to engage with each other in te reo Māori in their everyday lives.

Last week's big news from Facebook's (FB) F8 conference was Facebook's long-anticipated foray into the online dating game. Alphabet's (GOOG) Google I/O is happening this week in Mountain View, California and featured an impressive demo of its state-of-the-art AI capabilities. Here in Seattle, the "counter-programming" as it were, is the Microsoft Build 2018 Developer Conference. Perhaps as something of a direct response to Facebook's recent high-profile issues with data privacy as well as Google's own troubled past on this topic, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadela in his opening keynote pointedly addressed the issue of civic and ethical responsibility for technology companies. This underscores the message he gave in a recent interview on NBC's Today Show, where he said that'Trust' will push the company ahead of Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google.

CHENNAI: Indian Institute of Technology, Madras has signed a joint development agreement with Applied Materials India to conduct research in Data Sciences, Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. "We look forward to collaborating with Applied Materials in the fast-expanding field of AI. IIT Madras is already a leader in this area and bringing the expertise from academics and industry gives us unique opportunities..," IIT Madras, Director, Bhaskar Ramamurthi said in a statement here. IIT Madras strives to stay ahead of developments in technology and welcomes this opportunity to add momentum in research into AI, he said. Some of the works that would be taken up as part of the agreement include research on using representational neural networks, machine learning methods, images for technology enabled software solutions and advanced image analysis.

I met with Satya Nadella on the morning of April 20, 2017. I had come up to Microsoft to interview Satya for my forthcoming book, WTF? What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us, but so much of what I wanted to discuss was already in Satya's own brilliant memoir, Hit Refresh. We have a shared optimism about technology, and a shared conviction that the challenge of Artificial Intelligence is to define for ourselves and for society what is truly human, and to build a world in which AI reinforces and augments human capability and experience rather than devaluing it. So that's where we started our conversation Tim: One of the things you said in your book is that the challenge will be to define the grand, inspiring social purpose for which AI is destined. You wrote: "In 1969, when President Kennedy committed America to landing on the moon, the goal was chosen in a large part due to the immense technical challenge it posed and the global collaboration it demanded. In a similar fashion, we need to set a goal for AI that is sufficiently bold and ambitious, one that goes beyond anything that can be achieved through incremental improvements to current technology." I love that thought, and I wonder if you could expand on it. Satya: If you start with the assumption that AI's benefits have to be about augmenting human capability – if I even look at the place where even Microsoft's own engineers are most passionate, most driven about using AI – it is in assistive technology.

I had the pleasure of being one of the lucky individuals who attended Microsoft Build 2016. I use the term "lucky" because the conference sold out in less than 2 minutes. Build routinely sells out, but selling out in less than 2 minutes makes the event seem more like a rock concert than a Microsoft developer conference. Don't get me wrong, we "Microsoft guys" are pretty cool, but selling out at the speed of a rock concert is certainly rare. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, was the headliner for the keynote speech at Build 2016.