Microsoft President to Companies: Know What You Stand For
September 13 2019 - 5:58PM
Dow Jones News
By Sara Castellanos
NEW YORK -- Technology companies increasingly enmeshed in social
issues need to decide on principles to guide them as they face
challenges related to regulatory compliance and customer trust,
said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft Corp.
With artificial-intelligence-enabled technologies equally
capable of benefiting society or tearing it apart, technology
vendors -- and companies deploying their technology -- no longer
have the luxury of remaining bystanders, focused solely on
delivering the best product.
"You have to know what you stand for," Mr. Smith said at a
Thomson Reuters event Friday. "You have to be prepared as a
business to some degree to connect the courage of your convictions
with a hardheaded focus on business."
Microsoft's principles of transparency and privacy have at times
caused the company to take stances that are at odds with
governments, Mr. Smith said.
Social and political issues are becoming more important for
technology businesses, shaping perceptions of reputation and brand.
"Large tech companies play a vital role in our modern economy and
as such cannot avoid being entangled in important social issues,
which often have no easy answer," Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts
Institute of Technology economist, said in a recent interview.
Mr. Smith said Microsoft won't allow any government to put
eavesdropping equipment in one of its data centers. Business
customers who store their data in Microsoft's cloud retain the
rights to that data, and the tech giant becomes the steward and
protector of that information, he said. Microsoft has threatened to
shut down data centers in undisclosed countries when such
surveillance requests come up. "Whenever we've been forced to push,
governments have backed off," he said.
Microsoft won a legal battle with the U.S. in 2016 when a
federal appeals court ruled that the government couldn't force the
company to turn over emails or other personal data stored on
computers abroad. Congress, though, passed a law in 2018 giving
U.S. investigators access to data stored on overseas cloud
servers.
Microsoft also is taking a stand on AI-based facial-recognition
systems, calling for government regulation of the technology. Laws
can reduce bias and the risk of discrimination, he said.
Facial recognition can have important societal benefits, he
said, mentioning a nonprofit group in Brazil that reconnects
families with missing children using facial recognition. "It's hard
to innovate if you can't use something, and it's hard to learn if
you can't innovate," he said.
The company won't sell facial-recognition services for the
purposes of mass surveillance anywhere in the world, he said.
Microsoft has turned down a specific deal for the broad use of
facial recognition in an undisclosed country, he said.
"We thought it raised the risk of being used by a government to
chill freedom of expression and prevent people from being able to
assemble and protest," Mr. Smith said.
Other Microsoft executives have also been vocal about the need
to help guide companies through ethical challenges, specifically
those related to AI. Microsoft last year created a position to help
companies deploying AI learn how to prioritize ethical principles,
including fairness, accountability and transparency, in algorithm
development.
Mr. Smith, also Microsoft's chief legal officer, joined the
company in 1993. A book he co-wrote, "Tools and Weapons," was
released this week. It discusses Microsoft's take on a range of
societal issues that have become ubiquitous in the technology
sector, including national surveillance, technology's role in
public safety and challenges in rural communities that lack fast
internet connections.
Write to Sara Castellanos at sara.castellanos@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 13, 2019 17:43 ET (21:43 GMT)
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