Microsoft says AI can be a tool to promote equity and representation – with the right safeguards. One solution it's putting forward to help address the issue of bias in AI is increasing diversity and inclusion of the teams building the technology itself. "It's never been more important as we think about building inclusive AI and inclusive tech for the future," says Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Microsoft's chief diversity officer, who joined the firm in 2018. A former teacher for the deaf, McIntyre has spent over 20 years in human resources in the tech industry, including at IBM, and has lived and worked throughout the US as well as in Singapore and Dubai. Now, she says her team at Microsoft is increasingly focused on embedding inclusion practices into the firm's AI research and development to make sure there is better representation "at all levels of the company".
