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Arathi Sethumadhavan

Arathi Sethumadhavan is the head of research for Ethics & Society at Microsoft, where she works at the intersection of research, ethics, and product innovation. She has brought in the perspectives of more than 13,000 people, including traditionally disempowered communities, to help shape ethical development of AI and emerging technologies such as computer vision, NLP, intelligent agents, and mixed reality. She was a recent fellow at the World Economic Forum, where she worked on unlocking opportunities for positive impact with AI, to address the needs of a globally aging population. Prior to joining Microsoft, she worked on creating human-machine systems that enable individuals to be effective in complex environments like aviation and healthcare. She has been cited by the Economist and the American Psychological Association and was included in LightHouse3’s 2022 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics list. She has a Ph.D. in experimental psychology with a specialization in human factors from Texas Tech University and an undergraduate degree in computer science.[email protected]


Speech is human and multifaceted. Our approach to studying it should be the same.

Posted: Wed, June 22, 2022 - 9:57:27

Whether it’s the friendly virtual assistant in your smart speaker, the auto-generated captions on your YouTube video, or the software that physicians use to dictate clinical notes, voice AI has already become a fixture of modern life. It’s the promise of hands-free convenience: Simply speak naturally, and the computer listens, analyzes, and recognizes what you’re saying. With things like voice-controlled…

Artificial intelligence is changing the surveillance landscape

Posted: Wed, June 30, 2021 - 12:46:38

The following is a review of recent publications on the issue of AI and surveillance and does not reflect Microsoft's opinion on the topic.The termsurveillanceis derived fromsur, which means from above, andveillance, which means to watch. Theoretical approaches to surveillance can be traced back to the 18th century with Bentham’s prison-panopticon. The panopticon premise involved a guard in a central…