Robots won't render people jobless: Satya Nadella
London, May 28: Even in a "runaway Artificial Intelligence (AI)" scenario, robots will not render people completely jobless, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told The Sunday Telegraph in an interview.
People will always want a job as it gives them "dignity", Nadella said, adding that the focus should instead be on applying AI technology ethically.
"What I think needs to be done in 2018 is more dialogue around the ethics, the principles that we can use for the engineers and companies that are building AI, so that the choices we make don't cause us to create systems with bias … that's the tangible thing we should be working on," he was quoted as saying.
According to a report in MIT Technology Review on May 25, Microsoft is building a tool to automate the identification of bias in a range of different AI algorithms.
The Microsoft tool has the potential to help businesses make use of AI without inadvertently discriminating against certain groups of people.
Although Microsoft's new tool may not eliminate the problem of bias that may creep into Machine-Learning models altogether, it will help AI researchers catch more instances of unfairness, Rich Caruna, a senior researcher at Microsoft who is working on the bias-detection dashboard, was quoted as saying by MIT Technology Review.
"Of course, we can't expect perfection -- there's always going to be some bias undetected or that can't be eliminated -- the goal is to do as well as we can," he said.
In the interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Nadella also said that as Microsoft's business model was based on customers paying for services, he believed the company was on "the right side of history".
"Our business model is based on our customers being successful, and if they are successful they will pay us. So we are not one of these transaction-driven or ad-driven or marketplace-driven economies," the Microsoft chief was quoted as saying.
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Telangana first state to implement SC categorisation, issues orders
Hyderabad (PTI): Telangana on Monday issued a government order on the implementation of Scheduled Castes (SC) categorisation, making it the first state in the country to do so officially, Irrigation Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy said.
Telangana government had earlier appointed a commission headed by retired High Court judge Justice Shameem Akther on SC categorisation, which made recommendations that the 59 Scheduled Caste (SC) communities be divided into three groups viz I, II, and III for the total reservations of 15 per cent in government jobs and education.
"The following Act of the Telangana Legislature received the assent of the Governor of Telangana on 8, April 2025 and the said assent is hereby first published on the 14th April 2025 in the Telangana Gazette for general information," the GO said.
The issuance of GO coincides with the birth anniversary of BR Ambedkar, architect of Indian Constitution.
According to the commission report, group-I one comprising 15 socially, economically and educationally disadvantaged SC communities, are given one per cent reservation.
Group-II, including 18 moderately benefited SC communities, are provided a nine per cent quota while the Group-III comprising 26 significantly benefited SC communities, are given five per cent reservation.
Addressing a press conference, Minister Reddy, who headed a sub-committee on SC Categorisation, said the first copy of the GO was given to Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy this morning.
"From today, from this moment, SC categorisation will be implemented in Telangana in employment and education. We have issued a GO to that extent and gave the first copy to the CM," he told reporters.
"Telangana is the first state to implement the SC categorisation after the Supreme Court’s verdicts," Reddy said.
The minister alleged that earlier governments in Telangana confined themselves to pass resolutions for the categorisation and never took forward.
He further said all job vacancies in the state government now will be filled according to the sub-categorisation for SCs.
The Irrigation Minister further said the cabinet sub-committee did an extensive exercise in collecting the opinion of all the stakeholders.
He also said if the SC population goes up in 2026 census, the reservations for it would go up accordingly.
The Telangana Legislature in February accepted the recommendations of Justice Akther on SC categorisation, rejecting an advice that creamy layer should be exempted from reservations.
The Scheduled Castes (Rationalisation of Reservation) Bill, 2025 was passed last month. The Supreme Court gave a verdict last year in favour of categorisation.
