As more of our partners,
clients and customers set out to design conversational interfaces such as
chatbots and virtual assistants, they often ask us for advice on how to develop
these technologies in a way that will benefit people while also Microsoft support maintaining their trust. Today, I’m excited to share guidelines that we’ve developed for
responsible development of conversational artificial intelligence, based on
what we have learned both through our own cross-company work focused on
responsible AI and by listening to our customers and partners. Read more…
The field of
conversational AI isn’t new to me or to Microsoft. In fact, I’ve been working
on conversational interfaces since 1995 when we developed Comic Chat, a
graphical chat service that was embedded in an early version of Internet
Explorer. The lessons we’ve learned from those experiences, and from our more
recent work with tools such as Cortana and Zo, have helped us shape these
guidelines, which Microsoft support phone
number follow
in our own efforts to develop responsible and trusted bots. Read more…
These guidelines are just
that - guidelines. Microsoft support represent the things
we’ve found helpful to think through, especially when designing bots that have
the potential to affect people in consequential ways, such as helping them
navigate information related to employment, finances, physical health and
mental well-being. In these situations, Microsoft
supportive
learned to pause and ask: Is this a situation in which it’s important to make
sure there are people involved to provide judgment, expertise and empathy? Read more…
In addition to these
guidelines, Microsoft support phone number hope you’ll take
advantage of other tools we offer, such as the offensive text classifiers in
the Microsoft
Bot Framework to protect your bot from abuse and Microsoft Azure Application Insights to
build traceability capabilities into your bot, which are helpful in determining
the cause of errors and maintaining reliability. Read more…
Microsoft’s
Lili Cheng (Photo by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures)
In general, the
guidelines emphasize the development of conversational AI that is responsible
and trustworthy from the very beginning of the design process. Microsoft support encourages companies and organizations to stop and think about
how their bot will be used and take the steps necessary to prevent abuse. At
the end of the day, the guidelines are all about trust, because if people don’t
trust the technology, they aren’t going to use it. Read more…
Microsoft support think earning that trust begins with transparency about your
organization’s use of conversational AI. Make sure users understand they may be
interacting with a bot instead of – or in addition to – a person, and that they
know bots, like people, are fallible. Acknowledge the limitations of your bot,
and make sure your bot sticks to what it is designed to do. A bot designed to
take pizza orders, for example, should avoid engaging on sensitive topics such
as race, gender, religion and politics. Read more…
Think of conversational
AI as an extension of your brand, a service that interacts with your customers
and clients using natural language on behalf of your organization. Remember
that when a person interacts with a bot that represents your organization, your
organization’s trust is on the line. If your bot violates your customer’s
trust, then their trust in your organization may in fact be violated. That’s
why the first and foremost goal of these guidelines is to help the designers
and developers of conversational AI build responsible bots that represent the
trust in the microsoft support organization that they
represent. Read
more…
We also encourage you to
use your best judgment when considering and applying these guidelines, and to
also use the appropriate channels in your organization to ensure you’re in
compliance with fast-changing privacy, security and accessibility regulations. Read more…
Finally, it’s important to
note that these guidelines are just our current thoughts; they are a work in
progress. We have more questions than we have answers today. We know we’ll
learn more as we design, build and deploy more bots in the real world. We look
forward to your feedback on these guidelines and working with you as we work
toward a future where conversational AI help us all achieve more. Read more…
