Tools and Weapons: The Promise and The Peril of the Digital Age

by Brad Smith

In 2016, Anne was the second hacker recruited for a project using AI, computer vision, and a smartphone camera. One of her tasks was testing the app by walking around Microsoft’s campus with a phone strapped to her forehead. The life of an inventor is sometimes not for the fashion conscious. But when it comes to fashion, almost anything seems to go at Microsoft. The team’s work led to a breakthrough, an AI-powered app that helps people who are blind “see” the world as it’s described through their smartphones. With Seeing AI, Anne, who is blind herself, can now read a handwritten note from her family, independently. As she says, “That probably seems simple to you guys, since you’ve been able to do this for a long time. But when someone writes something to me that’s personal or private in nature, I’ve always had to ask someone else to read it to me. Now I don’t. That means something.”1