Information & Ethics committee  It's a good question. I think there's definitely a need for robust cybersecurity around technology in general. Microsoft is making significant investments on that front to ensure that the variety of technologies we provide are secure and that our customers remain secure. There a

Information & Ethics committee  My focus is more on the AI systems piece and using it responsibly, so this is a bit outside my area of expertise. However, I think there's always the threat of malign actors, so I think responding robustly and with significant investment, which is what we are doing, is the right

Information & Ethics committee  I think this is a fundamental question as part of the regulatory discussion. I think deciding what is a permissible use and what is not a permissible use is very important. We have some suggestions on this front. We think that indiscriminate mass surveillance is not something t

Information & Ethics committee  We think there's definitely the need for regulation, as we've been advocating today. We would suggest investing time and resources in creating that regulation. It takes a lot of time and investment to get any initiative progressed, so focusing on creating regulation, starting wit

Information & Ethics committee  My apologies; the lighting in my room appears to have gone out. I hope people can still see and hear me properly. I think there are definitely a number of countries across the world that are using facial recognition, particularly non-democratic countries, to surveil their popula

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. I think there have been some positive developments at the state level in the U.S. Washington state is one to which I would draw the committee's attention. There is a law that went into effect, as of July last year, that lays out some important transparency and accountabili

Information & Ethics committee  I think these are real concerns that need to be addressed. Again, that's why we're advocating regulation. I think we're skeptical about some of the claims around what facial recognition can do—like intuit an individual's political beliefs just by looking at that person—so I thin

Information & Ethics committee  Did you ask if Google or Microsoft...? Sorry.

Information & Ethics committee  Not to my knowledge, no, not that I'm aware of—not with facial recognition in Canada.

Information & Ethics committee  To my knowledge, we're not.

Information & Ethics committee  Not in relation to facial recognition, necessarily. We wouldn't sell any data we're using in relation to our facial recognition systems. That would be my answer.

Information & Ethics committee  I do. To my knowledge, we don't have any contracts to that effect, but I understand the request.

Information & Ethics committee  That's a really important question, and it's one of the major risks that we think needs to be addressed around facial recognition use. I'll come back to what I said before in terms of the internal safeguards we've mentioned. One of the most important is the testing piece. We ma

Information & Ethics committee  I guess surveillance would be observing individuals or groups.

Information & Ethics committee  It could be done without their consent, and that would problematic. I think it could be done with their consent. In large part, you would think of surveillance being done perhaps without an individual's consent.