Why building ethical products is our future
summary
Microsoft forms a 15‑person Ethics & Society unit that builds concrete tools like a harms map and a six‑principle rubric, and applies them to real products. After a 2019 scandal about human reviewers of voice data the team redesigns consent using four measurable goals (awareness, understanding, freedom of choice, control), requires a 75% comprehension threshold in testing, rolls the new flow into Windows 11, and gates risky features like custom neural voices behind application and review processes.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:24Meet Sharon
- 5:05Why is ethics important
- 8:46How to bring ethics into product development
- 12:11Understanding the risk surface areas
- 15:05Building mitigations using responsible innovation
- 23:16The greatest challenge
- 25:30Conclusion
- 25:54QA
- 29:13Balancing short and long term interests
- 32:05Getting out of the build trap
- 34:03Cancelled projects
- 35:18Trends in ethics
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