Photo price in the bay of Mont Saint Michel.
It is difficult to ignore the anxieties and even the polarization that we see in many places in the world today. The forces of globalization reshape our communities in a tangible way. More and more people are expressing concerns about their place in society and their cultural identity and their heritage. We see it not only in the United States, but through Europe, in Asia and elsewhere.
Technology has played a big role in accelerating globalization. Although it is our company to advance technology, we also think that technology should respect and even help protect the timeless values of the world. This conviction has led us to announce a new and fourth pillar to Microsoft from Microsoft AI today for a good portfolio – our $ 125 million commitment over five years to use artificial intelligence to meet some of the company’s largest challenges. This new pillar will focus on AI for cultural heritage.
Modern threats to cultural heritage are considerably illustrated through the future of languages, the verbal expression of culture. According to Unesco,Today a third partyworld languages have less than 1,000 speakers, and eachfifteen days A language dies with his last speaker. It is predicted that between 50 and 90% Threatened languages will disappear over the next century. When the world loses a language, we all lose an important element in human history and a community loses its ability to connect and communicate with its past.
An appreciation of the cultural heritage can also help to advance wider opportunities and a more inclusive future. For example, as we have associated each other and work with Nobel Media We have discovered new ways to use technology together to raise awareness of scientific breakthroughs made by women, including in an online experience called “Women who have changed science », Who celebrates pioneers like Marie Curie and Marie Goeppert-Mayer.
As we have learned more about the dimensions that make up the cultural heritage, we have concluded that preserving cultural heritage is not something that is the only one to have or pleasant to do, it is sometimes imperative for the well-being of societies in the world. According to the The United Nations,Cultural heritage can help promote resilience, reconciliation and social cohesion by connecting to shared history, customs, origins and beliefs.
Our new AI program for cultural heritage will use artificial intelligence to work with non -profit organizations, universities and governments around the world to help preserve the languages we are talking about, the places we live and the artifacts we cherish. It will be based on recent work that we have pursued using various aspects of AI in each of these areas, such as:
- Work in New York, where we collaborated with the Museum of Metropolitan ArtAnd put it to explore the ways in which AI can make the open access collection accessible, discoverable and useful to 3.9 billion people connected to the Internet worldwide.
- Working in Paris at the Museum of Reliefs Plans, where we have associated ourselves with two French companies, Holoforge Interactive and Iconem, to create an entirely new museum experience with mixed reality and AI which paid tribute to Mont-Saint-Michel, a French cultural icon off the coast of Normandy.
- And in the southwest of Mexico, where we are involved as part of our current efforts to preserve languages around the world to capture and Translate Yucatec Maya and Querétaro OtomiUse AI to make them more accessible to people around the world.
These projects have given us confidence that we can put AI to innovative uses which can help communities to extend access to culture and to explore new perspectives and connections through shared experiences. We realized that this work deserves more than a handful of projects. This is why we bring these efforts in a more complete program that will explore and pursue new opportunities with institutions from around the world.
As with our other three AI for good programs– IA for the earth, AI for accessibility and AI for humanitarian action – We are impatient to innovate and learn with individuals and institutions from around the world. And we can’t wait to share what we learn with others in the hope that we can all help inspire each other to use the most advanced technology on the planet to help preserve some of the timeless values in the world.