Need for uniform global norms on data privacy: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

The CEO said as technology was all-pervasive in human lives, societies and economy, technology developers should ensure artificial intelligence ethics, data privacy and security and internet safety.

Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella on Tuesday described data privacy as a human right and underlined that there was a need for uniform global norms on data privacy instead of fragmented regulations, in the backdrop of accelerated technology adoption in increasing areas, including patient care, drug discovery triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Satya Nadella, chief executive officer, Microsoft. (AP File Photo)

The CEO said as technology was all-pervasive in human lives, societies and economy, technology developers should ensure artificial intelligence ethics, data privacy and security and internet safety.

“We have become the digital first responders to all the first responders out there whether it is healthcare or critical manufacturing,” Nadella said in a fireside chat #Charcha2021: Healthcare to Hit Refresh, a virtual interactive session with Telangana information technology and industries minister K T Rama Rao in BioAsia 2021 conference.

He said accelerated technology adoption in healthcare also helped in ascertaining how the human immune system responds to the virus and passing speedily the clinical data towards drug discovery and vaccine development.

“It also helps while coming out of pandemic how we as a society and as a global community get better at handling the next event, better equipped both from a resiliency perspective and ability to adapt because of the digital tag,” he said.

Nadella said the pandemic had pushed the situation towards more flexibility in terms of work sites and collaboration. Not just knowledge workers, even the frontline health workers were able to adopt this flexibility to collaborate with experts at home to deal with the people through various modes like Microsoft Teams - a chat-based workspace in Office 365 that allows document sharing, online meetings, and many more extremely useful features for business communications.

The pandemic, said Nadella, had also given the people an opportunity to learn new things. "I think collaboration, learning and well-being are fundamentally the things that are going to transform how we think about work while giving people a lot more flexibility," the CEO said.

The start-up category has already shown tremendous potential in bringing in digital enablement in the medical industry and it is not just benefiting any specific segment but every possible individual in the country across cities and villages, he added.