March 2026

You have questions about AI. We get it – we’ve got questions too.

This month, we’re taking you inside a new video series that tackles some of those big questions. We’re also spotlighting a few AI projects making an impact around the world, from Nunavut to Nairobi.

Join us as we dig into how AI is shaping the world around us. 

Sinead Bovell is a futurist, someone who studies how trends in technology, society and the economy might shape the future. She’s also the founder of WAYE, a New York-based organization dedicated to helping young people prepare for careers in the digital age.

That makes her an ideal person to guide us through a video series tackling the questions we’re all asking about AI – like what does AI mean for work? Can it help improve health care? How could it change everyday life?  

In the series, On Second Thought, Bovell sits down with Microsoft researchers to help us understand the potential and impacts of a technology moving at head-spinning speed.

The first episode focuses on health care, with Jonathan Carlson of Microsoft Research Health Futures noting that the real question isn’t “AI or doctor?” but how the two work together.

AI can help clinicians sift through mountains of messy data, surface relevant information and personalize care – or even pull together information for tumor boards or frontline workers. But as helpful as AI can be, Carlson says, “that human element will always be critical.”

From there, the series turns to a thorny question: How can we make AI truly inclusive?

As Hiwot Tesfaye from Microsoft’s Office of Responsible AI says, it’s about who gets access, how well the system performs across groups and who might be misrepresented. Systems that recognize cultural contexts and lived experience are key to inclusion, and language is at the heart of that.

“Breaking down those language barriers,” Tesfaye says, “could be profound.”

AI is already transforming the scientific process, as John Link from the Microsoft Discovery & Quantum team explains in episode three. Link describes the lab of the future as one where every researcher is supported by a “team of virtual postdocs” – AI agents that scan literature, propose hypotheses, run simulations and keep logs. Using that approach internally, Link says, helped Microsoft identify a new datacenter coolant in months rather than years.

And in the workplace, Colette Stallbaumer, a leader in the cross-company Future of Work initiative, points to a shift from org charts to “work charts,” with teams forming around problems and AI broadening who can contribute. By being an “agent boss,” she says, employees can delegate tasks to AI and focus on work requiring judgment, creativity and communication.

More data = better decisions

Njoki Njoroge’s beard‑care company in Nairobi was booming – but growth was limited by what little data she could gather.  

Enter Auni, an AI app that turns her mobile‑money PDF transactions into clean, analyzable data. Powered by Microsoft Azure, Auni helps Kenyan small‑business owners understand patterns in customer behavior, sales and demand based on the mobile money transfers so many rely on. The app is now being used by thousands of businesses in Kenya.

Njoroge uses Auni to track customers, send timely product reminders and plan deliveries around busy periods. “I’m able to make clear decisions because I have the data,” she says. “You’re moving from guessing to knowing.”

Renewable energy, common ground

What do a woman-run wind farm in Brazil, a solar plant in Australia and a hydro project in West Virginia have in common?

They’re among the partners that helped Microsoft recently meet its goal of matching 100% of its electricity use with renewable energy purchases by 2025. Through long-term agreements with developers, Microsoft is helping bring 40 gigawatts of new renewable power to the grid, with 19 gigawatts of that already online.

These agreements help kickstart new solar, wind and hydro projects in communities around the globe.

AI to the rescue

At the Munich Fire Department’s dispatch center, the calls are nonstop, and dispatchers must balance life-or-death emergencies with routine patient transport requests.

To ease the pressure, the department and Microsoft built an AI operator that can handle non-emergency calls in natural, multilingual conversations. Using Microsoft AI tools, the system verifies key details like addresses, giving dispatchers more time to focus on urgent situations – while keeping people firmly in charge.

Life-threatening calls “must always be handled by humans,” says Florian Dax, one of the system’s chief architects. “But for all the support tasks and low-priority calls, AI can really help.”

Tech meets tradition in Nunavut

In Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost territory, accessing digital tools to preserve the Inuktut family of languages for future generations has been challenging.

According to UNESCO, over 2,500 languages worldwide are at risk of disappearing – and along with them, centuries of wisdom and history. A new partnership between Microsoft and local communities aims to change that. By working with residents to gather authentic text and audio, the team brought the Inuktut language into Microsoft Translator in a way that reflects the region’s dialects and cultural nuances.

The project is part of a broader AI for Good Lab effort to adapt large language models for low‑resource languages like Inuktut, for which there is little digital data available. “It’s really about making sure these transformational technologies are equitably distributed,” says Inbal Becker‑Reshef, the lab’s managing director.

As AI continues to evolve, the challenge – and opportunity – is to make sure it stays grounded in what people and communities actually need. Come back next month to read more of their stories.

Want to stay on top of the latest AI and technology news each day? Check out Signal blog. No technobabble or corporate-speak – just quick, easy-to-read bites of what you need to know now, plus tips and insights that actually matter for your work, life and the world.