Responsible AI and Security is a Partnership Story —What It Looks Like

By Howard Epstein, Accelerating Ecosystems Associates?

As we have been tracking the maturation of AI, AEA predicted that partner ecosystems are critical to achieving responsible AI and security. But what does that look like? In a recent CRN article, journalist Wade Milward covered a panel discussion at Microsoft Build 2024 on responsible AI and security. Based on their Copilot development experience, Microsoft executives Vasu Jakkal and Sarah Bird provided deeper insight into how partnerships will help responsible AI and security succeed. Their remarks go beyond co-develop, co-sell, and co-market. Here are the new headlines I took away from the discussion regarding partner interactions and vendor responsibilities.?

PARTNERS ?

Take the Lead on Educating Customers?

Partners are important in educating customers on AI, how to use it, and how to develop playbooks. They are critical in helping more people understand what they need to do to implement AI.?

Ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements globally?

Microsoft is partnering with dedicated AI legal and regulatory experts in regions worldwide to aid with governance system implementation?

Find the right data?

One of the earliest learnings with Copilot is that the tools make mistakes when they weren’t getting the right data to the system. They worked with their solution providers to do more work on data engineering and cleaning.?

VENDORS

But there’s responsibility for partner success on the AI vendor too. Microsoft recognized the need to make it easier for their partners to ramp-up on their platform??

They --?

Built User-friendly interfaces and provided a launching pad using low-stakes data- Microsoft built its AI interface to help educate users, with an onboarding experience, giving users the ability to start with low-stakes data.??

Were Transparent/Shared the secret sauce. They were transparent communicating with partners about how they built the system, what it does, and what it’s doing with their data.?

Provided Early Access to AI solutions to validate success. For example, more than 100 partners including MSSP’s got timely access to Copilot for Security.???

AEA COMMENTS?

Because AI will disrupt markets, B2B ecosystems must go beyond simply building, marketing, and selling AI solutions. Success will be dependent on ensuring trust in the models and data and achieving compliance wherever AI is deployed.?? With the right support from the vendors and close engagement with their partners, ecosystems can drive adoption, compliance, and better outcomes from their AI solutions. To learn more, contact us at [email protected] .??

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