AI for Good

Introduction

—William B. Weeks, MD, PhD, MBA

Writing is a lonely endeavor that, to be honest, is draining. Authors put a lot of themselves into writing. Picking the right next word, getting the phrasing correct, and accurately conveying the material all take effort. To be sure, spell-check helps, as do grammatical suggestions. However, writing about technical processes and research findings requires a lot of second-guessing and ego oversight. It is not enough just to get words on paper: someone reading them might follow your suggestions, and if the words are misleading or inaccurate, they could be more harmful than helpful. There is an ethical imperative to get the work right, to revise and check and confirm the work and the words so that they accurately depict what you did as a researcher, what you found, and what the limitations of your findings are.

Nonetheless, I love to write about and conduct research. Because of its challenges, I find the research process and the conveyance thereof to be highly intellectually stimulating and engaging. But more importantly, good research, when shared, can improve the world.

After a 30-year career at Dartmouth Medical School as a professor, teacher, and health services researcher who studied health systems and how people used them, I joined Microsoft. I love working at Microsoft and have had wonderful managers here—Dr. Jim Weinstein during my time at Microsoft Research, and now Dr. Juan M. Lavista Ferres, the co-editor of this book and ...