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Today I spoke with 120 engineers from various countries at the @SAP Institute for Product and Engineering, in a conversation hosted by @VRFerose, on #CompassionateAI. As an engineer myself, I believe engineering is a moral discipline: not only what we build, but why, and for whom. Compassion is not a soft emotion. It is feeling others' suffering as our own and taking mindful action to end it, with evidence, measurement and accountability. We talk about AI for good. But good for whom? Machines cannot be compassionate, but those who make them can be. I urged the engineers to step beyond their labs, listen to communities, and within a year build one tool that solves a real problem faced by the most marginalised. Will humans control machines, or machines control humans? It depends on the values we build with.