Microsoft has announced that more 5000 of its engineers and computer scientists will join its new AI and Research Group.
It’s a move that Microsoft says will “democratise AI”. The future of technology – all technology will revolve around AI and deep machine learning. The move combines Microsoft's existing Research group with its Cortana and Bing groups.
It is taking a four-pronged approach to how it thinks about AI and how it pursues this ambition to democratise AI for all:
- To harness artificial intelligence to fundamentally change how we interact with the ambient computing, the agents, in our lives.
- To infuse every application that we interact with, on any device, at any point in time, with intelligence.
- To make these same intelligent capabilities that are infused in our apps — the cognitive capabilities — available to every application developer in the world.
- To build the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer and making it available to anyone, via the cloud, to enable all to harness its power and tackle AI challenges, large and small.
If you have time, click the link above and read where AI is today and where it is heading.
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This announcement follows hot on the heels of Microsoft’s participation in the new Partnership on AI group announced yesterday.
It will be led by Microsoft’s Harry Shum who was previously executive vice-president of technology and research. The new group is in addition to R&D teams across most product lines but will include those working on Bing and Cortana.
Shum writes, “We are creating tools to make it easier for busy professionals to remember their commitments, family members from other countries to talk to each other in spite of language barriers, and multitasking smartphone users to send texts more quickly. And at the same time, we also are providing businesses with the tools they need to incorporate intelligence into every product they build and business decision they make.”
He adds, “End-to-end innovation in AI will not come from isolated research labs alone, but from the combination of at-scale production workloads together with deep technology advancements in algorithms, systems, and experiences. The new group will provide greater opportunity to accelerate our innovation in AI and to enable Microsoft to create truly intelligent systems and products for our customers. I believe we have some of the best AI talents on the planet, and we’ll continue to attract even more.”