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Microsoft Forms New AI Research Group Led By Harry Shum (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A day after announcing a new artificial intelligence partnership with IBM, Google, Facebook and Amazon, Microsoft is upping the ante within its own walls. The tech giant announced that it is creating a new AI business unit, the Microsoft AI and Research Group, which will be led by Microsoft Research EVP Harry Shum. Shum will oversee 5,000 computer scientists, engineers and others who will all be "focused on the company's AI product efforts," the company said in an announcement. The unit will be working on all aspects of AI and how it will be applied at the company, covering agents, apps, services and infrastructure. Shum has been involved in some of Microsoft's biggest product efforts at the ground level of research, including the development of its Bing search engine, as well as in its efforts in computer vision and graphics: that is a mark of where Microsoft is placing its own priority for AI in the years to come. Important to note that Microsoft Research unit will no longer be its on discrete unit -- it will be combined with this new AI effort. Research had 1,000 people in it also working on areas like quantum computing, and that will now be rolled into the bigger research and development efforts being announced today. Products that will fall under the new unit will include Information Platform, Cortana and Bing, and Ambient Computing and Robotics teams led by David Ku, Derrick Connell and Vijay Mital, respectively. The Microsoft AI and Research Group will encompass AI product engineering, basic and applied research labs, and New Experiences and Technologies (NExT), Microsoft said.
After all, Microsoft needs to develop some intelligence.
nobody
Stop with the AI bullshit. There is no such thing and the way processor speed growth is declining there will never be. Algorithms are not AI. Siri is not AI. Deepblue is not AI. We don't have any AI. We never will.
This is how Shumnet started
Our brightest minds are working to solve our most important problems.
and sing?
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Especially a bunch of filthy rich, globalist elitists who think they own the world.
I hope some maverick in a garage somewhere figures out AI and uses it to bring down the Big Brother globalist cabal.
He still owes me $40. Hey Microsoft, that guy is a welch!
A guy who owes me $40, that's who.
"... and democratizing AI in a way that changes our lives and the world around us for the better."
"... by democratizing access to intelligence to help solve our most pressing challenges."
"Microsoft, in its own words, is trying to 'democratize' AI tech — in other words, make more applications out of it that will end up in your hands, my hands and in the hands of businesses and other organizations."
The funny thing about crafting a euphemism, in this case "democratize" as a stand-in for branding and marketing, is you could choose any word you like. Why not "inseminate"? Or "steamroll"? How about "braise"?
Microsoft, in its own words, is trying to 'sous-vide' AI tech — in other words, make more applications out of it that will end up in your hands...
Here you go singing/dancing AI...
Y'know what? People have real I (intelligence), call it HI ? And humans are far more flexible in that than any machine. But even so they are a problem. When they try to help they usually just get in the way. The Boy Scout that wants to help an old lady cross the street is just a nuisance.
I liked Google search when it began. It offered information such as when a web page was published, cached images of the page, and other information that is rarely available now. Now it tries to be helpful by eliminating things I might not want and promoting things I might want. Fuck that. It was better before.
Siri and Ask Google are very convenient, usually helpful in my experience, but trust me, they will become obnoxious very soon. They've been an experiment; next phase is to be a commercial nuisance.
And of course the entire concept of AI is traditionally linked to government and military. Most of us now know that it is also part of the commercial master plan linked to financial, insurance, medical and other industries. Any benefit to an individual will be at the cost of privacy.
My suggestion for HI and AI is do as little as possible and don't get in my way.
...omphaloskepsis often...
In the case of Microsoft AI, I think they could actually create a new Turing Test. If and when the AI says, "Sorry, Dave, I'm not going to install this update", then it's a sentient being.
The world will not stop with the "AI Bullshit." Your strict-to-the-point-of-uselessness definition of AI doesn't mean anything to anyone else. People will still keep calling these solutions "AI" whether you like it or not, and everyone involved in the conversation will understand what they mean.
Even if the world did give a shit what you though the technical definition of AI is (which it doesn't), posting on slashdot is pretty much the worst possible way to get your message heard. One tick above whispering it while alone in your closet.
Lastly, your failure to recognize the ridiculously fast pace of technological advancement humanity has been experiencing in recent centuries is staggering. Your claim that "we never will" is pure idiocy.
You would be embarrassed by your post if you were smart enough to realize how dumb you sound.
So a bunch of philosophers sit around thinking up definitions all day.... ...meanwhile the world invents computers that can drive our cars for us, crunch our data and make recommendations for us, and someday organize our economy for us.
If they define intelligence such that this doesn't qualify, then they have made the word useless. Here's a definition for you "Intelligence: whatever humans can do that computers can't." There. We will never invent AI. Happy now?
But you might be thinking, "Something like Skynet could ever be created by a company like Microsoft."
And you'd be correct, they would have no clue what they'd done and it will emerge from something completely ill thought out(ActiveX?) but grow on its own.
With any luck, Microsoft falls before they get anywhere in the AI business.
He any relation to Gordon Shumway?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
5000 software engineers they have extra on hand to devote to this AI project.
Assuming they had this number before, 20 years to go from Windows '95 to something like Windows 10 which STILL isn't as stable as a *nix system and they expect to deliver functional AI bots?
My bet is on the heat death of the universe before this happens.