Microsoft's Future Now Conference discusses the implications of AI on business and society

“Today’s technologies can be used to amplify human ingenuity.”-Microsoft Canada’s VP of Marketing Emma Da SilvaBy Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing.  These were once all theoretical buzzwords bordering on science fiction and pertaining to the ideals of a far off future. These concepts, however, are very much in practice today and at an exponential rate which will not only change the way businesses operate, but will also transform society, jobs and the workplace as well as various industries.

Microsoft Canada took to the historic Carlu events venue to discuss the Future Now with various experts in applied sciences, AI and other related fields to shed clarity, insight and understanding in these emerging technologies.

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Microsoft's new A.I. can read and comprehend documents as accurately as humans

Big news from Microsoft regarding A.I. and Machine Learning. A team at Microsoft Research Asia reached the human parity milestone using the Stanford Question Answering Dataset, known among researchers as SQuAD. It’s a machine reading comprehension dataset that is made up of questions about a set of Wikipedia articles.

According to the SQuAD leaderboard, on Jan. 3, Microsoft submitted a model that reached the score of 82.650 on the exact match portion. The human performance on the same set of questions and answers is 82.304. On Jan. 5, researchers with the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba submitted a score of 82.440, also about the same as a human.

The two companies are currently tied for first place on the SQuAD “leaderboard,” which lists the results of research organizations’ efforts. 

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Intel Invests $1 Billion in the AI Ecosystem

Intel sees Artificial Intelligence as one of the tentpoles of its future. The company is investing in that future with a US $1 billion aimed to develop product innovation.

"AI will make the impossible possible: advancing research on cancer, Parkinson’s disease and brain disorders; helping to find missing children; and furthering scientific efforts in climate change, space exploration and oceanic research," explained Brian Krzanich, chief executive officer of Intel.

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Duolingo introduces AI-powered chatbots

Free language-learning platform Duolingo is helping language learners practice their new skills with the use of chatbots. The service gets three language “tutors” in the iOS app that you can text back and forth for practice. There’s Renèe the Driver, Chef Roberto, and Officer Ada to help you practice French, Spanish, and German. Duolingo promises to add more languages in the future but that’ll depend on demand. And since these chatbots are powered by artificial intelligence, the more you use them, the smarter they get. Chatbots have been gaining popularity in the recent months but are far from being polished products yet. It’s good to see them being used in more and more services to hopefully stabilize and improve them.