Microsoft on Wednesday announced new artificial intelligence nfeatures and functionality for several of its flagship products and nservices, including Office 365, Cortana and Bing, at an event in San nFrancisco. Harry Shum, EVP of Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and nResearch, demonstrated some of the new capabilities
nnnnBuilding on the progress the company has made in integrating AI over nthe past year, the new enhancements are designed to help users perform nincreasingly complex and complicated tasks.
nnnn“AI has come a long way in the ability to find information, but nmaking sense of that information is the real challenge,” said Kristina nBehr, a partner design and planning program manager with Microsoft’s nArtificial Intelligence and Research group.
nnnnOne of the advances, machine reading comprehension, will improve an nAI-based system’s understanding of context — for example, recognizing nthat one’s cousin is a family member.
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nnnnSearch Benefits
nBing users will get more personalized answers, Microsoft said, such as nrestaurant recommendations based on travel destinations, or a greater nvariety of answers to offer different perspectives on a topic.
AI guidance might help users figure out the exact questions they wantn to ask if their search queries are too vague to deliver meaningful nresults.
nnnnBing will utilize visual search as a way to help people seek ninformation about items or objects in photos. This functionality will ncomprise the use of object recognition along with machine reading ncomprehension.
nnnnAn Office AI
nMicrosoft announced improvements in AI integration with its Office 365 ntools as well. The spreadsheet program Excel, for example, will employ nmachine learning as a way to analyze data and predict trends via pivot ntables and charts. The new AI tools also will be able to extract ninsights from smaller sets of data.
Importantly, use of the new AI functionality won’t require more nadvanced training in Excel for users to determine which sets of data nshould be used to gain deeper insights.
nnnnMore Conscious Cortana
nMicrosoft’s virtual assistant Cortana will get an upgrade as well, nallowing it to make use of machine reading comprehension to summarize nsearch results. Cortana also will be able to sort through a user’s nemails to identify the most important ones and even read them aloud nduring a commute, for example. Use of that functionality will extend to nemails from multiple accounts, including on competing services such as nGmail.
Cortana also has been enhanced with “skills chaining,” allowing it ton suggest additions to one’s calendar after tickets have been booked, forn example.
nnnnAstute AI
nThese AI advances likely will be subtle and may go unnoticed by many users.
“AI will creep more and more into our lives,” said Roger Entner, principal analyst at Recon Analytics.
nnnn“Ideally it will help to make tools like Bing, Cortana and Office 365 more userful,” he told TechNewsWorld.
nnnn“This is the good AI, not the Terminator AI,” noted Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.
nnnn“In most cases, AI functions will be transparent to users just like they are in search engines today,” he told TechNewsWorld.
nnnnThe AI functionality simply makes the tools more efficient and useful.
nnnn“Think of this as reducing some of the simple tasks — not the human npart of the equation,” McGregor suggested, “and think about intelligent ndigital assistants and word predictors or spell checkers that are more nreliable than the ones we have today. This will be the most common form nof AI — embedded solutions that make the tools we use better, from nsearch engines to scientific research.”
nnnnHow Far to Take It
nAlthough the most extreme AI danger may lie in the rise of machines thatn overpower human controls, there are more subtle menaces to consider nwhen it comes to the place it will take in our lives.
“It is upon us to draw a line,” said Entner.
nnnn“Examples like Google and its all-encompassing ‘data kraken’ make it nclear how blurry the line is between really useful and really creepy — nlike when your Android phone constantly asks you if you are actually nshopping at the store you are at,” he pointed out. “Big brother [could nbe] watching all the time.”
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