Microsoft reorganizes to create a dedicated AI division
Microsoft has reorganized several disparate projects and programs into an entirely new Artificial Intelligence group. It will be the fourth major division after Windows, Office and cloud, reallocating over 5,000 computer scientists and engineers under its umbrella. The shift shows how much unified effort the tech giant believes the field needs, as well as internally standardized AI tech they can more easily integrate into customer products.
Microsoft Research chief Harry Shum will head the new AI division, according to GeekWire. In addition to his old department, the new group will include products like Cortana and Bing with the Ambient Computing and Robotics teams, as well as the company’s Information Platform Group. Collecting them all under one banner suggests how standardized they want their AI tech to be between disparate programs. It’s similar to how Microsoft internally pivoted to collectively harness the Internet in the mid-90s, GeekWire points out.
In a blog post, Shum said that the collaboration will build “an AI stack spanning infrastructure, services, apps and agents.” That will permit Microsoft’s mission shift to “democratize AI” by integrating it into more consumer, enterprise and developer projects. Hopefully, byproducts from the AI division’s R&D will produce fewer missteps like last March’s foul-mouthed Twitterbot and more advancements like their pilot project using AI to discover cancer treatments.
Source: Microsoft blog
Ask, and Siri will make Skype calls for you
When Skype updates on desktop and gives the “improving your experience” message it’s usually pretty easy to dismiss that as a bald-faced lie. But the latest iOS update actually sounds really useful. The VoIP service will now tap into Siri for making calls, pull contact information from the app into your contact list and, like Facebook Messenger before it, make incoming calls look like regular ones. It all sounds genuinely useful. As always, if the update hasn’t hit your iOS 10 device yet, that’s what the source link below is for.
Source: iTunes, Skype blog
Google, Facebook and other tech titans form ‘Partnership on AI’
Five of the biggest tech companies have launched a collaboration to help the public understand the benefits of artificial intelligence. The New York Times reported in early September that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon had been meeting to discuss an AI-related project. Now, the cat’s finally out of the bag. Their collaboration is officially called “Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society,” and it has a few goals other than to make sure people know that AI research isn’t all about creating killer robots.
Partnership on AI will support related research and recommend best practices in ethics, transparency and privacy when it comes to artificial intelligence studies. The project also aims to create an open platform where researchers and major players in the industry can communicate.
The initiative’s website explains its tenet as follows:
“We believe that artificial intelligence technologies hold great promise for raising the quality of people’s lives and can be leveraged to help humanity address important global challenges such as climate change, food, inequality, health, and education.”
All five founding companies have huge AI projects. IBM, as you know, has Watson, while Google has DeepMind, which you probably recognize as the the team behind AlphaGo. Amazon has Alexa, the voice assistance that’s loaded onto its Echo speakers, while Microsoft has Cortana and a whole bunch of chatbot projects. Finally, Facebook, depends on artificial intelligence for many of its features, including face recognition and its News Feed.
Despite the initiative’s solid lineup, people couldn’t help but wonder why it’s missing one key player: Apple. Microsoft’s Eric Horvitz, who serves as one of the project’s interim co-chairs, told The Guardian that they’ve been in discussions with Cupertino. “I know they’re enthusiastic about this effort,” he said, “and I’d personally hope to see them join.” Another missing name is Elon Musk’s OpenAI, a non-profit AI research project that promises to make its results available to all. That might eventually change, though, since the team plans to invite more companies and non-profits from around the world to be part of the effort.
Via: PopSci, The Guardian
Source: Partnership on AI
20-minute ‘Gears 4’ prologue playthrough looks very familiar
Even the most dedicated Gears of War fan might need a refresher course ahead of the franchise’s fourth numbered sequel. And that’s precisely what the new video from the developers at The Coalition is all about. What’s more, it’s direct feed footage of the first section of the game, aptly titled “Prologue.” So, you can see exactly what sorts of trouble you’ll be getting into in a few weeks.
The 22-minute video covers some of past Gears moments from different perspectives. Those include a battle from Aspho Fields (a key event in the universe’s fiction that hasn’t been in a game previously), Emergence Day when the humans of Serra came in first contact with the Locust enemies and the battle at Anvil Gate that ended the war with those subterranean monsters.
All that and the video sets up the legend of Marcus Fenix, father of 4’s protagonist, J.D.. This isn’t the first time Gears of War has had playable memories. In fact, 2013’s side story, Judgment, was based entirely around that narrative conceit. Kind of a clever way to tie all the games together, no? Sadly this video contains precisely zero new Run the Jewels tracks. Gears of War 4 comes out October 11th on Xbox One and Windows 10.
Source: Xbox Wire
Moscow will replace Microsoft’s products with local offerings
Microsoft might lose a whole city of customers in Russia. According to Bloomberg, Moscow will begin replacing Redmond’s products with homegrown software as a result of Vladimir Putin’s urging to stop depending on foreign tech. Artem Yermolaev, the city’s head of information technology, told reporters that Moscow will begin by dropping Microsoft’s Exchange Service and by replacing Outlook on 6,000 computers with state-run carrier Rostelecom PJSC’s email system. Authorities are looking to deploy the email software to as many as 600,000 computers in the future. They might even replace Windows and the Office suite entirely, though there seems to be no solid plan for that at the moment.
The Russian president has been calling for companies and other entities to opt for local offerings for a while now, citing American corporations’ decision to shutter services in Crimea after his government annexed the peninsula in 2014. To ensure things go their way, Putin’s internet czar German Klimenko wants to raise taxes imposed upon American firms operating within Russia.
In recent years, Putin’s government has also been passing laws and imposing strict requirements to ensure a tight hold over the country’s tech sector. Back in 2014, it required websites accessible in Russia to store its citizens’ personal data in servers within its borders. Earlier this year, it started requiring internet providers to add backdoor access to their subscribers’ encrypted messages, as well.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Bloomberg
Xbox One gets Fox Sports Go’s streaming app
Fox Sports Go is basically on every major streaming platform already, including Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku and Fire TV. And now you can add a gaming console to that list, with the app now available on the Xbox One. To give you a refresher, Fox Sports Go lets you watch live and on-demand videos from the NFL, MLB, NHL, UFC, NCAA football, UEFA Champions League and many more competitions. The only caveat is that you need a cable subscription to access it, but this shouldn’t come as a surprise — the cord-cutter life is rough.
Today’s announcement comes only a few weeks after Fox Sports Go launched on Chromecast, and right before that it was the Apple TV. It is, however, still missing from the PlayStation 4, though that may have something to do with Sony not wanting to overshadow its PS Vue offering.
Source: Fox Sports Go
Microsoft’s Edge browser stays secure by acting as a virtual PC
Microsoft has unveiled Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge, a new system that will isolate the browser on Windows 10 Enterprise PCs, making them harder to hack. In a blog, the company wrote that it’s “the first operating system to ship this type of technology alongside a browser.” Using the Virtualization Based Security (VBS) recently introduced for Windows 10, Edge runs inside a small, virtual “PC,” keeping it separate from processes including storage, other apps and, most importantly, the Windows 10 kernel.
Microsoft says that while other browsers are “sandboxed” away from security-sensitive PC areas, they “still provide a pathway for malware and vulnerability exploits.” By contrast, Application Guard uses a hardware container to completely isolate Edge from the rest of the PC.
The system is only available on Windows 10 Enterprise for now, so administrators will need to choose sites that do and don’t run inside Application Guard. When it’s enabled, malware can’t penetrate the protective VM “box” around Edge to access the rest of the system. “Even if an untrusted site successfully loads malware, the malware is unable to reach beyond the isolated container to steal data or permanently compromise devices or the network,” Microsoft wrote.
Running Edge in a virtual machine will slow it down a bit, but Microsoft says it uses the minimum resources necessary to keep it light. The other hassle is that an Application Guard-enabled session won’t save your cookies or other data, because closing the browser completely wipes all memory of the session. Those things mean that, for now, the VM-protected Edge system isn’t quite ready for non-enterprise users just yet. However, in an age of constant hacking, a browser that isolates your system from danger seems like an idea whose time has come.
Microsoft puts AI to work in Office 365
Microsoft isn’t just trying out artificial intelligence through bots and voice assistants — it’s going all-in. The crew in Redmond has revealed that Office 365 is wielding cloud-based AI to automate many tasks. Tap for Word and Outlook surface relevant content from your company to help finish a project, for instance. PowerPoint and Sway will have a QuickStarter feature that gives you curated outlines for given topics, saving you the trouble of creating the foundation of a presentation from scratch. Excel, meanwhile, will have a way to turn raw geographic data into Bing-based maps.
Some of these intelligent features are available now, although you’ll have to wait until later this year to get the Excel and PowerPoint helpers.
There are some more behind-the-scenes uses of AI as well. Microsoft’s sales service, Dynamics 365, will use AI assistance to bring up relevant data and point sales reps in the right direction when they’re trying to clinch a deal. The company is even using an AI agent in its American call centers to help staff answer your questions. While you might not notice these as much as the Office upgrades, they’re evidence that Microsoft sees machine learning as useful in many parts of the computing world.
Source: Official Microsoft Blog
‘Minecraft’ novel in the works by ‘World War Z’ author
With Microsoft’s billions behind it, Minecraft’s momentum is showing no signs of slowing. The game now supports VR and has lets players fine-tune their worlds with Add-Ons, the movie has a release date (although it is in 2019) and soon it’s going to have its very own official novel. Mojang has confirmed that the new book, titled Minecraft: The Island, is being written by none other than Max Brooks, the scribe behind the apocalyptic zombie novel World War Z.
“Think cuboid Robinson Crusoe, but madder: a hero stranded in an unfamiliar land, with unfamiliar rules, learning to survive against tremendous odds,” says Mojang’s Marsh Davies. “I’ve peeked at an early draft and it’s entirely amazing, just as we knew it would be.”
It’s not yet known when the book will be released or if it will have ties to the movie but it does appear that it will be the first of many. Publishing house Del Rey — the science fiction offshoot of Penguin Random House — is overseeing everything and the company has already remarked that it’s “fortunate to have someone of Max’s incredible talent and passion on board for the launch of the series.”
While parents will likely be on the hook for more money, some will be thankful that the Minecraft brand is extending its reach into education. Minecraft: Education Edition will help teachers from November 1st and the release of the upcoming novels can only further childrens’ love of reading.
Source: Mojang
‘Minecraft’ October updates are big deals for tweakers and VR
Minecraft is close to some updates that could seriously alter how you play if you like to mess with game mechanics… or simply immerse yourself in a virtual world. An upgrade arriving October 18th for Minecraft’s Windows 10, Pocket and Gear VR editions will introduce Add-Ons, which let you change how characters and objects behave by tweaking text files. Want giant chickens, or Creepers that trigger huge explosions? It’s now relatively trivial. Think of it as an entry point into the world of game mods without having to learn programming.
VR users, meanwhile, get more advanced controller support. You can use the Bluetooth-equipped Xbox One gamepad (like the one that ships with the Xbox One S) in the Windows 10 or Gear VR editions of the game, and PC players with an Oculus Rift can use Oculus Touch hand controllers. If Minecraft in VR still feels like a conventional PC or mobile game at the moment, it should be a more distinctive experience following the update.
The new software also introduces boss battles to the Windows 10, Pocket and Gear VR versions.
Console users won’t have to wait until the 18th to have something new, though. Microsoft and Mojang are releasing a Chinese Mythology Mash-Up that, as the name suggests, introduces a world and characters inspired by China’s culture. You’ll also find banners and more logical biomes, such as polar bears and igloos in arctic climates. Xbox and Wii U gamers get this update on October 4th, while the PlayStation crowd gets it on the 5th.
Source: Xbox Wire, Mojang, PlayStation Blog
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