Business View Magazine - October 2016 11
Microsoft is taking a four-pronged approach to
its initiative to democratize AI:
• Agents - Harness AI to fundamentally change hu-
man and computer interaction through agents such
as Microsoft’s digital personal assistant Cortana
• Applications - Infuse every application, from the
photo app on people’s phones to Skype and Office
365, with intelligence
• Services - Make these same intelligent capabili-
ties that are infused in Microsoft’s apps —cognitive
capabilities such as vision and speech, and machine
analytics — available to every application developer
in the world
• Infrastructure Build the world’s most powerful AI
supercomputer with Azure and make it available to
anyone, to enable people and organizations to har-
ness its power
For 25 years, Microsoft Research has contributed to
advancing the state-of-the-art of computing through
its groundbreaking basic and applied research that
has been shared openly with the industry and aca-
demic communities, and with product groups within
Microsoft. The organization has contributed innova-
tive technologies to nearly every product and ser-
vice Microsoft has produced in this timeframe, from
Office and Xbox to HoloLens and Windows. More
recently, Shum has expanded the organization’s
mission to include the incubation of disruptive tech-
nologies and new businesses.
“My job has been to take Microsoft Research, an
amazing asset for the company, and make it even
more of a value-creation engine for Microsoft and
our industry,” Shum said. “Today’s move to bring re-
search and engineering even closer will accelerate
our ability to deliver more personal and intelligent
computing experiences to people and organizations
worldwide.”
