Human language technologies – Linking language to the world through speech recognition, language modeling, language understanding, and dialog systems.Machine learning – Developing and improving algorithms that help computers learn from data to create more advanced, intelligent computer systems.Together we highlighted some of the key challenges posed by artificial intelligence and identified the next generation of approaches, techniques, and tools that will be needed to develop AI to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.
The Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2017 brought together thought leaders and researchers from a broad range of disciplines including computer science, social sciences, human design and interactions, and policy. In addition to technological advances, researchers and thought leaders need to be concerned with the ethics and societal impact of intelligent technologies. We are seeing widespread investments in AI which are advancing the state of the art in machine intelligence and perception, enabling computers to interpret what they see, to communicate in natural language, to answer complex questions, and to interact with their environment. At the core, is the ability to harness the explosion of digital data and computational power with advanced algorithms that extend the ability for machines to learn, reason, sense, and understand-enabling collaborative and natural interactions between machines and humans. Microsoft AI researchers are striving to create intelligent machines that complement human reasoning and enrich human experiences and capabilities. The 18th annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit was held in Redmond, WA on July 17 and consisted of a variety of keynotes, talks, panels, and technologies focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) research: The Edge of AI.