Microsoft’s new AI features on Azure and Bing, Amazon’s Model Server for Apache MXNet, and Toyota’s trialing of quantum computing system for IoT among today’s top news in artificial intelligence and data science news.
Microsoft’s new AIs around ‘conversational bots’
Microsoft makes Azure Bot Service and LUIS generally available for developers to build better conversational AI tools
Microsoft has announced the generally availability of its Azure Bot Service and Cognitive Language Understanding service (known as LUIS). “Making these two services generally available on Azure simultaneously extends the capabilities of developers to build custom models that can naturally interpret the intentions of people conversing with bots,” Lili Cheng, corporate vice president at the Microsoft AI and Research division wrote in a company blog post on the announcement. Cheng further says Microsoft has designed the bot framework to be “as flexible” as possible. “You don’t even need to host it on Azure if you don’t want to,” she said, adding that the company’s mission is “to bring conversational AI tools and capabilities to every developer and every organization on the planet.”
Azure based bots using LUIS are at the foundation of conversational AI services offered by ICS, a UK based AI company. ICS.ai have embraced the development of customisable and ever improving conversational bots to support public sector organisations in their digital transformation journeys. A core component of using AI in the public domain is adopting AI compliance and ethics that include trust, privacy, inclusion and accessibility.
Can Artificial Intelligence revive Bing’s fortunes?
Microsoft announces new AI-powered search features for Bing with improved image search and object recognition, machine reading, and a more conversational auto-complete function
Microsoft has announced a set of artificial intelligence functionalities for its Bing search engine to make it “more conversational” and context-sensitive. The new features upgrade Bing with better use of object recognition, machine reading for parsing text and extracting meaning, and other improved techniques with AI training methods. Earlier in September, Microsoft had attempted to cut down on fake news, misinformation, and other distorted stories from manipulative information sources, with a new fact checks feature into Bing search results. Now they have further enhanced Bing search results showing multiple perspectives collated from a list of pre-approved multiple news sources. Next, Microsoft has entered into a new partnership with social news site Reddit, under which Bing search results will source information by using algorithms to read and analyze the user-generated text across Reddit. Besides, Bing has also introduced a new machine learning-driven conversational search function, deploying a more advanced form of auto-complete to help users better phrase a query to get a more desirable answer on the first search. Additionally, Bing’s image search function will be able to better identify objects in photos, having been trained on object recognition models. While the conversational and intelligent search features will be available from next month, the improved search functionality is already effective, Microsoft said.
Analyzing IoT data with quantum computers
Denso, Toyota conducting a trial to see if quantum computers can be used to analyze IoT data with commercial applications
Denso and Toyota Tsusho will jointly conduct a test run using a quantum computer to process data from a traffic IoT platform. The test will include vehicle location and travel data of over 130,000 commercial vehicles in Thailand. During the trial, the companies hope to guide application development to make transportation more efficient, including traffic decongestion and route optimization for emergency vehicles. Canada-based D-Wave Systems has built the quantum computer that will be used in the test to collect and analyze information from taxis and trucks. While TSquare, a traffic information service application from Toyota Tsusho, will provide quantum computer-based data analysis and processing technologies, Denso will create an algorithm to process and analyze quantum computer-based data within an app on TSquare. Toyota Tsusho is a member of the Toyota Group.
AWS further makes deploying deep learning models easier
Introducing Model Server for Apache MXNet (MMS)
The Amazon Web services has announced the availability of Model Server for Apache MXNet (MMS). Built on top of Apache MXNet, Model Server for Apache MXNet is an open source component designed to simplify the task of deploying deep learning models for inference at scale. MMS is available to use through a PyPi package, or directly from the Model Server GitHub repository, and it runs on Mac and Linux. For scalable production use cases, the AWS recommends using the pre-configured Docker images that are provided in the MMS GitHub repository. The only prerequisite to get started is Python, and then PyPi can be used to install MMS as follows: $ pip install mxnet-model-server. For more information, refer to server documentation.
#ieeeEAD: Announcing Ethically Aligned Design v2
IEEE releases version 2 of Ethically Aligned Design for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (A/IS), invites industry inputs
IEEE has announced the publication of the second version of Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Well-being with Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (EADv2). In this regard, the IEEE Global Initiative has created its “Ethics in Action” campaign (#ieeeEAD on twitter) to encourage the general public to provide feedback to the document or join Standards Working Groups. Details on how to submit feedback to Ethically Aligned Design, Version 2 are available via Submission Guidelines available on The IEEE Global Initiative’s website. All comments and input will be made publicly available and should be sent no later than 12 March 2018. For more information, please visit the landing page of The IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Autonomous and Intelligent Systems.