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    Microsoft’s Journey in AI: 15 Milestones That Shaped the Future

    techgeekwireBy No Comments3 Mins Read

    Microsoft’s Journey in AI: 15 Milestones That Shaped the Future

    The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a decades-long process, with numerous technological breakthroughs paving the way for today’s AI era. Microsoft, a company that has been at the forefront of technological innovation for the past 50 years, has played a significant role in shaping the future of AI. From the launch of its first operating system in 1985 to recent advancements in AI research, Microsoft’s journey in AI is marked by several key milestones.

    Early Innovations and Foundations

    Bing Launches with Natural Language Capabilities

    Bing illustration
    In 2009, Microsoft launched Bing, introducing notable machine learning features such as search suggestions and related searches. These features leveraged semantic technology from Powerset, a company Microsoft acquired in 2008.

    Project Oxford: Laying the Foundation for Azure AI

    Project Oxford illustration
    Released in 2015, Project Oxford (now known as Azure AI Foundry) provided developers with intelligent technologies for building smarter apps featuring face detection, voice recognition, and language understanding. “So much of this goes back to Bing,” said Eric Boyd, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Azure AI Platform.

    Breakthroughs in AI Research

    Deep Residual Networks (ResNet)

    ResNet illustration
    Introduced in 2015, ResNet significantly improved the training of deep neural networks, enabling the development of deeper architectures with better performance. “ResNet set the standard for computer vision that’s used everywhere,” said Peter Lee, president of Microsoft Research.

    Multisensory and Multilingual Learning

    Between 2015 and 2020, Microsoft achieved human performance parity on several benchmarks in conversational speech recognition, machine translation, and image captioning. These breakthroughs led to the development of Azure AI services, enabling customers to accelerate more powerful and integrative AI systems.

    Enhancing Accessibility and Processing Power

    Seeing AI: Making the Visual World Audible

    Seeing AI illustration
    Launched in 2016, Seeing AI uses computer vision and natural language processing to describe a person’s surroundings, read text, and identify currency.

    Brainwave: Deep Learning Acceleration Platform

    Project Brainwave illustration
    Introduced in 2017, Brainwave is a deep learning acceleration platform designed to run real-time AI workloads at scale on Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure.

    Recent Advancements

    Turing-NLG and Supercomputing Infrastructure

    Turing-NLG illustration
    In 2020, Microsoft released Turing-NLG, one of the largest language models at the time, and introduced a new supercomputer hosted in Azure for OpenAI.

    GitHub Copilot and AI-Powered Coding

    Github illustration
    Launched in 2021, GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered coding assistant that helps developers write code more efficiently.

    Copilot+ PCs and AI Agents

    Copilot PC illustration
    Introduced in 2024, Copilot+ PCs feature a new system architecture that brings together the power of the CPU, GPU, and NPU, enabling new AI experiences. AutoGen, launched in 2023, is an open-source programming framework for building AI agents.

    Conclusion

    Microsoft’s journey in AI is a testament to the company’s commitment to innovation and its vision for a future where AI empowers every person and organization to achieve more. As AI continues to evolve, Microsoft remains at the forefront, driving advancements that have the potential to transform industries and improve lives.

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