by admin | May 25, 2021 | Employment, Markets, Private Jobs, Technology
By Nishant Arora,
Redmond (Washington State) : Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the big buzzword in the world of technology as it promises to change the way we live and interact with devices.
For Microsoft, there is nothing “artificial” about delivering on “intelligence” as the supreme aim is to empower nearly one billion people with disabilities.
The excitement about AI is so evident on the Microsoft campus here that various teams associated with the task have focused their energies towards achieving the impossible — to give differently-abled a normal, dignified life.
The change has been visible in the last couple of years under CEO Satya Nadella who has brought AI to the fore across domains — devices, Cloud, Office 365, Windows and so on.
For him, “Artificial Intelligence represents one of technology’s most important priorities, and heath care is perhaps AI’s most urgent application.”
“AI for Accessibility” is a new, $25 million, five-year programme from Microsoft for developers globally, including in India.
The programme will put AI tools in the hands of developers to accelerate the development of accessible and intelligent AI solutions for people with disabilities.
Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft’s first-ever Chief Accessibility Officer whose deafness set in at a young age, has a mammoth goal ahead — to utilise AI tools for accessibility and inclusion.
“Accessibility is all about making anything and everything accessible to everyone. We have several programmes for the disabled, like ‘Seeing AI’ and auto alt-text features that are helping narrate the world for people who are blind or have low vision,” Jenny told a group of visiting journalists.
The company has developed apps that describe what people see and feel, help them do text-to-speech and speech-to-text translation and, with predictive text, ensure that people don’t need to type as much.
“We now have eye control, learning tools, ‘Editor’ software, video and audio transcription, and ease of Access settings on Windows 10,” she added.
The “AI for Accessibility” programme provides seed grants of technology to developers, universities, non-governmental organisations and inventors.
At the Accessibility and Inclusion Xbox Lab here, Evelyn Thomas, Senior Programme Manager, is making sure that gamers with limited mobility can enjoy the experience with Xbox Adaptive Controller that has been created to remove barriers by being adaptable to more gamers’ needs.
“Persons with disabilities can now enjoy the immersive experience. You can see here the Xbox family of controllers and devices that are helping such people create a set-up that works for them in a way that is plug-and-play, extensible, and affordable,” Thomas explained.
Microsoft has worked with third-party manufacturers to support external inputs which can be plugged in to the new controller. These inputs include PDP’s One-Handed Joystick for the Xbox Adaptive Controller, Logitech’s Extreme 3D Pro Joystick, and Quadstick’s Game Controller.
Designed for the low-vision community, Microsoft’s app called “Seeing AI” harnesses the power of AI to describe people, text and objects. It can tell visually-impaired persons what is around them. If the phone is pointed at a park, the camera app can describe how the scene looks like.
Similarly, it can tell the amount of your restaurant bill or narrate just about anything it is pointed at.
“AI can help people develop professional skills and influence workplace culture and inclusive hiring,” Jenny said, adding that AI is capable of hearing, seeing, and reasoning with increasing accuracy.
By making software and devices smarter, and keeping them affordable, people gain independence to perform daily tasks and personalise tools for their unique needs.
“AI-driven technology can create possibilities for all people, regardless of how they listen, speak, or write,” Jenny said.
The truth is that only one in 10 people with disabilities globally has access to assistive technologies and products. And, according to Nadella, it is important for us to figure out how to empower more people.
“It has been a personal passion of mine to help people suffering with disabilities like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and autism,” Nadella said recently.
Nadella’s personal passion (his son has cerebral palsy) has now turned into a massive mission at Microsoft, with several teams working towards harnessing the power of AI to empower people with disabilities.
(Nishant Arora was in Redmond on the invitation from Microsoft. He can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Deepening their partnership on development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, Google is integrating Facebook’s open source Machine Learning (ML) PyTorch framework across its software and hardware tools for AI development.
PyTorch is a deep learning framework designed for easy and flexible experimentation and Facebook on Tuesday announced the preview release of an updated version of the framework – PyTorch 1.0.
The new partnership is aimed at making PyTorch framework work with Google’s custom computer chips for ML, dubbed Tensor Processing Units, or TPU, Fortune.com reported.
“In conjunction with today’s release of PyTorch 1.0 Preview, we are broadening support for PyTorch throughout Google Cloud’s AI platforms and services,” Rajen Sheth, Director of Product Management, Google Cloud wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
ML developers use many different tools, and Goolge has integrated several of the most popular open source frameworks into its products and services, including TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, and XGBoost.
“Today, we’re pleased to announce that engineers on Google’s TPU team are actively collaborating with core PyTorch developers to connect PyTorch to Cloud TPUs,” Sheth said on the blog.
“The long-term goal is to enable everyone to enjoy the simplicity and flexibility of PyTorch while benefiting from the performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency of Cloud TPUs,” he added.
PyTorch 1.0 accelerates the workflow involved in taking breakthrough research in AI to production deployment, Facebook said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Urdu
San Francisco : Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers at Facebook have set a new record in improving translation from Urdu to English.
Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is the field concerned with using AI to do translations in any language.
The team from Facebook AI Research (FAIR) has seen a dramatic improvement in its results, the Forbes reported on Saturday.
“To give some idea of the level of advancement, an improvement of 1 BLEU point (a common metric for judging the accuracy of MT) is considered a remarkable achievement in this field; our methods showed an improvement of more than 10 BLEU points,” the team said in a paper that described translation from Urdu to English.
Facebook AI researchers seek to understand and develop systems with human-level intelligence by advancing the longer-term academic problems surrounding AI.
The research covers the full spectrum of topics related to AI, and to deriving knowledge from data: theory, algorithms, applications, software infrastructure and hardware infrastructure.
“Long-term objectives of understanding intelligence and building intelligent machines are bold and ambitious, and we know that making significant progress towards AI can’t be done in isolation,” said researchers from FAIR.
FAIR researchers have tested a new approach that teaches bots how to chit-chat like humans.
Facebook is making deep investments in AI technology and in May announced the next version of its open-source AI framework for developers.
Microsoft is currently leading when it comes to AI and Deep Neural Networks to improve real-time language translation.
Earlier this year, Microsoft brought machine learning to improve language translation for Hindi, Bengali and Tamil.
With Deep Neural Networks-powered language translation, the results are more accurate and the sound more natural.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Facebook has forged a partnership with the New York University (NYU) on a research project that aims to make magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans up to 10 times faster by leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
If the project, called fastMRI, yields the desired results, it will make MRI technology available to more people, expanding access to this key diagnostic tool, Facebook said in a blog post on Monday.
MRI scanners provide doctors and patients with images that typically show a greater level of detail related to soft tissues — such as organs and blood vessels — than is captured by other forms of medical imaging.
But they are relatively slow, taking anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour, compared with less than a second or up to a minute, respectively, for X-ray and CT scans.
These long scan times can make MRI machines challenging for young children, as well as for people who are claustrophobic or for whom lying down is painful.
Additionally, there are MRI shortages in many rural areas and in other countries with limited access, resulting in long scheduling backlogs.
Making MRI scanners faster has several benefits, including increased access to these devices for patients.
Sufficiently accelerated MRI devices could also reduce the amount of time patients must hold their breath during imaging of the heart, liver, or other organs in the abdomen and torso.
Increased speed could let MRI machines fill the role of X-ray and CT machines for some applications, allowing patients to avoid the ionising radiation associated with those scans.
This NYU-Facebook project will initially focus on changing how MRI machines operate.
Currently, scanners work by gathering raw numerical data in a series of sequential views and turning the data into cross-sectional images of internal body structures that doctors then use to evaluate a patient’s health.
The larger the data set to be gathered, the longer the scan will take.
Using AI, it may be possible to capture less data and therefore scan faster, while preserving or even enhancing the rich information content of magnetic resonance images.
The key is to train artificial neural networks to recognise the underlying structure of the images in order to fill in views omitted from the accelerated scan, Facebook said.
The Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) group, believes that though this project will initially focus on MRI technology, its long-term impact could extend to many other medical imaging applications.
For example, the improvements afforded by AI have the potential to revolutionise CT scans as well.
Advanced image reconstruction might enable ultra-low-dose CT scans suitable for vulnerable populations, such as pediatric patients, Facebook said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Large Enterprise, Markets, Technology
San Francisco : Microsoft on Friday introduced new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered capabilities in Microsoft 365 that will allow people in an organisation create live and on-demand events.
Events can now be viewed in real-time or on-demand, with high-definition video and interactive discussion, the company said in a statement.
Launched one year back, the adoption of Microsoft 365 has grown by more than 100 per cent — building on over 135 million commercial monthly Office 365 users, 200 million Windows 10 commercial devices in use, and over 65 million seats of Enterprise Mobility + Security.
“Today, we are introducing new ways Microsoft 365 connects people across their organisation and improves collaboration habits, including new AI-infused capabilities,” said Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft.
AI-powered services will include speech-to-text transcription, timecoding, transcript search and closed captions to make the event more accessible to all.
Microsoft rolled out the preview of a new Workplace Analytics solution, which uses collaboration insights from the Microsoft Graph, to help teams run efficient meetings, create time for focused work, and respect work/life boundaries.
“Organisations can use aggregate data in Workplace Analytics to identify opportunities for improving collaboration, then share insights and suggest habits to specific teams using MyAnalytics,” Markezich said.
Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows 10, coming soon to iOS, and preview on the web, the company announced.
“The new Whiteboard application enables people to ideate, iterate, and work together both in person and remotely, across multiple devices,” Microsoft said.
—IANS
