Microsoft's AI Copilot unauthorized for United States House of Representatives use
axios.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] The U.S. House has set a strict ban on congressional staffers' use of Microsoft Copilot, the company's AI-based chatbot, Axios has learned.
"The Microsoft Copilot application has been deemed by the Office of Cybersecurity to be a risk to users due to the threat of leaking House data to non-House approved cloud services,"
Intel confirms Microsoft's Copilot AI will soon run locally on PCs, next-gen AI PCs require 40 TOPS of NPU performance
@WindowsCentral: [Transcription] [Excerpt] During its AI Summit in Taipei this week, Intel described the perks of Core Ultra AI PCs to @rrspear, including the upcoming ability to run Microsoft Copilot locally.
A standout upgrade in Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 is the Copilot key, which gives you quick access to Copilot in Windows, so you can work smarter, be more productive, and boost your creativity. Copilot in Windows serves as an AI assistant for everyday tasks, streamlining your workflow with personalized support, contextual assistance, insights, and suggestions. Surface lets you engage with Copilot in ways that are natural and intuitive through keyboard, pen, touch, and voice. This allows you to stay in your flow and maintain focus on the task at hand.
Microsoft AI’s first CEO: co-founder of DeepMind, Mustafa Suleyman
@mustafasuleyman: I’m excited to announce that today I’m joining @Microsoft as CEO of Microsoft AI. I’ll be leading all consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, Bing and Edge. My friend and longtime collaborator Karén Simonyan will be Chief Scientist, and several of our amazing teammates have chosen to join us.
@InflectionAI will continue on its mission under a new CEO, and look to reach more people than ever by making its API widely available to developers and businesses the world over. It’s been an amazing journey, with so much more to come. Thank you to everyone for your support. Things really are just getting started.
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@satyanadella: Welcome to Microsoft, @mustafasuleyman. Thrilled to have you lead Microsoft AI as we build consumer AI, like Copilot, that is loved by and benefits people around the world.
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☑️ #95 Mar 8, 2024
Update on Microsoft Actions Following Attack by Nation State Actor Midnight Blizzard
msrc.microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] This blog provides an update on the nation-state attack that was detected by the Microsoft Security Team on January 12, 2024. As we shared, on January 19, the security team detected this attack on our corporate email systems and immediately activated our response process. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence investigation identified the threat actor as Midnight Blizzard, the Russian state-sponsored actor also known as NOBELIUM.
Microsoft and Mistral AI announce new partnership to accelerate AI innovation and introduce Mistral Large first on Azure
azure.microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Today, we are announcing a multi-year partnership between Microsoft and Mistral AI, a recognized leader in generative artificial intelligence. Both companies are fueled by a steadfast dedication to innovation and practical applications, bridging the gap between pioneering research and real-world solutions.
finchat.io: The world's largest company reported better than expected earnings on Tuesday. Driven by strength in its Intelligent Cloud segment, which includes businesses like Azure, SQL, GitHub, and others, Microsoft delivered $62 billion in revenue this quarter, up 18% from a year ago.
In reference to slowing spend or "optimizations" from its cloud customers, CEO Satya Nadella stated "That period... I think, has ended at this point."
On the bottom line, earnings grew faster than revenue as Microsoft's operating margin expanded from 38.7% a year ago to 43.5% this quarter.
@Beth_Kindig: Microsoft’s $MSFT intelligent cloud revenue has grown at a 16.8% CAGR since FY14, from just under $22 billion to nearly $88 billion in FY23
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☑️ #91 Jan 19, 2024
Microsoft Actions Following Attack by Nation State Actor Midnight Blizzard
msrc.microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] The Microsoft security team detected a nation-state attack on our corporate systems on January 12, 2024, and immediately activated our response process to investigate, disrupt malicious activity, mitigate the attack, and deny the threat actor further access. Microsoft has identified the threat actor as Midnight Blizzard, the Russian state-sponsored actor also known as Nobelium. As part of our ongoing commitment to responsible transparency as recently affirmed in our Secure Future Initiative (SFI), we are sharing this update.
By 31 December 2024, will Microsoft announce that its AI Research Lab in China is closing or being relocated?
infer-pub.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Microsoft Research Lab Asia (MSR Asia), is the division of Microsoft Research based in China and focuses its research on artificial intelligence, computer vision, and other critical technologies. In June 2023, the Financial Times reported that Microsoft was moving some of its top AI experts from MSR Asia to a new research lab in Vancouver that would be organizationally aligned with MSR Asia (Financial Times). This followed a decision in May by Microsoft-owned LinkedIn to shut down InCareer, the stripped-down version of the LinkedIn app that remained in China after LinkedIn decided to pull out of the country in 2021 (Reuters). However, Peter Lee, the head of Microsoft Research, has denied claims that Microsoft is planning to close their lab in China saying, “There has been no discussion or advocacy to close Microsoft Research Asia, and we look forward to continuing our research agenda” (New York Times).
Resolution Criteria:
This question will be resolved as "Yes" if Microsoft announces in a press release, statement by Microsoft executives, or other official communication that it is closing Microsoft Research Asia or moving the research lab to another country. The announcement must be made on or before 31 December 2024, but the closure or relocation does not need to be effected by that date. The relocation of some MSR Asia staff without the closing of offices or cessation of operations in China will not be sufficient for resolution.
Screenshot. Source: INFER (INtegrated Forecasting of Events and Risks)
Microsoft Picks Dee Templeton as OpenAI Board Observer
bloomberg.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Microsoft Corp. executive Dee Templeton has joined OpenAI’s board as a nonvoting observer, according to a person familiar with the matter, as part of a broader boardroom overhaul following the brief ouster of the startup’s chief executive officer.
Templeton has worked at Microsoft for more than 25 years and is the company’s vice president for technology and research partnerships and operations, according to her LinkedIn profile. She has already begun attending board meetings, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters. OpenAI and Microsoft declined to comment.
Microsoft introduces Copilot key (a new key on select PC keyboards), first change in 30 years
blogs.windows.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Introducing a new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs.
Today, we are excited to take the next significant step forward and introduce a new Copilot key to Windows 11 PCs. In this new year, we will be ushering in a significant shift toward a more personal and intelligent computing future where AI will be seamlessly woven into Windows from the system, to the silicon, to the hardware. This will not only simplify people’s computing experience but also amplify it, making 2024 the year of the AI PC.
Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, is set to officially step down from his role on December 29th
Powered by chat.openai.com: Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, is scheduled to officially step down from his role on December 29th. This decision comes after Microsoft's acquisition of the company. Kotick has been a prominent figure at Activision Blizzard, recognized for leading the studio behind the popular "Call of Duty" series. The majority of Activision Blizzard's leadership team will remain in place, reporting to Matt Booty, the President of Game Content and Studios at Microsoft. No immediate replacement for Kotick has been announced by Microsoft at this time.
Microsoft successfully completed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, concluding a lengthy and often contentious approval process involving regulators in the US, EU, UK, and New Zealand. Despite challenges, including a legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a US federal court, Microsoft secured the acquisition, which includes popular gaming franchises like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Diablo. However, even after the deal's closure in October, the FTC continued its efforts to block the acquisition. Lawyers representing both the FTC and Microsoft appeared before a three-judge panel at the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals, where the FTC argued that the deal could potentially allow Microsoft to withhold games from other platforms, pointing to Microsoft's past behavior after acquiring Zenimax in 2020. Microsoft's representatives maintained that the acquisition would be beneficial and argued against the FTC's claim, stating that the standard for blocking the deal cannot be as low as the FTC suggests.
This acquisition, one of the largest in the gaming industry, marks a significant expansion of Microsoft's gaming portfolio and has been closely watched due to its potential impact on the gaming market and competition.
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☑️ #86 Dec 12, 2023
Phi-2: The surprising power of small language modes
microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Phi-2 is a Transformer-based model with a next-word prediction objective, trained on 1.4T tokens from multiple passes on a mixture of Synthetic and Web datasets for NLP and coding. The training for Phi-2 took 14 days on 96 A100 GPUs. Phi-2 is a base model that has not undergone alignment through reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), nor has it been instruct fine-tuned. Despite this, we observed better behavior with respect to toxicity and bias compared to existing open-source models that went through alignment (see Figure 3). This is in line with what we saw in Phi-1.5 due to our tailored data curation technique, see our previous tech report(opens in new tab) for more details on this. For more information about the Phi-2 model, please visit Azure AI | Machine Learning Studio(opens in new tab).
techrepublic.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Microsoft’s biggest investment in the U.K. to date will see the company double its AI data centre footprint and deliver skills training to more than one million people.
The investment, announced by the U.K. government on November 30, will see Microsoft more than double its AI data centre footprint in Britain over the next three years and deliver AI-related training to more than one million people. The company will also supply more than 20,000 graphic processing units for the country’s “next-generation” AI infrastructure and expand its Accelerating Foundation Models Research programme to give the U.K. researchers and scientists priority access to its AI foundation models.
New NVIDIA H100, H200 Tensor Core GPU Instances Coming to Microsoft Azure to Accelerate AI Workloads
blogs.nvidia.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Confidential computing and two new NVIDIA-powered instances expand generative AI possibilities for Azure customers.
As NVIDIA continues to collaborate with Microsoft to build state-of-the-art AI infrastructure, Microsoft is introducing additional H100-based virtual machines to Microsoft Azure to accelerate demanding AI workloads.
At its Ignite conference in Seattle today, Microsoft announced its new NC H100 v5 VM series for Azure, the industry’s first cloud instances featuring NVIDIA H100 NVL GPUs.
Microsoft announced plans to add the NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPU to its Azure fleet next year to support larger model inferencing with no increase in latency.
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☑️ #82 Nov 15, 2023
Welcoming Mistral, Phi, Jais, Code Llama, NVIDIA Nemotron, and more to the Azure AI Model Catalog
Models as a Service (MaaS)
techcommunity.microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Today, we are also pleased to announce Models as a Service. Pro developers will soon be able to easily integrate the latest AI models such as Llama 2 from Meta, Command from Cohere, Jais from G42, and premium models from Mistral as an API endpoint to their applications. They can also fine-tune these models with their own data without needing to worry about setting up and managing the GPU infrastructure, helping eliminate the complexity of provisioning resources and managing hosting.
AMD Brings New AI and Compute Capabilities to Microsoft Customers
ir.amd.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 15, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today at Microsoft Ignite, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) and Microsoft featured how AMD products, including the upcoming AMD Instinct™ MI300X accelerator, AMD EPYC™ CPUs and AMD Ryzen™ CPUs with AI engines, are enabling new services and compute capabilities across cloud and generative AI, Confidential Computing, Cloud Computing and smarter, more intelligent PCs.
Source: Microsoft Corporation
AMD Instinct MI300X Accelerators will power new Microsoft Azure virtual machine series optimized for AI —
4th Gen AMD EPYC processors are also now being used to run a new generation of general purpose, memory-intensive and compute-optimized VMs
Startups to access high-performance Azure infrastructure, accelerating AI breakthroughs
blogs.microsoftt.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Today Microsoft is updating its startup program to include a free Azure AI infrastructure option for high-end GPU virtual machine clusters, for use in training and running large language models and other deep learning models.
Y Combinator (YC) and its community of startup innovators will be the first to access this offering in private preview to a limited cohort. YC has an unmatched reputation as a pioneering startup accelerator helping launch transformative companies including Airbnb, Coinbase and Stripe. Now YC startups will have the technical resources they need to quickly prototype and bring to market cutting-edge AI innovations. Our close collaboration with YC provides valuable insights into the infrastructure needs of early-stage AI companies, ensuring our offering delivers optimal value to additional startups going forward.
Siemens and Microsoft partner to drive cross-industry AI adoption
press.siemens.com: Siemens Industrial Copilot will allow users to rapidly generate, optimize and debug complex automation code, and significantly shorten simulation times. This will reduce a task that previously took weeks to minutes. The copilot ingests automation and process simulation information from Siemens’ open digital business platform, Siemens Xcelerator, and enhances it with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service. Customers maintain full control over their data, and it is not used to train underlying AI models.
Project Silica: Sustainable cloud archival storage in glass
microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Diverse applications for sustainably archiving humanity’s data.
Project Silica holds promise in numerous sectors, such as healthcare, scientific research, and finance, where secure and durable archival storage of sensitive data is crucial. Research institutions could benefit from Silica’s ability to store vast datasets generated from experiments and simulations, ensuring the integrity and accessibility of research findings over time. Similarly, healthcare organizations could securely archive patient records, medical imaging data, and research outcomes for long-term reference and analysis.
As the volume of globally generated data grows, traditional storage solutions will continue to face challenges in terms of scalability, energy-efficiency, and long-term durability. Moreover, as technologies like AI and advanced analytics progress, the need for reliable and accessible archival data will continue to intensify. Project Silica is well-positioned to play a pivotal role in supporting these technologies by providing a stable, secure, and sustainable repository for the vast amounts of data we create and rely on.
Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Labs offer you access and facilities to build, develop, prototype, and test your solutions for your market.
aiotlabs.microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Accelerate your AI and/or IoT Project with personalized help from our Microsoft technology experts.
For any customers/partners looking to implement Microsoft’s AI or IoT tools, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies.
One-week long complimentary, personalized development sprints for engineering teams, tailored for your own project.
Learn what’s possible, reduce time to market, benefit from Microsoft’s engineering guidance.
Why join Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Labs?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are transforming how people, devices, and data interact in every sphere of life.
However, the pace of change is exponential. Organizations may struggle to spot latest technologies quickly, or they may miss important pieces to build their own ecosystem - making them unable to move fast enough develop and commercialize their potential in the market. If your organization is developing an AI and/or IoT solution, you may go for a consultation with the Microsoft’s AI Co-Innovation Labs to help solve your challenges in AI and/or IoT technologies, as well as receive guidance and recommendations from Microsoft AI and IoT technology experts.
Virtual Labs: Available anywhere in the world. Source: Microsoft Corporation
Industrial Metaverse Co-innovation Program (IMCP): A proprietary co-innovation program dedicated to accelerating Industrial Metaverse projects with Microsoft AI, IoT, Big Data technologies for enterprises in Smart Energy, Manufacturing industries.
Microsoft Corporation completed its previously announced acquisition of Activision Blizzard
sec.gov: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Item 2.01 Completion of Acquisition or Disposition of Assets.
On October 13, 2023, Microsoft Corporation, a Washington corporation (“Microsoft”), completed its previously announced acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Inc., a Delaware corporation (“Activision Blizzard”). Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement and Plan of Merger (as amended, supplemented or otherwise modified from time to time, the “Merger Agreement”), dated as of January 18, 2022, by and among Microsoft, Activision Blizzard and Anchorage Merger Sub Inc., a Delaware corporation and a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft (“Merger Sub”), at the effective time of the Merger (the “Effective Time”), Merger Sub merged with and into Activision Blizzard (the “Merger”), with Activision Blizzard surviving the Merger as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft.
Microsoft to Debut AI Chip Next Month That Could Cut Nvidia GPU Costs
theinformation.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Microsoft next month plans to unveil the company’s first chip designed for artificial intelligence at its annual developers’ conference, according to a person with direct knowledge. The move, a culmination of years of work, could help Microsoft lessen its reliance on Nvidia-designed AI chips, which have been in short supply as demand for them has boomed.
The Microsoft chip, similar to Nvidia GPUs, is designed for data center servers that train and run large language models, the software behind conversational AI features such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Microsoft’s data center servers currently use Nvidia GPUs to power cutting-edge LLMs for cloud customers, including OpenAI and Intuit, as well as for AI features in Microsoft’s productivity apps.
vantage.sh: [Transcription] [Excerpts] In the annals of enterprise there exists a concept known as a “unified data analytics platform”. One place to store, organize, train on and query all your data.
For the past 10 years Databricks has been building this software. But there is another company with a long history of serving enterprises and building data products which always had the potential to provide some of these workflows for customers.
With the release of Fabric at their Build conference earlier this year, Microsoft is taking steps to give enterprises an all-in-one platform for data analytics. Could their latest effort be a real threat to Databricks? We dissect the pricing and workflows of the two offerings.
Parakhin: “Apple is making more money on Bing existing than Bing does”
modestproposal1: “Apple is making more money on Bing existing than Bing does,” Mikhail Parakhin, the head of Microsoft’s advertising and web services, testified.
(Bloomberg) -- A Microsoft Corp. executive said the company has tried for years to displace Alphabet Inc.'s Google as the default search engine for iPhones, but that Apple Inc. never seriously considered switching to Microsoft's Bing and was content to use it as a "bargaining chip" with the search giant.
"Apple is making more money on Bing existing than Bing does," Mikhail Parakhin, the head of Microsoft's advertising and web services, testified during the US government's antitrust trial against Google in Washington. "We are always trying to convince Apple to use our search engine."
Parakhin, who joined Microsoft in 2019 from Russian search engine Yandex NV, said Microsoft met with Apple as recently as 2021 to discuss a potential switch to Bing, but didn't make any progress.
In response to Google's lawyers, Parakhin said it was "uneconomical for Microsoft to invest more" in technology for the mobile search market. "Unless Microsoft gets a more significant, or firmer guarantee of distribution, it makes it uneconomical to invest."
Infosys collaborates with Microsoft to accelerate and democratize industry-wide adoption of generative AI
infosys.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Both companies will help enterprises take an AI-first approach to scale next-generation AI solutions to improve operational efficiencies, drive revenue growth, and enable business transformation.
Infosys(NSE, BSE, NYSE: INFY), a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, today announced that it is collaborating with Microsoft to jointly develop industry leading solutions that leverage Infosys Topaz, Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Cognitive Services. Both organizations are bringing together their respective artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to enhance enterprise functions with AI-enabled solutions across multiple industries. The integrated solutions will accelerate rapid democratization of data and intelligence that will help businesses increase productivity and drive new revenue growth.
Microsoft’s AutoGen: Enabling next-generation large language model applications
microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] “Capabilities like AutoGen are poised to fundamentally transform and extend what large language models are capable of. This is one of the most exciting developments I have seen in AI recently.” Doug Burger, Technical Fellow, Microsoft
AutoGen is a framework for simplifying the orchestration, optimization, and automation of LLM workflows. It offers customizable and conversableagents that leverage the strongest capabilities of the most advanced LLMs, like GPT-4, while addressing their limitations by integrating with humans and tools and having conversations between multiple agents via automated chat.
“Plot a chart of META and TESLA stock price change YTD”. Source: Microsoft Corporation
Moral Development of Large Language Models by Microsoft
arxiv.org: [Transcription] [Tittle & Abstract] Exploring Large Language Models' Cognitive Moral Development through Defining Issues Test.
The development of large language models has instilled widespread interest among the researchers to understand their inherent reasoning and problem-solving capabilities. Despite good amount of research going on to elucidate these capabilities, there is a still an appreciable gap in understanding moral development and judgments of these models. The current approaches of evaluating the ethical reasoning abilities of these models as a classification task pose numerous inaccuracies because of over-simplification. In this study, we built a psychological connection by bridging two disparate fields-human psychology and AI. We proposed an effective evaluation framework which can help to delineate the model's ethical reasoning ability in terms of moral consistency and Kohlberg's moral development stages with the help of Psychometric Assessment Tool-Defining Issues Test.
Microsoft and Oracle Expand Partnership to Deliver Oracle Database Services on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in Microsoft Azure
oracle.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Microsoft Joins Oracle as the Only Other Hyperscaler to Offer Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Database Services to Simplify Cloud Migration, Multicloud Deployment, and Management.
Austin, Texas and Redmond, WA—September 14, 2023. Oracle Corp and Microsoft Corp today announced Oracle Database@Azure, which gives customers direct access to Oracle database services running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and deployed in Microsoft Azure datacenters.
With the introduction of Oracle Database@Azure, Oracle and Microsoft are helping customers accelerate their migration to the cloud, so they can modernize their IT environments and take advantage of Azure’s infrastructure, tooling, and services. Customers will benefit from:
More options to move their Oracle databases to the cloud;
The highest level of Oracle database performance, scale, and availability, as well as feature and pricing parity;
The simplicity, security, and latency of a single operating environment (datacenter) within Azure;
The ability to build new cloud native applications using OCI and Azure technologies, including Azure’s best-in-class AI services;
The assurance of an architecture that is tested and supported by two of the most trusted names in the cloud.
Introducing the Microsoft Copilot Copyright Commitment
microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Use Microsoft Copilot services with confidence.
September 7, 2023. Today, we announced the Microsoft Copilot Copyright Commitment, a new benefit that extends our existing intellectual property indemnity support to commercial Copilot services and builds on our previous AI Customer Commitments. Starting October 1, 2023, Microsoft is offering to defend customers from IP infringement claims arising from the customer's use and distribution of the output content generated by Microsoft’s Copilot services. Specifically, should a third party sue a commercial customer for copyright infringement for using a Microsoft Copilot service or the output they generate, we will defend the customer and pay the amount of any adverse judgements or settlements that result from the lawsuit, as long as the customer used the guardrails and content filters we have built into our products.
This new commitment does not change Microsoft’s position that it does not claim any intellectual property rights in the outputs of its Copilot services.
Microsoft: China stole secret key that unlocked US govt email from crash debug dump
theregister.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Mistakes were made, lessons learned, stuff now fixed, says Windows maker.
Remember that internal super-secret Microsoft security key that China stole and used to break into US government email accounts back in July?
The Windows giant has, in its own words, today described how the Chinese spy team it tracks as Storm-0558 obtained that golden cryptographic key, which was then used to break into Uncle Sam's Outlook web mail accounts. The cyber-snoops stole the consumer key from a software crash dump which, as Microsoft was good enough to admit, should have been redacted and not have included the digital key in the first place.
Source: Mozilla Corporation and/or Mozilla Foundation | 🟠 Opinion: Firefox Money by The Lunduke Journal of Technology (for paid subscribers)
☑️ #66 Aug 17, 2023
The new Bing has failed to take any market share from Google after six months
searchengineland.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Microsoft disputes the data, which shows Bing's market share is actually lower in 2023 than it was in 2022 – before new Bing launched.
It’s been just over six months since the new AI-powered Bing with Bing Chat launched – but its overall search engine market share remains virtually unchanged globally and in the U.S.
Why we care. When the new Bing launched, it felt like the dawn of an exciting new era in search. Microsoft seemed to have a legitimate chance to erode some of Google’s dominance and become a truly worthy competitor to Google, thanks to its new conversational and generative AI take on search. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened.
@bing: has happened since. We’ve introduced new features like Image Creator, Chat History, Partner Plugins, Visual Search, Bing Chat Enterprise, Windows Copilot, and so much more! We’ve made Bing Chat more accessible on mobile, in the Microsoft Edge browser and starting today, more customers can try all these great features in third-party browsers!
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☑️ #64 Aug 3, 2023
Microsoft files patent for an Human-computer interface
patentscope.wipo.int: US20230245395 - RE-CREATION OF VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A VIDEO CALL
[Transcription] [Abstract] An improved human-computer interface (“HCI”) is disclosed herein for viewing a three-dimensional (“3D”) representation of a real-world environment from different, changing, and/or multiple perspectives. An AR device may capture, in real-time, a 3D representation of a scene using a surface reconstruction (“SR”) camera and a traditional Red Green & Blue (“RGB”) camera. The 3D representation may be transmitted to and viewed on a user's computing device, enabling the user to navigate the 3D representation. The user may view the 3D representation in a free-third-person mode, enabling the user to virtually walk or fly through the representation captured by the AR device. The user may also select a floor plan mode for a top-down or isomorphic perspective. Enabling a user to view a scene from different perspectives enhances understanding, speeds trouble-shooting, and fundamentally improves the capability of the computing device, the AR device, and the combination thereof.
Source: FIG. 1 is a computing system diagram illustrating aspects of an operating environment for the embodiments disclosed herein along with aspects of an illustrative HCI that enables a 3D representation of a real-world environment through a video call, according to one embodiment disclosed herein.
Linux Foundation Creates Ultra Ethernet Consortium with Microsoft
prnewswire.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Leading Cloud Service, Semiconductor, and System Providers Unite to Form Ultra Ethernet Consortium.
UEC to deliver on Ethernet-based open, interoperable, high-performance full-communications stack architecture to meet the growing network demands of AI & HPC at scale.
SAN FRANCISCO, July 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Announced today, Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) is bringing together leading companies for industry-wide cooperation to build a complete Ethernet-based communication stack architecture for high-performance networking. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads are rapidly evolving and require best-in-class functionality, performance, interoperability and total cost of ownership, without sacrificing developer and end-user friendliness. The Ultra Ethernet solution stack will capitalize on Ethernet's ubiquity and flexibility for handling a wide variety of workloads while being scalable and cost-effective.
CISA and Microsoft Partnership Expands Access to Logging Capabilities Broadly
cisa.gov: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Access to New Logging by Default Will Enhance Cyber Defense and Incident Response.
“After working collaboratively over the past year, I am extremely pleased with Microsoft’s decision to make necessary log types available to the broader cybersecurity community at no additional cost,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly. “While we recognize this will take time to implement, this is truly a step in the right direction toward the adoption of Secure by Design principles by more companies. We will continue to work with all technology manufacturers, including Microsoft, to identify ways to further enhance visibility into their products for all customers.”
"Today’s announcement comes as a result of our close partnership with CISA, who have called for the industry to take action in order to better protect itself from potential cyber-attacks,” said Vasu Jakkal, Corporate Vice President, Security, Compliance, Identity, and Management at Microsoft. “It also reflects our commitment to engaging with customers, partners, and regulators to address the evolving security needs of the modern world.”
The Register: Under CISA pressure collab, Microsoft makes cloud security logs available for free
Microsoft and Meta expand their AI partnership with Llama 2 on Azure and Windows
blogs.microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Today, at Microsoft Inspire, Meta and Microsoft announced support for the Llama 2 family of large language models (LLMs) on Azure and Windows. Llama 2 is designed to enable developers and organizations to build generative AI-powered tools and experiences. Meta and Microsoft share a commitment to democratizing AI and its benefits and we are excited that Meta is taking an open approach with Llama 2. We offer developers choice in the types of models they build on, supporting open and frontier models and are thrilled to be Meta’s preferred partner as they release their new version of Llama 2 to commercial customers for the first time.
What happens to Microsoft and Activision Blizzard post-FTC?
venturebeat.com: Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley has issued her rulingin the case of the Federal Trade Commission’s temporary injunction against Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. She ruled against the injunction, which dissolves on July 14. This begs the question: What will happen for both Activision Blizzard (and the FTC) in the immediate aftermath? — Continue reading
XboxP3: 1/We're grateful to the court for swiftly deciding in our favor. The evidence showed the Activision Blizzard deal is good for the industry and the FTC’s claims about console switching, multi-game subscription services, and cloud don’t reflect the realities of the gaming market.
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XboxP3: 2/Since we first announced this deal, our commitment to bringing more games to more people on more devices has only grown. We’ve signed multiple agreements to make Activision Blizzard’s games, Xbox first party games and Game Pass all available to more players than they are today.
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XboxP3: 3/We know that players around the world have been watching this case closely and I’m proud of our efforts to expand player access and choice throughout this journey. END
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☑️ #59 Jun 29, 2023
Moody’s and Microsoft Develop Enhanced Risk, Data, Analytics, Research and Collaboration Solutions Powered by Generative AI
ir.moodys.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Strategic Partnership for Next-Gen Solutions Built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Fabric, and Microsoft Teams and Moody’s Proprietary Data to Empower Financial Services, Capital Markets and More.
Strategic Partnership Highlights
Microsoft and Moody’s are co-creating new products and services for research and risk assessment, built on Azure OpenAI Service for enhanced data and risk management.
“Moody’s CoPilot,” an internal copilot tool, is now deployed to Moody’s 14,000 global employees, and will combine Moody’s proprietary data, analytics and research with the latest large language models (LLMs) and Microsoft’s world-class generative AI technology to drive firm-wide innovation and enhance employee productivity in a safe and secure digital sandbox.
Moody’s is adopting Microsoft Teams to provide a new platform for its knowledge workers and customers that will enhance collaboration, productivity, and communication, while maintaining the highest compliance standards.
For internal use and co-innovations, Microsoft is leveraging Moody’s broad range of solutions, including Moody’s Orbis database – one of the world’s most powerful databases on companies – with applications that include third-party reference data, counterparty risk assessment, and supply chain management.
Microsoft and Moody’s will collaborate on the opportunity to deliver data to their shared customers through Microsoft Fabric, a new analytics platform for end-to-end data management.
Moody’s commits to using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to power its growing suite of generative AI capabilities and cloud-based applications.
Microsoft says early June disruptions to Outlook, cloud platform, were cyberattacks
msrc.microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpts] Beginning in early June 2023, Microsoft identified surges in traffic against some services that temporarily impacted availability. Microsoft promptly opened an investigation and subsequently began tracking ongoing DDoS activity by the threat actor that Microsoft tracks as Storm-1359.
These attacks likely rely on access to multiple virtual private servers (VPS) in conjunction with rented cloud infrastructure, open proxies, and DDoS tools.
We have seen no evidence that customer data has been accessed or compromised.
Microsoft closes deal with Nvidia-backed CoreWeave
cnbc.com: Microsoft signs deal for A.I. computing power with Nvidia-backed CoreWeave that could be worth billions.
The GPU Cloud. Source: CoreWeave (NVIDIA’s Elite Partner)
Both Microsoft and CoreWeave declined to make comments.
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☑️ #55 May 23, 2023
AI Coming to the PC at Scale
intel.com: Intel and Microsoft collaborate to advance artificial intelligence for Windows 11 PCs
[Transccription] [Excertp] Microsoft and Intel are working together to drive the development of artificial intelligence (AI) on personal computing (PC). And at Microsoft’s Build 2023 conference, Intel and Microsoft are previewing the AI-enabled capabilities of Intel’s upcoming Meteor Lake client PC processors. Utilizing Meteor Lake processors’ unique disaggregated architecture, Intel and Microsoft are enabling new AI-powered features for PC users – including new multimedia features like auto reframe and scene edit detection in Adobe Premiere Pro and more effective machine learning.
Microsoft Build brings AI tools to the forefront for developers
blog.microsoft.com: [Transcription] [Excerpt] Microsoft is announcing that we will adopt the same open plugin standard that OpenAI introduced for ChatGPT, enabling interoperability across ChatGPT and the breadth of Microsoft’s copilot offerings.
Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with first customer: Microsoft
@Helion_Energy: Announcing Helion’s first customer: Microsoft. We expect to start producing electricity in the world’s first fusion power plant by 2028, dramatically shortening the timeline for commercially viable fusion energy. Read more
Microsoft making plans to close $69B Activision deal
newyorktimes.com: Microsoft reportedly plans to finalize the $69 billion acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard despite the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) ongoing antitrust concerns.
According to a report published by the New York Post on Tuesday, Microsoft hopes it will receive approval from the British regulator later this week and from the European Commission during May.
Print Edition scheduled for tomorrow [4/27/23]
[Summarizer] Microsoft recently announced its plans to buy Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion, which would make Microsoft the world's third-largest gaming company by revenue. However, the U.K. antitrust regulators have blocked Microsoft's plans to acquire Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.
The deal is the largest in Microsoft's history and is a test of a new global alignment that is making it tougher for big corporations to close deals. In addition, video game workers at Microsoft and Activision have taken action to protest against the companies' working conditions.
The era of AI: How the Microsoft Cloud is accelerating AI transformation across industries
blogs.microsoft.com: [Transcription] This past quarter has put a spotlight on advancements in generative AI, and the possibilities of its application to deliver pragmatic business outcomes. For organizations around the world, there is incredible opportunity to enhance products and services while unlocking innovation and business value to help shape the future of industry. The pace and scale of technological innovation happening today is unprecedented and breathes optimism into a demanding economy.
Those leveraging the Microsoft Cloud — the most trusted, comprehensive and integrated cloud — are best positioned to take advantage of these advancements. As leaders look to embrace AI, it becomes more critical than ever to prioritize having a data-driven business, fortified with digital and cloud capabilities. This approach will help organizations leverage generative AI as an accelerant to transformation.
![Current Rationale Summary [Last Updated 01/24/24)]: Based on the provided forecasts and rationales, there are a few key arguments for and against Microsoft announcing the closure or relocation of its AI Research Lab in China by the end of 2024: Arguments for closure/relocation: - Pressure from the US government to limit technology transfers and investments in China, especially in sensitive areas like AI. Some forecasts cite the possibility of new investment restrictions being imposed on US companies operating in China. - Concerns about intellectual property theft and industrial espionage by the Chinese government. The lab's research could be nationalized or copied. - Geopolitical tensions between the US and China continuing to worsen, perhaps triggered by a crisis like conflict over Taiwan. This could force US companies to leave China. Arguments against closure/relocation: - China is an important market for Microsoft, accounting for 1.5% of its sales. Microsoft won't want to damage relations with China by closing the lab. - The lab provides access to top AI talent that is vital for Microsoft's competitiveness in this field globally. China will be the largest AI market long-term. - Microsoft has denied plans to close or relocate the lab in official statements, emphasizing a commitment to continuing research there. - It would be a significant operational undertaking to close a lab of that size. Microsoft may opt to quietly reduce the lab's importance instead. - Forecast median probability is only 10-20%, indicating low likelihood of closure according to crowd wisdom.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4fe4408a-8d85-4626-8784-9298507416e8.heic "Current Rationale Summary [Last Updated 01/24/24)]: Based on the provided forecasts and rationales, there are a few key arguments for and against Microsoft announcing the closure or relocation of its AI Research Lab in China by the end of 2024: Arguments for closure/relocation: - Pressure from the US government to limit technology transfers and investments in China, especially in sensitive areas like AI. Some forecasts cite the possibility of new investment restrictions being imposed on US companies operating in China. - Concerns about intellectual property theft and industrial espionage by the Chinese government. The lab's research could be nationalized or copied. - Geopolitical tensions between the US and China continuing to worsen, perhaps triggered by a crisis like conflict over Taiwan. This could force US companies to leave China. Arguments against closure/relocation: - China is an important market for Microsoft, accounting for 1.5% of its sales. Microsoft won't want to damage relations with China by closing the lab. - The lab provides access to top AI talent that is vital for Microsoft's competitiveness in this field globally. China will be the largest AI market long-term. - Microsoft has denied plans to close or relocate the lab in official statements, emphasizing a commitment to continuing research there. - It would be a significant operational undertaking to close a lab of that size. Microsoft may opt to quietly reduce the lab's importance instead. - Forecast median probability is only 10-20%, indicating low likelihood of closure according to crowd wisdom.")
