Reinforcement learning, a machine learning paradigm for sequential decision making, has stormed into the limelight, receiving tremendous attention from both researchers and practitioners. When combined with deep learning, reinforcement learning (RL) has produced impressive empirical results, but the successes to date are limited to simulation…
Bias in AI is a big problem. In particular, AI can compound the effects of existing societal biases: in a recruiting tool, if more men than women are software engineers, AI is likely to use that data to identify job applicants and overscreen for men,…
In his work in visual merchandising, designer Kenroy Tyrell has used LED lights in displays for trade shows and showrooms. But on this particular day, he found himself using the technology in a way he never anticipated—as part of a garment he had created. Tyrell…
Technical Fellow and Director of Microsoft Research Eric Horvitz was completely floored as he spun around and spied the stunning sculpture that had silently been wheeled in behind him. The evening’s gathering had been arranged to celebrate a special birthday. His wife, Mary, had just…
Mixed reality (MR) applications and devices are seeing increased adoption, integrating computation into the fabric of our daily lives. This requires realistic rendering of virtual audio-visual content to deliver sensory immersion to MR users. Producing renderings indistinguishable from reality within tight computational budgets is both…
When AI systems impact people’s lives, it is critically important that people understand their behavior. By understanding their behavior, data scientists can properly debug their models. If able to reason how models behave, designers can convey that information to end users. If doctors, judges and…
Everyone is familiar by now with recommendation systems such as on Netflix for movies, Amazon for products, Yelp for restaurants and TripAdvisor for travel. Indeed, quality recommendations are a crucial part of the value provided by these businesses. Recommendation systems encourage users to share feedback…
The past few years have seen tremendous progress in reinforcement learning (RL). From complex games to robotic object manipulation, RL has qualitatively advanced the state of the art. However, modern RL techniques require a lot for success: a largely deterministic stationary environment, an accurate resettable…
Lots of important information, including job openings and other kinds of advertising, are often transmitted by word-of-mouth in online settings. For example, social networks like LinkedIn are increasingly used as a way of spreading information about job opportunities, which can greatly affect people’s career development.…
Deep learning algorithms, supported by the availability of powerful Azure computing infrastructure and massive training data, constitutes the most significant driving force in our AI evolution journey. In the past three years, Microsoft reached several historical AI milestones being the first to achieve human parity…
“Here’s my conference paper—what do you think?” After hours of agonizing over words and illustrations, sharing a draft document is a moment of great pride. All too often, this is shortly followed by embarrassment when your colleague gets back to you with reams of edits.…
A team of researchers from the Natural Language Processing (NLP) Group at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) and the Speech Dialog Research Group at Microsoft Redmond are currently leading in the Conversational Question Answering (CoQA) Challenge organized by Stanford University. In this challenge, machines are measured…
