{"id":537,"date":"2014-08-04T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/inside_microsoft_research\/2014\/08\/04\/platt-plenty-excited-about-ai\/"},"modified":"2016-07-20T07:29:49","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T14:29:49","slug":"platt-plenty-excited-about-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/platt-plenty-excited-about-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Platt Plenty Excited About AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"posted-by\">Posted by <span class=\"author\">Rob Knies<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/TNBlogsFS\/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com\/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles\/00\/00\/00\/90\/35\/Platt.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"191\" title=\"John Platt\" style=\"float:left;margin:10px\" alt=\"John Platt\" src=\"https:\/\/msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/TNBlogsFS\/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com\/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles\/00\/00\/00\/90\/35\/Platt.jpg\" \/><span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>Now, here&rsquo;s an interesting one: The latest video in <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Channel 9\" href=\"https:\/\/channel9.msdn.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Channel 9<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>&rsquo;s <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Microsoft Research Luminaries\" href=\"https:\/\/channel9.msdn.com\/Series\/Microsoft-Research-Luminaries\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft Research Luminaries<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> series features <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"John Platt\" href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/people\/jplatt\/\" target=\"_blank\">John Platt<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> (<a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"@johnplattml\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/johnplattml\" target=\"_blank\">@johnplattml<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>) and explores his work in the resurgent research area of artificial intelligence (AI), its close cousin, machine learning, and the impact of deep learning on those fields.<\/p>\n<p>Platt, a Microsoft distinguished scientist and deputy managing director of <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Microsoft Research Redmond\" href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/labs\/redmond\/\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft Research Redmond<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, tells interviewer <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Larry Larsen\" href=\"https:\/\/channel9.msdn.com\/Niners\/LarryLarsen\/\" target=\"_blank\">Larry Larsen<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> that he has been with Microsoft for 17 years, but that he has spent no fewer than 32 years in the AI domain. At Larsen&rsquo;s prompting, Platt then attempts to define and differentiate what is meant by the terms &ldquo;AI&rdquo; and &ldquo;machine learning.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re very intertwined,&rdquo; he begins. &ldquo;I would define artificial intelligence as software that&rsquo;s trying to emulate the human mind. That&rsquo;s often specific to a domain, like computers that can see&mdash;that&rsquo;s computer vision&mdash;or computers than can listen, which is speech recognition, or computers that can read text, which would be natural language processing or text mining. So that&rsquo;s AI: emulating the human mind.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Machine learning is a set of techniques that turn a data set into a set of software. It&rsquo;s an alternative way of programming. Instead of writing a specification and then trying to hand-build a piece of software that matches the specification, you have a data set and perhaps some desired output or behaviors that you&rsquo;d like when you see elements of that data set. Machine learning will generate a piece of software that will match your goals on that data set.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p> <iframe src=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/apps\/video\/ifVideo.aspx?id=226034\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That bit of instructive clarification complete, Platt then outlines the history of AI, going all the way back to Alan Turing and the dawn of computing. He then pivots to discuss how AI can be enhanced via deep learning and then to the <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Cortana\" href=\"http:\/\/www.windowsphone.com\/en-us\/how-to\/wp8\/cortana\/meet-cortana\" target=\"_blank\">Cortana<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> dialog system for <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Windows Phone 8.1\" href=\"http:\/\/www.windowsphone.com\/en-us\" target=\"_blank\">Windows Phone 8.1<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> before turning his conversational focus to one of Microsoft&rsquo;s recent research successes, <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Project Adam\" href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/news\/features\/dnnvision-071414.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Project Adam<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>u.<\/p>\n<p>That work demonstrates that large-scale, commodity distributed systems can train huge deep neural networks effectively, as evidenced by the world&rsquo;s best photograph classifier over 22,000 categories encompassing 14 million images. Project Adam, from a small team headed by researcher <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" title=\"Trishul Chilimbi\" href=\"http:\/\/research.microsoft.com\/en-us\/um\/people\/trishulc\/\" target=\"_blank\">Trishul Chilimbi<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, is 50 times faster than and more than twice as accurate as the best previous effort in this direction.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Trishul and I are speculating about what kinds of amazing things we can build with Project Adam,&rdquo; Platt says. &ldquo;What sort of large-scale systems can we build, and how much amazing AI stuff can we do? I&rsquo;m very excited.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>His enthusiasm is contagious, as you&rsquo;ll see when you watch the video. Learn more at the <a title=\"Machine Learning blog\" href=\"\/b\/machinelearning\/\" target=\"_blank\">Machine Learning blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by Rob Knies Now, here&rsquo;s an interesting one: The latest video in Channel 9&rsquo;s Microsoft Research Luminaries series features John Platt (@johnplattml) and explores his work in the resurgent research area of artificial intelligence (AI), its close cousin, machine learning, and the impact of deep learning on those fields. Platt, a Microsoft distinguished scientist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[193706,200315,187359,194956,186897,195185,186925,201271,202241,202393,186418,202507,202765,196463,186936,196903,197281,186456,204347,204609],"research-area":[],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-blog","tag-ai","tag-alan-turing","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-channel-9","tag-computer-vision","tag-cortana","tag-deep-learning","tag-deep-neural-network","tag-john-platt","tag-larry-larsen","tag-machine-learning","tag-machine-learning-blog","tag-microsoft-research-luminaries","tag-microsoft-research-redmond","tag-natural-language-processing","tag-project-adam","tag-speech-recognition","tag-text-mining","tag-trishul-chilimbi","tag-windows-phone-8-1","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","byline":"","formattedDate":"August 4, 2014","formattedExcerpt":"Posted by Rob Knies Now, here&rsquo;s an interesting one: The latest video in Channel 9&rsquo;s Microsoft Research Luminaries series features John Platt (@johnplattml) and explores his work in the resurgent research area of artificial intelligence (AI), its close cousin, machine learning, and the impact of&hellip;","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260988,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions\/260988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=537"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}