Microsoft taps the brainpower of its legendary research unit in an artificial intelligence push

Microsoft taps the brainpower of its legendary research unit in an artificial intelligence push

Microsoft has decided it needs more real brains working on artificial intelligence. The company said Thursday it is combining the team working on bots like Cortana with its longstanding Microsoft Research lab into a single 5,000-person unit. Research head Harry Shum will lead the effort. “Microsoft has been working in artificial intelligence since the beginning of Microsoft Research, and yet we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible,” Shum said in a statement. The move continues an effort under CEO Satya Nadella to get more product results out of the research team, which for years focused primarily on academic pursuits. An early example of this is Microsoft Pix, an iPhone camera app that uses artificial intelligence as a way to try to take better pictures. Pix is based…


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