One of the core directions of Project Malmo is to develop AI capable of rich interactions. Whether that means learning new skills to apply to challenging problems, understanding complex environments, or knowing when to enlist the help of humans, reinforcement learning (RL) is a core…
While reinforcement learning (RL) has seen significant successes over the past few years, modern deep RL methods are often criticized for how sensitive they are with respect to their hyper-parameters. One such hyper-parameter is the discount factor, which controls how future rewards are weighted compared…
Making sense of the world around us is a skill we as human beings begin to learn from an early age. Though there is still much to know about the process, we can see that people learn a lot, both directly and indirectly, from observing…
One in four of us, at some point in our lives, will be affected by a mental health condition. Good mental health and well-being are fundamental to our general health and quality of life. It enables us to build resilience against everyday stresses, to work…
Don’t limit yourself. If someone else can do it, you can do it, too. Don’t get comfortable. If doing well is easy, it’s time to challenge yourself. Over the years, these two principles have guided Columbia University PhD student Adji Dieng (opens in new tab)…
Dynamical systems theory provides a mathematical framework for studying how complex systems evolve over time, such as the neurons in our brains, the global climate system, or engineered cells. But predicting how these systems will behave in the future or how they might respond to…
With inputs from: Elizabeth Bondi (Harvard University), Bob DeBortoli (Oregon State University), Balinder Malhi (Microsoft) and Jim Piavis (Microsoft) Autonomous systems have the potential to improve safety for people in dangerous jobs, particularly first responders. However, deploying these systems is a difficult task that requires…
Microsoft Azure cloud hosts a wide variety of services, and Azure has hundreds of network edge locations worldwide across the globe’s six continents to host those services. The Azure locations host many interactive (latency-sensitive) services that cater to consumer and enterprise clients covering a broad…
When I was asked about my favorite movie in a game with friends after my wedding ceremony, I replied Star Wars. That was about two decades ago, and, yes, it’s still the case. I especially like Return of the Jedi. The third installment in the…
The cloud is an enormous success story. Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud offering, was launched in 2010. It has grown by more than ten times in the past five years and is now operating in 54 regions around the world. Azure Chief Technology Officer, Mark…
AI has made major strides in the last decade, from beating the world champion of Go, to learning how to program, to telling fantastical short stories. However, a basic human trait continues to elude machines: common sense. Common sense is a big term with…
Microsoft researchers are delving beyond the boundaries of information retrieval to optimize how we access and manage information in different areas. Not only are they advancing the realm most synonymous with information retrieval, search engines, but they are also researching new information access processes, utilizing…
