In both language and mathematics, symbols and their mutual relationships play a central role. The equation x = 1/y asserts the symbols x and y—that is, what they stand for—are related reciprocally; Kim saw the movie asserts that Kim and the movie are perceiver and…
Today people use personal digital assistants for help with scheduling, playing music, turning on or adjusting other devices, and answering basic questions such as “What time’s the game on?” or “Where’s the nearest hardware store?” But what if these assistants could do more to help…
Since its open-source release on December 3rd 2018, Microsoft SEAL has become one of the world’s most popular homomorphic encryption libraries and has been adopted by security and privacy professionals world-wide in both academia and industry. Thanks to the fact that it is written in…
One challenge with AI algorithmic fairness is that one usually has to know the potential group(s) that an algorithm might discriminate against in the first place. However, in joint work with Maria De-Arteaga, Nathaniel Swinger, Tom Heffernan, and Max Leiserson, we automatically enumerate groups of…
Varma’s team published a paper that exploded the number of choices that could be considered from a search engine from five thousand to ten million. This changed the nature of the game and led to the establishment of a new research area in machine learning…
One empirical finding in deep learning is that simple methods such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD) have a remarkable ability to fit training data. From a capacity perspective, this may not be surprising— modern neural networks are heavily over-parameterized, with the number of parameters much…
In the larger quest to make the Internet of Things (IoT) a reality for people everywhere, building devices that can be both ultrafunctional and beneficent isn’t a simple matter. Particularly in the arena of resource-constrained, real-time scenarios, the hurdles are significant. The challenges for devices…
Modern machine learning is characterized by two key features: high-dimensional models and very large datasets. Each of these features presents its own unique challenges, from basic issues such as storing and accessing all of the data to more intricate mathematical quests such as finding good…
What is the common denominator between the following situations: a doctor choosing among different drugs for a sequence of patients; a website selecting ads for its visitors based on the information it has about them; and a travel agency making recommendations to its customers for…
What an exciting two days at the Second Homomorphic Encryption Standardization Workshop at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More than 70 participants from 10 countries gathered together for two intense days of panels, discussions and planning and walked away with a significant milestone: the first draft…
Earlier this week Microsoft Research Montreal celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) with a one-day symposium: I Chose STEM. More than 200 Canadian STEM students and research community stakeholders joined Microsoft Research for inspirational keynotes, workshops…
Support for under-represented Ph.D. students in computer sciences By Lynn Parker, Writer, Microsoft The Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant program offers financial support to selected doctoral students from groups that are under-represented in the field of computing in the form of grants to complete their dissertations.…
