Microsoft Buys AI Startup Maluuba

Microsoft announced on Friday its plans on buying Maluuba, a Montreal startup focused on providing deep and reinforcement learning to solve the problem of machine literacy through common sense reasoning, memory, and communication.

"Microsoft provides us the opportunity to deliver our work to the billions of consumer and enterprise users that can benefit from the advent of truly intelligent machines," Maluuba said in its blog post.

Microsoft did not disclose financial terms of the acquisition and will bring on board Maluuba co-founders Kaheer Suleman and Sam Pasupalak, along with their team from the startup.

"Maluuba's vision is to advance toward a more general artificial intelligence by creating literate machines that can think, reason and communicate like humans -- a vision exactly in line with ours," Microsoft artificial intelligence and research group executive vice president Harry Shum said in a blog post.

"I'm incredibly excited about the scenarios that this acquisition could make possible in conversational AI."

Tech giants Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft are all competing to develop the most sophisticated connected assistant, to give software the ability to understand what people say and even anticipate desires or needs.

Amazon virtual assistant Alexa was a star at the Consumer Electronics Show gadget gala last week in Las Vegas. Amazon and Alexa face fierce competition.

At CES, computer chipmaker Nvidia said it would use Google Assistant for its interactive streaming devices. Microsoft's Cortana will power a voice-assistant speaker for kids and families being introduced by Mattel, and will also be in Renault-Nissan's connected car hub.

Samsung's smart refrigerator will use the South Korean giant's Tizen operating system to create a voice activated connected hub.

Many smart devices for the home also integrate with Apple Home Kit, which uses the iPhone maker's artificial intelligence and voice assistant Siri.

While ending the announcement, Maluuba quoted T.S. Eliot's words: "In our end is our beginning."

Source: Maluuba, Microsoft

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Microsoft Has Just Created A New Research Group For Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft has created a new artificial intelligence unit, as the company pushes deeper into the fast-growing field.

Almost whole of Silicon Valley is diving into artificial intelligence (AI)and machine learning research, an industry estimated to boom to $70 billion by 2020 from just $8.2 billion in 2013, according to a Bank of America report that cited IDC research.

On Wednesday, Microsoft teamed up with four other big technology companies - Amazon Inc, Google, Facebook and IBM - to create a non-profit organization to advance public understanding of AI technologies.

The new unit called Microsoft AI and Research Group, will be headed by Harry Shum, a company veteran who has held senior roles at the Microsoft Research and Bing engineering divisions.

"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.

Chief Executive Satya Nadella has previously said the company's $26.2 billion deal for LinkedIn Corp is expected to help bolster its efforts in analytics, machine learning and AI.

Microsoft has also been acquiring companies to expand its AI footprint. The company in February acquired the predictive keyboard app, SwiftKey. And last month it bought Genee, an AI-based scheduling service.

However, Microsoft's tryst with artificial intelligence had taken an embarrassing turn earlier this year, when its AI 'chatbot' Tay launched racist and sexist comments on Twitter.

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