Microsoft has announced the formation of its AI and Research Group, which it says will help the company democratize artificial intelligence use across individuals and organizations. The group unites Microsoft Research, which has been its own unit since 1991, with more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers working on the company's artificial intelligence products. News of the Microsoft AI and Research Group came a day after the company announced the Partnership on AI with Amazon, Facebook, Google and IBM in an effort to "study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public's understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society." AI and machine learning action at Microsoft has been going nonstop in recent years, in terms of internal development, acquisitions and industry efforts. In fact, Microsoft just bought an intelligent scheduling company called Genee.

NEW YORK - 28 Sep 2016: Amazon, DeepMind/Google, Facebook, IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft today announced that they will create a non-profit organization that will work to advance public understanding of artificial intelligence technologies (AI) and formulate best practices on the challenges and opportunities within the field. Academics, non-profits, and specialists in policy and ethics will be invited to join the Board of the organization, named the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society (Partnership on AI). Leading tech industry researchers from Amazon, DeepMind/Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft convened to announce a partnership on artificial intelligence (AI) best practices, at IBM's Watson headquarters in New York City, Weds., September 28, 2016. Founding members of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence from left: Eric Horvitz, Microsoft; Francesca Rossi, IBM; Yann LeCun, Facebook and Mustafa Suleyman, Google/DeepMind. Not pictured is Ralf Herbrich, Amazon.

Fujitsu has introduced a new technology to improve the internal memory of GPUs in order to increase the machine learning accuracy. Fujitsu claims that the new technology has doubled the efficiency of machine learning compared with previous technology. According to the company, in recent years the use of GPUs in machine learning has increased. GPUs have been providing the raw power to complete the complex calculations required for machine learning. The calculations can be done seamlessly when the data is stored in the GPU chip, but there is a limit on the GPU chips to store information.

On Thursday, Microsoft took the unusual step of combining its Bing and Cortana product teams with Microsoft Research, in a bid to accelerate innovation for both the search engine and the digital assistant. The move was part of a broader reorganization that saw Microsoft split its Applications and Services Group, which also included Microsoft's Office applications, into two separate organizations. Office applications will form their own group. Though Microsoft has asked researchers to work on projects that could eventually be commercialized, combining teams that work on active products, such as Cortana and Bing, with the future-facing teams that comprise Microsoft Research, is in fact unique within Microsoft. Together, Bing and Cortana, plus Microsoft's Information Platform and Ambient Computing and Robotics teams, will form the Microsoft AI and Research Group. All told, the group will include more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers, Microsoft said.

Computers can already recognize you in an image, but can they see a video or real-world objects and tell exactly what's going on? Researchers are trying to make computer video recognition a reality, and they are using some image recognition techniques to make that happen. Researchers in and outside of Google are making progress in video recognition, but there are also challenges to overcome, Rajat Monga, engineering director of TensorFlow for Google's Brain team, said during a question-and-answer session on Quora this week. The benefits of video recognition are enormous. For example, a computer will be able to identify a person's activities, an event, or a location.

Microsoft has reorganized several disparate projects and programs into an entirely new Artificial Intelligence group. It will be the fourth major division after Windows, Office and cloud, reallocating over 5,000 computer scientists and engineers under its umbrella. The shift shows how much unified effort the tech giant believes the field needs, as well as internally standardized AI tech they can more easily integrate into customer products. Microsoft Research chief Harry Shum will head the new AI division, according to GeekWire. In addition to his old department, the new group will include products like Cortana and Bing with the Ambient Computing and Robotics teams, as well as the company's Information Platform Group. Collecting them all under one banner suggests how standardized they want their AI tech to be between disparate programs.

If you spend your work days toiling in Google's productivity apps, the first thing you might notice today is that Google for Work is now called "G Suite". Once you get past the new label, you might also notice a slew of smart updates across the board that ought to save you time and keep your workflow moving. First up: Docs, Sheets and Slides got a new "Explore" feature that uses natural language search to help you research reports, organize data or design better looking presentations. In each of the main apps, an Explore button brings up a new sidebar with contextual options based on the app you're using. In Docs, this means Explore will search and suggest images, web links or other Drive documents that appear relevant to the content you're writing.

There may now be an easier way to implement advanced machine learning models in your projects. Google has opened up its Cloud Machine Learning to all businesses in a public beta, after a few months of testing it in private alpha. The tool makes it easier to train models at a much faster rate, and is integrated with the Google Cloud Platform. This has applications for businesses in areas such as customer support (learning how to automate responses to a variety of queries and complaints) or any kind of repetition-heavy task. In a blog post, Google described how its customer Airbus Defense and Space used the tool to automate the detection and correction of satellite images that contain imperfections such as cloud formations.

Americans want to stay in control of their cars, a new study finds. According to a study by Kelley Blue Book, 80 percent of Americans say people should always have the option to drive themselves. This study comes just a week after the Department of Transportation released regulatory guidelines for self-driving vehicles. And it comes comes as car companies are spending billions to advance the technology. But despite the push toward autonomous cars, consumers remain unconvinced.

You're so hard to explore. Sometimes you bombard spacecrafts with hurtling rocks and deadly cosmic rays, and other times you're so empty you don't give astronauts a darn thing to hold on to. But while scientists haven't quite figured out how to keep radiation at bay, the scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory--specifically, its Planetary Robotics Laboratory--are building machines that can get a grip on the most difficult surfaces astronauts will find out there. Adhesion-wise, space presents a couple problems. First, robots typically struggle with uneven surfaces, let alone the kind of cliffs and crags you see on Mars.