Microsoft researchers present 18 papers at the International Conference on Machine Learning

Machine learning covers a lot of ground. At Microsoft, it's being incorporated to detect lies, recognize human responses and forecast finances; as well as improve search, natural language processing, advertising, security and gaming. It's making a big difference in a lot of different applications that really matter for the future," says John Langford, an expert on machine learning at the Microsoft Research lab in New York City who is also the general chair for the International Conference on Machine Learning, which has grown by 65 percent since last year thanks to the technology's success. "Figuring out how to use data to make decisions to help people is what machine learning is about." Advanced analytics and data science resources make it possible for once-arduous tasks to get done quickly. It can speed up a multitude of normally time-consuming processes, such as vision recognition, causality, crowd sourcing and more. "Now we're seeing more work in neural networks and deep learning than in previous years," says Langford of some prevalent themes in this year's conference. By far, this is the largest ICML ever. The field is really growing fast."