Objective: To enhance automated de-identification of radiology reports by scaling transformer-based models through extensive training datasets and benchmarking performance against commercial cloud vendor systems for protected health information (PHI) detection. Materials and Methods: In this retrospective study, we built upon a state-of-the-art, transformer-based, PHI de-identification pipeline by fine-tuning on two large annotated radiology corpora from Stanford University, encompassing chest X-ray, chest CT, abdomen/pelvis CT, and brain MR reports and introducing an additional PHI category (AGE) into the architecture. Model performance was evaluated on test sets from Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) for token-level PHI detection. We further assessed (1) the stability of synthetic PHI generation using a "hide-in-plain-sight" method and (2) performance against commercial systems. Precision, recall, and F1 scores were computed across all PHI categories. Results: Our model achieved overall F1 scores of 0.973 on the Penn dataset and 0.996 on the Stanford dataset, outperforming or maintaining the previous state-of-the-art model performance. Synthetic PHI evaluation showed consistent detectability (overall F1: 0.959 [0.958-0.960]) across 50 independently de-identified Penn datasets. Our model outperformed all vendor systems on synthetic Penn reports (overall F1: 0.960 vs. 0.632-0.754). Discussion: Large-scale, multimodal training improved cross-institutional generalization and robustness. Synthetic PHI generation preserved data utility while ensuring privacy. Conclusion: A transformer-based de-identification model trained on diverse radiology datasets outperforms prior academic and commercial systems in PHI detection and establishes a new benchmark for secure clinical text processing.

Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, speaks at the company's annual developer conference in Seattle, Washington. Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, speaks at the company's annual developer conference in Seattle, Washington. Tech giant reports earnings of $3.72 per share day after deal with OpenAI pushed value of company to more than $4tn Microsoft blew off concerns of overspending on AI on Wednesday, reporting elevated earnings even as it faced an outage of its cloud computing service, Azure, and its office software suite, 365. The strong earnings report comes a day after a deal with OpenAI pushed the value of the tech giant to more than $4tn. After its Xbox and investor relations pages went down, the company issued a statement that said: "We are working to address an issue affecting Azure Front Door that is impacting the availability of some services."

Heathrow, NatWest and Minecraft are among some of the sites and services experiencing problems amid a global Microsoft outage. Outage tracker Downdetector showed thousands of reports of issues with a number of websites globally on Wednesday. Microsoft said some users of Microsoft 365, which includes Outlook and Teams, might see delays. The company's Azure cloud computing platform, which underpins large parts of the internet, reported a degradation of some services at 1600 GMT. It said this was due to DNS issues - the same root cause of the huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage last week.

What does recognising a Palestinian state mean? Why have Spain, Italy sent ships to assist the Gaza flotilla? Who are the artists speaking out against the war? Why has Microsoft cut Israel off from some of its services? Microsoft has announced that it has withdrawn some of its services from the Israeli army, following an investigation that raised concerns that Israel may be violating the company's terms of service by using its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services to spy on millions of Palestinians throughout Gaza and the West Bank.

The Israeli military's reliance on Microsoft's cloud technology and artificial intelligence systems surged during the most intensive phase of its bombardment of Gaza, leaked documents reveal. The files offer an inside view of how Microsoft deepened its relationship with Israel's defence establishment after 7 October 2023, supplying the military with greater computing and storage services and striking at least 10m in deals to provide thousands of hours of technical support. Microsoft's deep ties with Israel's military are revealed in an investigation by the Guardian with the Israeli-Palestinian publication 972 Magazine and a Hebrew-language outlet, Local Call. It is based in part on documents obtained by Drop Site News, which has published its own story. The investigation, which also draws on interviews with sources from across Israel's defence and intelligence establishment, sheds new light on how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) turned to major US tech companies to meet the technological demands of war. After launching its offensive in Gaza in October 2023, the IDF faced a sudden rush in demand for storage and computing power, leading it to swiftly expand its computing infrastructure and embrace what one commander described as "the wonderful world of cloud providers".

Microsoft reported better-than-expected earnings on Wednesday fueled by growth in its Azure cloud business, as five of the "Magnificent Seven" tech megacaps roll out quarterly earnings this week. "AI-driven transformation is changing work, work artifacts, and workflow across every role, function, and business process," the company's CEO, Satya Nadella, said in a press release. "We are expanding our opportunity and winning new customers as we help them apply our AI platforms and tools to drive new growth and operating leverage." All eyes were on Azure, Microsoft's fastest-growing division that has received billions of dollars of investment as the company focuses attention on artificial intelligence. Revenue from the division increased by 22%, according to a press release. A day earlier, Google's parent, Alphabet, reported that its cloud business grew nearly 35% from a year earlier to 11.35bn, beating analyst estimates.

Profits at Microsoft beat Wall Street's expectations as its heavy bet on artificial intelligence continued to bear fruit in the second quarter. The technology giant has invested billions of dollars into AI in a bid to turbocharge its growth, particularly of its cloud computing services. Its cloud computing revenue surged by more than 20% in the latest quarter. Microsoft's AI tools "are orchestrating a new era of AI transformation, driving better business outcomes across every role and industry," said Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft. As the group races to integrate AI across its software and services, Nadella said its Azure cloud computing business saw the pace of deals worth 100m and 10m increase by double-digit percentages.

Since OpenAI's release of ChatGPT, generative AI has received significant attention across various domains. These AI-based chat systems have the potential to enhance the productivity of knowledge workers in diverse tasks. However, the use of free public services poses a risk of data leakage, as service providers may exploit user input for additional training and optimization without clear boundaries. Even subscription-based alternatives sometimes lack transparency in handling user data. To address these concerns and enable Fraunhofer staff to leverage this technology while ensuring confidentiality, we have designed and developed a customized chat AI called FhGenie (genie being a reference to a helpful spirit). Within few days of its release, thousands of Fraunhofer employees started using this service. As pioneers in implementing such a system, many other organizations have followed suit. Our solution builds upon commercial large language models (LLMs), which we have carefully integrated into our system to meet our specific requirements and compliance constraints, including confidentiality and GDPR. In this paper, we share detailed insights into the architectural considerations, design, implementation, and subsequent updates of FhGenie. Additionally, we discuss challenges, observations, and the core lessons learned from its productive usage.

This paper aims to answer the question: Can deep learning models be cost-efficiently trained on a global market of spot VMs spanning different data centers and cloud providers? To provide guidance, we extensively evaluate the cost and throughput implications of training in different zones, continents, and clouds for representative CV, NLP, and ASR models. To expand the current training options further, we compare the scalability potential for hybrid-cloud scenarios by adding cloud resources to on-premise hardware to improve training throughput. Finally, we show how leveraging spot instance pricing enables a new cost-efficient way to train models with multiple cheap VMs, trumping both more centralized and powerful hardware and even on-demand cloud offerings at competitive prices.

In 2019, Mr. Nadella made Microsoft's first of several investments in OpenAI, the start-up that would build the A.I.-powered ChatGPT chatbot. In the end of the summer of 2022, he was impressed by a preview of OpenAI's underlying technology, known as GPT-4, and soon began prodding Microsoft to add generative A.I. to its products at what he called a "frantic pace." He started with adding a chatbot to the Bing search engine, but then began pushing A.I. into the Windows operating system and productive applications like Excel and Outlook, and offering OpenAI's systems to customers of Azure, Microsoft's flagship cloud computing product. The revenue has only just started to show up in Microsoft's financial results. Generative A.I. accounted for about three percentage points of growth to Azure in the three months that ended in September, and the 30-a-month offering inside Microsoft's productivity software began a general release only in November. This isn't the first time that Microsoft has pulled ahead of Apple in recent years.