This research summary is just one of many that are distributed weekly on the AI scholar newsletter. To start receiving the weekly newsletter, sign up here. Microsoft recently introduced ML.NET, a framework for building custom machine learning library solutions. Although ML.NET is new, it goes back to 2002 when Microsoft Research embarked on a text mining search and navigation(TMSN) project for use within Microsoft products. The project was later renamed The Learning Code (TLC) in 2011.

Artificial inteligence and machine learning are dominant themes of new developer tooling being introduced at Microsoft's Build developer conference this week, and ML.NET is a prime example. It's an open source, cross-platform machine learning framework, designed to help .NET developers get in on cutting-edge ML programming without having to learn the underlying technical details associated with creating and tuning machine learning models. One benefit to Visual Studio coders is the ability to work with ML models in native .NET languages like C#, "without having to learn and use Python," as one developer said in comments section of the announcement post. The new framework was originally developed at Microsoft Research and was launched as part of the .NET Foundation. Designed to complement ML and AI development with the company's existing tools such as Azure Machine Learning and Cognitive Services, the early preview will in time receive more capabilities.