The odds are against today's defenders Today the odds remain stacked against cybersecurity professionals. Too often, they fight an asymmetric battle against prolific, relentless and sophisticated attackers. To protect their organizations, defenders must respond to threats that are often hidden among noise. Compounding this challenge is a global shortage of skilled security professionals, leading to an estimated 3.4 million openings in the field. The volume and velocity of attacks requires us to continually create new technologies that can tip the scales in favor of defenders.

Humans are hard-wired to dream, to create, to innovate. Each of us seeks to do work that gives us purpose -- to write a great novel, to make a discovery, to build strong communities, to care for the sick. The urge to connect to the core of our work lives in all of us. But today, we spend too much time consumed by the drudgery of work on tasks that zap our time, creativity and energy. To reconnect to the soul of our work, we don't just need a better way of doing the same things.

To empower people to unlock the joy of discovery, feel the wonder of creation and better harness the world's knowledge, today we're improving how the world benefits from the web by reinventing the tools billions of people use every day, the search engine and the browser. Today, we're launching an all new, AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser, available in preview now at Bing.com, to deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content. We think of these tools as an AI copilot for the web. "AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all – search," said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. "Today, we're launching Bing and Edge powered by AI copilot and chat, to help people get more from search and the web."

They are doing critical science missions in an intense operating environment where safety is paramount. On spacewalks they repair equipment, install new instruments and upgrade the largest spacecraft ever flown. Just like workers here on Earth, their gloves can show wear and tear – even rips and cuts – presenting potential safety concerns. To prevent problems from arising, astronauts working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) must take photos of their spacesuit gloves during and after every spacewalk and transmit them down to Earth for inspection. From there, NASA analysts examine photos of the gloves, looking for any damage that could pose a hazard, and then send the results back to the astronauts on the ISS.

This evening at a press event to kickoff MWC Barcelona, I had the pleasure of joining CEO Satya Nadella and Technical Fellow Alex Kipman onstage to talk in depth about Microsoft's worldview for the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. As part of today's press event, we also introduced the world to HoloLens 2. This is a tremendously exciting time for Microsoft, our partners, our customers, the computing industry and indeed the world. The virtually limitless computing power and capability of the cloud combined with increasingly intelligent and perceptive edge devices embedded throughout the physical world create experiences we could only imagine a few short years ago. When intelligent cloud and intelligent edge experiences are infused with mixed reality, we have a framework for achieving amazing things and empowering even more people. Today represents an important milestone for Microsoft.

To help its service technicians more efficiently repair and maintain its models, Mercedes-Benz USA is outfitting all of its authorized American dealerships with HoloLens 2 headsets. The devices are equipped with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, a mixed reality app that that lets users collaborate during hands-free video calls from their own computers. Organizations have long known the importance of business resiliency, but becoming resilient requires time and preparation, and the pandemic has forced many organizations to evolve at a pace few could have imagined. To recover and thrive within this new context presents new challenges. That is why we are partnering with customers to support faster adoption of digital capabilities.

One of the most gratifying parts of my job at Microsoft is being able to witness and influence the intersection of technological progress and impact: harnessing the big trends in computing that have the opportunity to benefit everybody on the planet. Frank's post this morning from Ignite shows just how much progress is happening in many of these areas. Today, the foremost computing trend is undoubtedly artificial intelligence (AI). As we increasingly develop the ability to deploy huge AI models at scale in a way that can be leveraged by all developers and businesses, AI is becoming a platform – an environment upon which folks can build amazing new experiences, just like we've seen happen before with personal computers, mobile devices or the internet. Getting this AI platform off the ground requires unprecedented computing horsepower.

Imagine an autonomous vehicle navigating a smoke-filled mine looking for survivors, personal belongings or any other clues to find anyone who might be alive. It identifies objects it sees and decides which paths to take first. As it reaches the limit of where it can explore, a drone sitting on the vehicle flies off to explore the hard-to-reach corners of the mine. All of this is done without any communication with the outside world. Team Explorer from Carnegie Mellon University and Oregon State University did exactly this to win the first event of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Subterranean Challenge.

I have been talking a lot this year about democratizing digital. It is about empowering everyone to have a digital experience and enabling everyone to participate in the digital economy. This trend is large-scale, with broad business and social impact. This was clear earlier this month at the Microsoft Government Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C. There, I met with federal agency and department leaders to discuss how cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) are delivering new levels of innovation and impacting entire markets and industries. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offers one of the best examples of the power of data and AI to transform agricultural productivity through the FarmBeats initiative.

Artificial intelligence can help us to solve some of society's most difficult challenges and create a safer, healthier and more prosperous world for all. I've already shared the exciting possibilities in the fields of healthcare and agriculture in previous posts. But there may be no area where the possibilities are more interesting – or more important – than education and skills. From personalized learning that takes advantage of AI to adapt teaching methods and materials to the needs of individual students, to automated grading that frees teachers from the drudgery of assessing tests so they have more time to work with students, to intelligent systems that are transforming how learners find and interact with information, the opportunities to improve education outcomes and accessibility will be truly transformational. There are many classrooms around the world where educators teach very diverse groups of students from different cultures, who speak multiple languages.