Above: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks about autonomous systems at the Build conference held May 6, 2019, in Seattle.

Microsoft Wants to Help Novice Developers Create AI Projects

Microsoft announced plans last week to offer an end-to-end toolkit for AI and robotics. The platform’s first component will be a limited preview program for building intelligent agents using Microsoft AI and Azure tools that can autonomously run physical systems.

Microsoft has created a strong interest in its self-contained AI efforts. allowing users to create a dream appliance, which then is self-powered without the user having learned a single line of code.

The announcement, which took place at the Build developer conference in Seattle, follows Microsoft’s declaration last week that machine teaching — the ability to give AI attributes from human professionals without coding —as the next major frontier in AI.

“I think AI has to break away from being something that only AI experts can work on; otherwise the application of the AI and its impact on the world is going to be very limited. I think we have to get to the place where it’s not that 10,000 AI experts in the world are the only ones who can actually apply AI in different scenarios across many vertical domains,” Microsoft VP for Business AI Gurdeep Pall told VentureBeat in a phone interview last week.

With this platform, you can build simple snakelike search and rescue robots like a company called Sarcos did, or even get involved with making forklifts for Toyota.

A robot like this one can be created with any AI expertise by using Microsoft’s platform.

The platform will rely on existing services such as Microsoft’s Azure IoT, reinforcement learning, AirSim to simulate actions, ROS, and tech from Bonsai, an enterprise AI startup acquired by Microsoft last year.

According to an article by Khari Johnson on venturebeat.com, Microsoft introduced new drag-and-drop tools for its Azure Machine Learning offerings, as well as a fully managed blockchain service and Unreal Engine support for HoloLens 2.

This sudden burst of AI power means that anyone can become an AI developer by making the most of the new platform.

read more at venturebeat.com