Satya Nadella's Monday afternoon keynote picked up and amplified a theme that had been developed during the morning keynote: We are at an inflection point in the technology industry. Nadella's premise: the future will belong to the people who have the tools to take the phenomenal amount of information being generated daily, then turn it into actionable intelligence. The good news, however, is that he sees Microsoft's mission as "the democratization of artificial intelligence." In other words, every one of us will have the potential to act on all that data.
Rich Hay, Michael Morisy and I attended the afternoon keynote. Below are the key points and demos that took up the time.
Julia White back to emcee the keynotes, setting terms on how this keynote’s about “the future” #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
"AI intersects across all of our technologies." @satyanadella #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/z9LpsZoMo1
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
“We’re going to see some magical technologies … we’re going to set ourselves a goal of democratizing AI” - Satya Nadella #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Hello, mobile first cloud first — you’ve been invoked! “It’s about the mobility of the computing experience across our lives” #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
AI = “the ability to reason over large amounts of data and convert it into intelligence” per Nadella #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Making sense of the information we have at our disposal is critical. #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/7D7RPT17nV
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
Buckle in: We’re going back to the printing press as example of tech that democratized intelligence #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Satya Nadella positioning Microsoft as the makers of the Gutenberg Press for the AI age. #MSIgnite
— Michael Morisy (@morisy) September 26, 2016
“It’s pretty stunning to see the amount of information we have generated … in 2015, we generated close to 10 zb of data” #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Agents, applications, services, infrastructure = 4 core pillars of MSFT’s AI strategy #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Cortana - 133 million users and 12 billion questions asked. #MSIgnite #Context pic.twitter.com/BE2E9n1Fwa
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
Agents are the initial mediators of human-computer interactions — pt is to be ubiquitous in any context. #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Laura Jones, demo’ing Cortana, emphasizing iterative learning, i.e. more effective w/greater use and exposure #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Cortana to use machine learning to combine health data, daily schedule & provide actionable insights, recommendations #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Part of this demo demonstrates how Cortana can assume mindless, data-oriented maintenance tasks like monthly reports #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Demo of Cortana pulling in Bing, calendaring to make to-dos more effective. Striking when you consider Siri’s debate gaffe today. #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
“If you want to talk about that scarcity of human attention and time …” then what better use of AI than in your email? #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
MSFT is also using Cortana/AI to handle language translation, “complete linguistic comprehension” in composition. #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Emerging theme in keynote: the next step in computing is to pull info-management tasks off machine, into everyday interactions #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Office 365 is not just about moving to the cloud. The data under the apps can be used to create intelligence. #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/8sCXAi1JI2
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
Demo’ing what is basically a customer service bot. Would like to find out degree of customer satisfaction w/this set-up. #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Mention that customer service levels are “more efficient,” nods to customer satisfaction; no demo w/fluidity of human conversation #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
This Virtual Customer Service Agent is already live in English for US at https://t.co/mx3QFyRsCE #MoreMagic! #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/KxZvhowHXn
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
The Cortana Intelligence Suite is already in use across wide variety of industries, locales. AI as a service = something to watch #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
“Everyone is going to build a bot interface b/c it’s a convenient way for your customers to interact [with you]” #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
MSFT offering bot-building-as-a-service, 45K developers have already built bots #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
“we will democratize application usage for everyone and everything, and that’s what’s so exciting” — scope is boggling if true. #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Just some of the ways the Cortana Intelligence Graph is being put to use today. #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/xhltW08Pbm
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders says he "made it" now that he is on the Microsoft Keynote stage. #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/dDAF1he76n
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
Deion Sanders and Satya Nadella looking over his Fantasy Football lineup with a NFL FF BOT. #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/EnvQ2uWLF0
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
Uber now asking drivers to take selfies at random times — AI match w/photos presumably protects both driver rep and rider safety. #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
“Once the car knows the emotional state of the driver, it can help the driver get in a preferred emotional state.” #MSIgnite
— Michael Morisy (@morisy) September 26, 2016
Volvo & Microsoft team up to build cars the manipulate your emotional state. #MSIgnite
— Michael Morisy (@morisy) September 26, 2016
MSFT + Lowes = “Most remodels start before a customer walks into the store.” Pinterest = data collection tool for this step #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Smart, smart synergy between Pinterest, Lowes & MSFT’s Cortana service to move ppl’s pins to product selection. #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Here comes the HoloLens demo. #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/Rq1WZIvgnq
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
Watching the Hololens/Lowes/kitchen-planning demo is like watching an HGTV show without the narration or commercials #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
Demo here — monitoring shoppers’ eyepath, verbal feedback, etc. — shows how retailers will be able to go niche on customers #MSIgnite
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
The last pillar is Infrastructure. Azure is Global, Trusted, Intelligent. "From Silicon to Cloud" #MSignite pic.twitter.com/RXspF39D8W
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
Talking about programmable FPGA's AI Super Computers. Already deployed in 15 countries across 5 continents. #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/o2eu5E9SCZ
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
The Azure Std Server has 1.8 tera-ops of compute capacity; the FPGA gives it 7.9 Tera-ops of compute capacity. #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/dZtg9gCSvT
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
That is a lot of computer power. 1/10th of a second to translate a 1/4 mile stack of documents. Humans need 2/10ths to blink. #MSIgnite pic.twitter.com/imNVkpiBst
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
Bing Search is already using the FPGA fabric. #MSIgnite
— Richard Hay (@WinObs) September 26, 2016
Thematic continuity between AM and PM #MSIgnite keynotes: both are about MSFT articulating a vision of the future based on actionable info.
— Lisa Schmeiser (@lschmeiser) September 26, 2016
