How Machine Learning Ate Microsoft 96
snydeq writes Yesterday's announcement of Azure Machine Learning offers the latest sign of Microsoft's deep machine learning expertise — now available to developers everywhere, InfoWorld reports. "Machine learning has infiltrated Microsoft products from Bing to Office to Windows 8 to Xbox games. Its flashiest vehicle may be the futuristic Skype Translator, which handles two-way voice conversations in different languages. Now, with machine learning available on the Azure cloud, developers can build learning capabilities into their own applications: recommendations, sentiment analysis, fraud detection, fault prediction, and more. The idea of the new Azure offering is to democratize machine learning, so you no longer need to hire someone with a doctorate to use a machine learning algorithm."
Autocorrect :) (Score:5, Funny)
Ate or Aid?
Re: Autocorrect :) (Score:1)
Microsoft Bob (Score:5, Funny)
Bob set machine learning back a century.
Re: (Score:2)
Bob set machine learning back a century.
Can an Intel I7 do the job for realtime translation, or do we need an I7++ and 64gigs ram/desktop/cellphone ?
Call me paraniod, but ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Well, of course. Businesses don't do anything for free, so you're not paranoid, just cautious.
Re: (Score:1)
Don't be silly, Microsoft are in the business of selling server licenses. Many many businesses are asking for an on-premises versions of the azure tools, and this is just the publicly available "trial version".
Re: (Score:3)
I doubt it. They are in the business of selling products and services, they don't care what they can sell. They are a business trying to make money and stay relevant.
If running a porn streaming service wouldn't damage their image and was something they thought they knew how to run well and make good money on, I'm sure they would just add it to their list of services.
Now to be a bit more specific, of course they want your data. You see this happening especially on the consumer side.
For example: where can I g
Re:Call me paraniod, but ... (Score:5, Informative)
SharePoint will do that.
For that matter you can run the entire Azure suite in your private location: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us... [microsoft.com]
Re: (Score:3)
But important parts are missing.
Some examples:
- AzureAD, specifically ACS
- Site Recovery for disaster recovery
These are all online services with no buy/download equivalent from Microsoft.
Re: (Score:2)
Originally we were talking about some fairly mundane features. You aren't. You are talking about stuff that really is fairly complex, I'd say more SaaS than IaaS/PaaS.
Site Recovery is an Azure public cloud recovery solution. If I'm running a private copy of Azure then either:
a) I want to recover to the public Azure in which case Microsoft's Site Recovery works fine
b) I want to recover to another private data center in which I want to use a clustering / replication strategy.
AzureAD requires contracts a
Re:Call me paraniod, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me be clear: what applies to Azure as a foreigner applies also to Amazon/AWS, Google, Rackspace, IBM/SoftLayer, CenturyLink, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, PeerOne or any other US-based company (even if they run the service in Europe for example).
But I noticed there are others in the world, for example on the OpenStack Marketplace:
http://www.openstack.org/marke... [openstack.org]
Re: (Score:2)
No, the Fed created money to buy toxic assets at above market value. Expansive monetary policy is a free lunch. Private sector money creation is a free lunch: when they charge interest on a loan, they book it immediately in the Net Worth balance sheet item, so it is available to bank investors to spend, thereby adding just enough liquidity for the borrower, if everything goes right, to pay back the bank. With the money the bank created. See how the bank benefits from the money creation? It gets to hire the
Re: (Score:2)
... this is just their latest way to get their hands on your data.
Unfortunately, they're all like this. Pretty soon, Facebook is gonna want to know who my friends are. After they get that data, they'll be using the data I report about what I had for breakfast to show my friends ads. Then, they'll be providing "Like" buttons to report the following breakfast data from my friends back to me: "Hey Mikey, he likes it!"
Re: (Score:1)
How Bing learns (Score:3, Interesting)
So how did MS apply "machine learning" to make Bing not suck? By holding an internal competition to see who's algorithm processed "user improvement program" data best. So that essentially meant training it up to match Google search results (and presumably, which links "consenting" users clicked).
(OK, I'm sure they've come a long way since then on their own merits, but we can't let them live that one down ;-)
Re:How Bing learns (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with your statement is you make the assertion that Bing no longer sucks, which is false. Bing is still horrible.
Re: (Score:3)
I dunno...I just put the following query into Bing: "is bing horrible", and it came up with Why Bing Sucks. Top 5 Reasons [geeknizer.com]. So...it sucks, but it certainly isn't horrible.
Re:How Bing learns (Score:5, Interesting)
Although the above was just a joke, I actually clicked on the link after I submitted it, and it turns out to be an old page from 2009. It provides the follows searches which it says "just don't work" on Bing (in 2009):
“Was Einstein married?”
“What did Benjamin Franklin invent?”
“What is the top selling album of all time?”
I did a quick comparison of those three between Bing and Google, and the results seemed pretty comparable. In fact, I thought Bing did a little better on the first two, and Google did a little better on the last one - primarily because it provided a nice blurb from Wikipedia in the results.
So, although I think we can all agree that Bing was "horrible" in the past, it's come a long ways. It's not like in the old days when Google was clearly the best - I think you could use any of the major search engines now and do just fine.
Re:How Bing learns (Score:4, Interesting)
DuckDuckGo uses Bing, but it does some nice enhancements, like putting Wikipedia results first very often. If you want to live a Google-free life, and don't want to give your search history to MS either - ddg.gg [duckduckgo.com].
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Startpage is google, right? Sadly, it's blocked at work for me, but I don't even like to give traffic to google - who knows what they can figure out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, but DDG has !bangs [duckduckgo.com], so you can... duck?... for "!g foo" to get the Google results instead. I spent a few days acclimating to DDG and now use it for almost everything, falling back to Google for the 1% of the time when I don't get the results I expect. Also works for a few hundred other things, including the old green mare herself: "!/. foo" searches Slashdot.
Re: (Score:2)
I've never noticed the difference in search results. Maybe I just don't care. Or maybe Google's "search bubble", where they give you results based on creepily stalking your search history works out well for you and prevents you from seeing results you don't like.
I missed the calculator built into Google at first, but then I found that with ddg you can just do !wa for wolfram alpha, which is more comprehensive than Google calculator. "!wa speed of light in furlongs per fortnight" works as well as Google,
Re: (Score:2)
So, although I think we can all agree that Bing was "horrible" in the past, it's come a long ways.
I don't know man, every once in a while I use Bing to search for stuff, and it seems pretty generally bad. Maybe someone at Microsoft read that page and optimised those special cases.
Re: (Score:2)
[Tee-hee] - the idea of Microsoft paying attention to any form of user feedback really tickled me. :-)
Does Bing suck? (Score:3)
Did Bing suck. I did the Bing vs. Google head to head test about 18 month back a few times. (looks like it might still be online at: http://www.bingiton.com/ [bingiton.com] And I most typically scored 3-Google, 2-Bing with often Bing having some interesting results Google didn't have. For example Bing tends to do better in hitting a better diversity of current information. Bing may be a bit behind possibly and I'm not even comfortable saying that, but sucks no.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Too often when I put in very specific keywords that very relevant to a particular article Google doesn't show the most likely hit, it instead tries to suggest what Joe Six pack might want and that I actually made typos to the keywords or typed those keywords by mistake and ignores some of them.
Then when I turn on Verbatim on Google, it gives me a list of all the pages that contain those keywords in a useless order (which could include
Dammit! (Score:5, Funny)
"recommendations, sentiment analysis, fraud detection, fault prediction, and more."
I'll never get a job again if they use that in interviews.
Re: (Score:1)
*Must have 10 years experience in Azure Machine Learning.
Youpie I just wasted 5 years of my life.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
If you want my data just ask for it.
OK, let's start with this: is "ProzakLord" your real first name or your last? Either way, can you provide us with the other one?
Re: Youpie I just wasted 5 years of my life.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now, now... Don't be petty. I'm sure this will let all the BI "analysts" make the same mistakes they always do, but much more cheaply.
The flaw in your knowledge behind your well put, albeit sarcastic, commentary is the fact that most people don't care about quality and actively dislike information that rebuts their previously-held conclusions (like well-analyzed data is wont to do). As such, quality data analysis is greatly overvalued by folks who do it, while undervalued or misused by those who most need i
Re: (Score:2)
If you want my data just ask for it.
What data?
Correlation and causation again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Now at least we have a tool to tell them apart.
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
Re:Correlation and causation again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Correlation and causation again (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds like Reason [bbc.co.uk]..
Reason allows users to specify in advance the decision they want it to reach, and only then to input all the facts. The program's task was to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion. The only copy was sold to the US Government for an undisclosed fee.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To build any good model you want a dev set, a test set and a blind sets. Azure should split the data out by default.
no longer need to hire someone with a doctorate (Score:2)
Unless you actually want that someone to actually know what they are doing, e.g., to know that there's no one-size-fits-all "machine learning"...
Re: (Score:1)
If you think of machine learning as being a bit like calvinball, it works out.
Re: (Score:1)
Not really. Web "developers" don't have to understand TCP/IP to do their thing. I imagine this will be similar. There'll be a basic set of functionality that can be used by Mr Below Average coder to produce ok results.
Re: (Score:1)
Heh, shows what you know :) Mr. Below Average coder will get the Mr. Below Average Result. At least until the computing cost drops so far down that Mr. Below Average MBA will have no problem paying for the huge extra resources needed to blindly stumble through all the preset algorithms (with their corresponding parameter space optimizations) to achieve a still-suboptimal-but-not by-a-really-huge-margin Mr. Average Result. However, there are hard limits for these costs so it's possible the threshold needed f
Re: (Score:3)
More likely, there will be a basic set of functionality that can be used by Mr Below Average coder to generate a bunch of spurious correlations.
I don't think getting the machine learning to "work" is going to be the hard part, in the literal sense of the code running and generating stuff. But if you have no understanding of statistics, the conclusions you draw are likely to be invalid.
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Great things don't have to be secret weapons nobody else can have. Word processors and spreadsheets used to be great things before being given from granted. They fuelled the computer revolution in the 80s (with video games.) Many companies sold them, MS being the most successful in the long run. Same with machine learning frameworks. We'll see how it plays out.
Re: (Score:2)
Because Google, esp. with their investments in DeepMind, are investing in Machine Learning. Giving away what Google's been investing in is a great way to try to encourage lots of start ups to compete with Google's 20% projects.
These startups will be relying on Microsofts services, not Googles. Which has at least some benefit.
Besides, they have had a few huge machine learning projects (Dozens of PhDs... they've invested far far mor
Be careful Microsoft (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
it's bullshit. they're not "democratizing" anything, because selling a product and democracy are completely unrelated.
the word they should have used was "commercialise". or perhaps "commoditise". either of those are far more appropriate in that context, and actually make sense.
but they sound like grubby self-centred commercialism in comparison to something noble and uplifting like democratise.
First tier support staff? (Score:2)
.
A month or so ago, I had some issues with Microsoft's Bing bot not following the directions contained in my robots.txt file. When I sent an email in to the BingBot support address, the first reply I got back was that Microsoft considered my robots.txt instructions an "ideal" not something that has to be followed.
I pushed back and finally got someone who understand the purpose of robots.txt. That person told me to put a work-a
This AI machine (Score:2)
This AI machine first has to be able to throw a chair before it can take over Microsoft.
Oh dear, did someone say fault prediction? (Score:2)
HAL: I've just picked up a fault in the AE35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in 72 hours.
Pfft, check this out - Android 5.0 (Score:2)
I spent sometime at my storage area recently, going through old paper work and history. Not wanting to take anything with me I took photos of the papers of interest as normally do.
These were legal papers and stuff involving my sons mom when he was much younger. You know the normal break up, the family court, and false accusation, normal stuff.
Making sure that the photos were saved as they weren't the day before (and 4.2.2) -that night I was updated to (5.0 Lollipop) very nice OS. I had a hard time seeing th
no longer need to hire ... anyone, actually (Score:2)
PhD in machine learning or ...:
secretaries - because we can all do our own docs
car repair mechanics - because it's really just about replacing modules or the whole car
architects - because there's lots of free 3-D drawing apps out there
carpenters - because, hey, how hard is it to nail wood together
lawyers - because just a little reading and memorization will tell you what you need to know
engineers - because they're like carpenters, only with metal and bigger things
programmers - because anyone can learn 'hell