Microsoft Research Podcast

Powerful large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a phase change for artificial intelligence—and a signal of accelerating progress to come. In this Microsoft Research Podcast series, AI scientist and engineer Ashley Llorens hosts conversations with his collaborators and colleagues about what these models—and the models that will come next—mean for our approach to creating, understanding, and deploying AI, its applications in areas such as healthcare and education, and its potential to benefit humanity.This episode features Sriram Rajamani, Distinguished Scientist and Managing Director of Microsoft Research India. Rajamani talks about how the lab’s work is being influenced by today’s rapidly advancing AI. One example? The development of a conversational agent in India capable of providing information about governmental agricultural programs in farmers’ natural language, particularly significant in a country with more than 30 languages, including 22 government-recognized languages. It’s an application Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described as the “mic drop moment” of his trip to the lab early this year.Learn moreAI4Bhārat | Organization homepageMEGA: Multilingual Evaluation of Generative AI | Publication, May 2023AI and Microsoft Research | Learn more about the breadth of AI research at Microsoft

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across disciplines and institutions. Collaborators, a new Microsoft Research Podcast series, explores the relationships—both expected and unexpected—behind the projects, products, and services being pursued and delivered by researchers at Microsoft and the diverse range of people they’re teaming up with.In this episode, Dr. Gretchen Huizinga talks with Microsoft Health Futures Senior Director Javier Alvarez and Dr. Raj Jena, a radiation oncologist at Addenbrooke’s hospital, part of Cambridge University Hospitals in the United Kingdom, about Project InnerEye, a Microsoft Research effort that applies machine learning to medical image analysis. The pair shares how a 10-plus-year collaborative journey—and a combination of research and good software engineering—has resulted in the hospital’s creation of an AI system that is helping to decrease the time cancer patients have to wait to begin treatment. Alvarez and Jena chart the path of their collaboration in AI-assisted medical imaging, from Microsoft Research’s initiation of Project InnerEye and its decision to make the resulting research tools available in open source to Addenbrooke’s subsequent testing and validation of these tools to meet the regulatory requirements for use in a clinical setting. They also discuss supporting clinician productivity—and ultimately patient outcomes—and the important role patients play in incorporating AI into healthcare.Learn more:Project InnerEye | Project pageHow AI is helping to shrink waiting times for NHS cancer patients | Microsoft News Centre UK blog post, June 2023Accounting for past imaging studies: Enhancing radiology AI and reporting | Microsoft Research blog, June 2023Microsoft Health Futures | Lab pageBiomedical Imaging | Research group pageEvaluation of Deep Learning to Augment Image Guided Radiotherapy for Head and Neck and Prostate Cancers | JAMA publication, November 2020

Dr. Jina Suh and Dr. Shamsi Iqbal discuss their collaboration on developing data-driven tools for decision-making. They explore the integration of humans and data, the pressure on leaders to make the right decisions, and responsible use of data in the workplace.

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across disciplines and institutions. Collaborators, a new Microsoft Research Podcast series, explores the relationships—both expected and unexpected—behind the projects, products, and services being pursued and delivered by researchers at Microsoft and the diverse range of people they’re teaming up with.In the world of gaming, Haiyan Zhang has situated herself where research meets real-world challenges, helping to bring product teams and researchers together to elevate the player experience with the latest AI advances even before the job became official with the creation of her current role, General Manager of Gaming AI. In this episode, she talks with host Dr. Gretchen Huizinga about the variety of expertise needed to avoid the discomfort experienced by players when they encounter a humanlike character displaying inhuman behavior, the potential for generative AI to make gaming better for both players and creators, and the games she grew up playing and what she plays now.Learn more:Game Intelligence | Group pageProject Paidia | Project pageTrueSkill™ Ranking System | Project pageTrueMatch Matchmaking System | Project pageGrounded Conversational Characters | Project page

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across disciplines and institutions. Collaborators, a new Microsoft Research Podcast series, explores the relationships—both expected and unexpected—behind the projects, products, and services being pursued and delivered by researchers at Microsoft and the diverse range of people they’re teaming up with.In this episode, host Dr. Gretchen Huizinga welcomes Dr. Spencer Fowers, a member of the Special Projects Technical Staff at Microsoft Research, and Dr. Kwame Darko, a plastic surgeon in the reconstructive plastic surgery and burns center in Ghana’s Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. The two are among a group working to make specialized medical care more widely available, especially to those in remote or underserved communities. They share how their 3D telecommunication technology helps bring patients and doctors together when being in the same room isn’t an easy option and how the experience is supporting greater patient satisfaction, allowing more time for surgeons to prepare for surgery, and making the assembly of a super team of medical experts from around the globe more feasible.Learn more:3D telemedicine brings better care to underserved and rural communities, even across continents | Microsoft Research Blog, May 2023Microsoft’s Holoportation Communications Technology: Facilitating 3D Telemedicine | Microsoft Research video, May 2023Participatory Development of a 3D Telemedicine system during Covid: the future of remote consultations | Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery, October 20223D Telemedicine | Project pageHoloportation | Project pageKorle Bu Teaching Hospital

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across disciplines and institutions. Collaborators, a new Microsoft Research Podcast series, explores the relationships—both expected and unexpected—behind the projects, products, and services being pursued and delivered by researchers at Microsoft and the diverse range of people they’re teaming up with.In this episode, Microsoft Principal Researcher Dr. Bichlien Nguyen and Dr. David Kwabi, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan, join host Dr. Gretchen Huizinga to talk about how their respective research interests—and those of their larger teams—are converging to develop renewable energy storage systems. They specifically explore their work in flow batteries and how machine learning can help more effectively search the vast organic chemistry space to identify compounds with properties just right for storing waterpower and other renewables for a not rainy day. The bonus? These new compounds may just help advance carbon capture, too.Learn moreMicrosoft Climate Research InitiativeProject ZerixProject CarbonixKwabi Lab, University of MichiganUnderstanding capacity fade in organic redox-flow batteries by combining spectroscopy with statistical inference techniques

Powerful new large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a phase change for artificial intelligence—and a signal of accelerating progress to come.In this Microsoft Research Podcast series, AI scientist and engineer Ashley Llorens hosts conversations with his collaborators and colleagues about what these new models—and the models that will come next—mean for our approach to creating, understanding, and deploying AI, its applications in areas such as health care and education, and its potential to benefit humanity.This episode features Senior Principal Researcher Emre Kiciman and Principal Researcher Amit Sharma, whose paper “Causal Reasoning and Large Language Models: Opening a New Frontier for Causality” examines the causal capabilities of large language models (LLMs) and their implications. Kiciman and Sharma break down the study of cause and effect; recount their respective ongoing journeys with GPT-3.5 and GPT-4—from their preconceptions to where they are now—and share their views of a future in which LLMs help bring together different modes of reasoning in the practice of causal inference and make causal methods easier to adopt.Learn moreCausal Reasoning and Large Language Models: Opening a New Frontier for Causality | Publication, April 2023The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond | Book by Peter Lee, April 2023AI and Microsoft Research | Learn more about the breadth of AI research at Microsoft

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across disciplines and institutions. Collaborators, a new Microsoft Research podcast series, explores the relationships—both expected and unexpected—behind the projects, products, and services being pursued and delivered by researchers at Microsoft and the diverse range of people they're teaming up with. In this inaugural episode, host Dr. Gretchen Huizinga talks with GitHub Staff Product Manager Kasia Sitkiewicz and Protocol Labs Research Scientist Petar Maymounkov about how their collaboration on Gov4git, a governance tool for decentralized, open-source cooperation, is helping to lay the foundation for a future in which everyone can collaborate more efficiently, transparently, and easily and in the ways that meet the unique desires and needs of their respective communities. They discuss the governance features that make Gov4git more suitable for serving a broader range of communities than today’s public blockchains and the open-source book project allowing them to test the potential and limitations of the work.https://www.microsoft.com/research

Powerful new large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a phase change for artificial intelligence—and a signal of accelerating progress to come.In this Microsoft Research Podcast series, AI scientist and engineer Ashley Llorens hosts conversations with his collaborators and colleagues about what these new models—and the models that will come next—mean for our approach to creating, understanding, and deploying AI, its applications in areas such as health care and education, and its potential to benefit humanity.The third episode features Ece Kamar, deputy lab director at Microsoft Research Redmond. Kamar draws on decades of experience in AI research and an opportunity she and Microsoft colleagues had to evaluate and experiment with GPT-4 prior to its release in discussing the capabilities and limitations of today’s large-scale models. She explores the short-term mitigation techniques she and her team are using to make these models viable components of the AI systems that give them purpose and shares the long-term research questions that will help maximize their value. https://www.microsoft.com/research

Powerful new large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a phase change for artificial intelligence—and a signal of accelerating progress to come.In this new Microsoft Research Podcast series, AI scientist and engineer Ashley Llorens hosts conversations with his collaborators and colleagues about what these new models—and the models that will come next—mean for our approach to creating, understanding, and deploying AI, its applications in areas such as health care and education, and its potential to benefit humanity.The second episode features Peter Lee, head of Microsoft Research. Lee was among a group within Microsoft to have early access to GPT-4 for evaluation and experimentation. Here, he applies his philosophy of tackling research from what will be inevitably true at a future point in time to this current moment. He also explores the differences that may make integrating today’s AI advancements into health care more attainable, a topic he expands on in the soon-to-be-released book The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond and the New England Journal of Medicine article "Benefits, Limits, and Risks of GPT-4 as an AI Chatbot for Medicine."https://www.microsoft.com/research