Maluuba Is Microsoft’s Latest Acquisition In The AI Field

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it has acquired Maluuba, a Canadian startup that shows great promise in the AI or artificial intelligence field.

Microsoft, the giant company, is just one of those that have turned to investing in AI. The social media platform Facebook is one contender. The Internet giant, Google, is another. These are just two amongst the many other players. Over the past 5 years, AI has marked some significant advances. Especially in the area of deep learning.

However, Microsoft’s latest acquisition might place them a step ahead. On Friday, the company announced that it acquired Maluuba.

This is a Canadian startup. It is based in Waterloo, Ontario and was founded in 2011. It is the achievement of two University of Waterloo undergraduates. Maluuba is specialized in deep learning acquired through natural language processing.

Deep learning has accounted for some significant advances. Microsoft announced the acquisition through an official blog post. In it, it also drew attention to some other facts. More exactly, its image recognition and speech milestones. They were both based on deep learning technique.

According to the post, Microsoft sees Maluuba’s tech as the next big thing. More exactly, it predicts that machine writing and reading is the next step in AI.

Maluuba is already quite ahead in the said area. Back in the spring of 2016, it revealed one of its achievements. It presented its AI system. This was able to both read and comprehend a text. Its respective skills were almost up to human capabilities.

Maluuba’s approach to deep learning is very human-like. They try to solve machine literacy problems through common actions. More exactly, by using a common sense reasoning. Communication and memory are also employed.

Their system should allow AI-powered devices to better understand questions. As such, they will also offer better answers. The questions can be based on any written document. Natural language processing should also account for natural conversations. This will be carried out with users.

Maluuba’s system outperformed similar technologies. Facebook and Google also presented such systems.

The startup’s technology is already being used. Its natural language understanding tech was adopted by various consumer electronic brands. As such, it can be found in more than 50 million devices. These target the IoT, smartphone, and smart TV areas.

Microsoft will also be making a new tie. Yoshua Bengio will join Microsoft’s AI division advisors. He is considered a specialist in deep learning. Bengio is also very known for his work in the artificial neural networks domain.

Maluuba’s system could come to be integrated to Cortana. This is Microsoft’s digital Assistant. As such, it could help users deal with everyday tasks. It would be able to analyze for and transmit vital information.

Microsoft also envisions a deeper applicability. This would target the company’s enterprise systems. As such, the Maluuba machine comprehension capabilities could have an even deeper scope.

It could offer answers to a directory inquiry. This would be offered in a company security-compliant way. The Maluuba tech would have a deeper understanding of company’s documents content.

It could be a higher version of the current technology. Nowadays, a search result is based on keyword matching. And this is reportedly just one of the various Maluuba applications. It could have many potential uses.

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