Next Big Windows Update Will Bring Hardware-Accelerated AI (zdnet.com) 87
Mary Jo Foley, writing for ZDNet: Every tech vendor these days is quick to slap the AI label on products and services. Up until today, I thought Microsoft had done an admirable job in refraining from doing this with Windows. But the shark has been jumped as of March 7, the company's latest Windows Developer Day. Cue the eye rolls. Microsoft is telling developers that the next release of Windows 10, which we are still calling by its codename, "Redstone 4," will enable developers to "use AI to deliver more powerful and engaging experiences." Microsoft execs say there's now an AI platform in Windows 10 that enables developers to use "pre-trained machine learning in their apps on Windows 10 devices."
more powerful and engaging experiences (Score:5, Insightful)
it's a clipnado (Score:2)
it's a clipnado
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pre-trained machine learning (Score:2)
Don't worry, "pre-trained machine learning" is probably a euphemism for if-statements, so it's unlikely that either will be necessary.
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C'mon. As much as I despise them, I'm sure there are script-kiddies who can code Keras or PyTorch at Microsoft.
https://www.kaggle.com/gaborfo... [kaggle.com]
https://github.com/Cadene/pret... [github.com]
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That's only half right. "Engaging" is the user spying. "Powerful" is the other half of the coin, improving Microsoft's ability to remotely control our computers.
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MS has documented the of data they collect from someone using their OS.
No, they documented some interfaces and data formats. If you look carefully at the documentation you'll see quite a bit of it is undefined key/value pairs that is never actually concretely specified.
You can configure the OS to not send information to MS.
No you can't. Microsoft's own documentation makes this very clear. You cannot turn it off. You can limit what is transmitted but you can't stop it at least not with the levers and knobs provided by Microsoft assuming those levers and knobs don't mysteriously reset themselves every time a forced update is ins
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Microsoft Windows 10 and AI (Score:2)
just my 2 cents
Marketing noise (Score:2)
It's a marketing ploy. AI is being mentioned in the news a lot lately, so Microsoft has to look like they're on board. That's all this is. I'm surprised they didn't say "blockchain" in there somewhere as well.
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Clippy on steroids (Score:3)
MS Bob is now pumped up and will shove animated AI paperclips up your @ss if you do anything he doesn't like. I, for one, welcome our new Skynet overlords..
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Yeah will it seems, a playstation or steambox for gaming and a Linux box for coms and cursing M$ to hell for anything else, not that I believe but the 9th level with the betrayers would be suitable for them.
Hardware acceleration? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft execs say there's now an AI platform in Windows 10 that enables developers to use "pre-trained machine learning in their apps on Windows 10 devices."
That's not hardware acceleration, because you need, ya know, specialized hardware for that which you can't send via a software update. In fact, the word "hardware" isn't even in the linked article, so where did this silly headline even come from?
Re:Hardware acceleration? (Score:4, Informative)
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AI specifically needs a general purpose CPU, so this is just AI running on a computer
No this uses Nvidia Titan xp's dedicated neural net chip and Qualcom 835's dedicated neural net chip.
It also will run on a general purpose GPU or CPU as a fallback.
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One of the advantages to this approach is reducing the bottleneck of moving large amounts of data from the matrix math oriented machine learning system to a conventional procedural CPU.
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The anti microsoft bullshit here at slashdot is very tired. what a lazy writeup this is about a real technology. poopooing machine learning as though its nothing when its most definitely not. lame journalism.
Don't you know the best and the brightest are only on /.? More than every academic and corporate research center in the world combined. If someone in a /. comment or summary poo-poo's AI, then that's the final word.
This is a good idea, not "eye rolling" (Score:2)
I can't believe the seemingly low understanding of modern AI and neural networks that seems to linger on Slashdot...
It's a good idea to provide frameworks that help the system use GPU or other dedicated hardware to work with pre-existing neural networks. It means practical use of local pre-defined networks for things like image or speech recognition - or did you seriously all WANT all of that traffic going to a server for processing?
Apple just introduced this last year themselves, they call it CoreML.
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I don't necessarily want it baked into the OS either but a bunch of incompatible and expensive third party systems isn't an improvement. The best of all worlds would be a standard cross-platform open source toolkit.
Re: This is a good idea, not "eye rolling" (Score:2)
Um...TensorFlow? Neural Compute stick?
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Thank you for making my point by mentioning two competitors.
Re: This is a good idea, not "eye rolling" (Score:2)
The neural compute stick (I have one) can run tensor flow models. What's your point?
Caling it... (Score:2)
... Artificial Stupidity would not carry such a marketing zing, would it?
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we've had artificial stupidity for decades. Very fast, too :)
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Natural born and bred stupidity is best. It can even win trade wars!
"Hardware-Accelerated AI "? (Score:3)
Er... so that would be a computer, then?
Sounds reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)
Per the article, they will let developers train their AI in Azure and then import directly into applications. Training a neural network is exactly the kind of limited-duration, CPU-heavy activity that the cloud is designed for. Borrow a thousand CPUs to knock it out in short order and get on with your work.
And imagine if you wanted to train an algorithm with different inputs to see which method yields the best results in your application. You can burn through the training process in parallel in the cloud quickly, and then start building packages for testing immediately. You can iterate faster to fine tune things once you've picked the best baseline training. Without paying for an expensive AI "render farm" up front. The idea is promising, although the devil is always in the details.
And, obviously, any decent hardware-level support for AI would be great. The article only refers to the Azure integration though, so it appears the Slashdot headline is misleading.
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GPUs can be virtualized as well. Plus, all of the big players are customizing hardware to accelerate their cloud workloads. That includes Microsoft, Google, and Facebook for sure, and probably Amazon as well---though Amazon has never said anything publicly.
If Microsoft wants to do NN training, they could easily add GPUs, custom ASICs, or FPGAs to support those loads. They have done ASICs and FPGAs before, so I'd be shocked if they aren't already gearing up for AI workloads. Since they control the entire sta
Jumping sharks? (Score:2)
So 90s. I thought we stopped Jumping Sharks when we started Nuking Fridges.
Not spying, Trying to (Score:2)
Sell crap!
Re: Not spying, Trying to (Score:1)
Windows - pah! (Score:2)
Just checked out two Windows laptops, running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. On each, I checked Windows Update and found the usual uninstalled stack of Optional Updates waiting to be downloaded. On each machine, I dutifully checked all the installation boxes and clicked Download and Install. Both machines cranked away for a half hour and then crapped out with "Cannot find updates. Try again later?"
Before Microsoft puts anything resembling AI into Windows, could it deign to release a version of the OS that doesn
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Yes this. I have been supporting Windows machines for friends, family, and clients for years.
I can't recommend Microsoft any more. They were never terrific, although Windows 7 was a high point. But now they've gone full tilt into this remote-controlled walled garden kind of thing.
Want to guess how an app could use AI? Such as noticing your activity and recommending various products and services? Or, worse, reconfiguring things for you?
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Let me guess... instead of waiting for a Windows update to rearrange all the systems settings UI, this "A.I." feature will dynamically rearrange things for you on the fly.
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Predictive analytics to move the update now button under your mouse at the most unexpected time
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"It looks like you're trying to find a shortcut on your desktop. Would you like help?"
-Clippy
It's a trap! (Score:2)
There, fixed it for you:
"Redstone 4," will enable developers to "use AI to deliver more powerful and annoying experiences."