On the evening of May 7th, Beijing time, the Microsoft Build 2018 developer conference was held at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes that by 2020, there will be more than 20 billion smart devices in the world, each person will generate 1.5GB of data every day, and the data generated by each smart home will be as high as 50GB. "The world is a supercomputer." Under this premise, AI and cloud computing are still Microsoft's most important topics.
In the opening speech, Nadella first emphasized three issues that Microsoft is concerned about - privacy, responsibility and AI ethics, "We must ask ourselves not only to care about what computers can do, but also what they should do." Considering the recent data privacy turmoil in Silicon Valley, this opening is also quite intriguing.
AI and Azure came out first as the first part of the main body of the speech.
At the Build developer conference at the same time last year, Nadella announced that Microsoft's strategy has changed from "mobile first, cloud first" proposed in 2014 to "Intelligent Cloud & Intelligent Edge" (Intelligent Cloud & Intelligent Edge) . A year later, Microsoft has continued this strategy, announcing a series of developer service developments including AI, cloud computing, data, sensors and devices.
Chinese companies have also occupied a considerable position at the Microsoft Build conference.
DJI appeared in the first Demo session and announced a strategic cooperation with Microsoft. DJI released a software development kit (SDK) for Windows and announced the selection of the Microsoft Azure intelligent cloud platform as its preferred cloud computing partner. Based on this cooperation, developers will be able to remotely control DJI drones by developing native Windows applications to achieve functions such as autonomous flight and real-time data streaming. The SDK also allows Windows developers to integrate and control payloads and mechanical components from third parties, such as multispectral sensors and custom motion devices.
Live Demo of DJI
In the on-site Demo session, the staff from DJI demonstrated how to use a drone, through SDK and Azure services, to identify the damaged part of a pile of pipes on the ground and transmit the picture and judgment to the display terminal in real time.
The damaged part identified by the drone
In addition, Xiaomi, Huawei, and a Chinese artificial intelligence solution platform company called Roboo all appeared in Nadella's speech. In the part of speech semantic recognition, Xiaomi and Huawei's devices are used as physical products to demonstrate the real-time translation technology of Azure AI.
Huawei in Keynote
Kinect also returned at Build 2018, and was remodeled to be more suitable for the development of Microsoft AI and Azure. The new sensor kit is smaller and more powerful, and the name has also been upgraded to Project Kinect for Azure.
In the Microsoft 365 session, Microsoft proposed a design philosophy from device-centric to people-centric. According to data provided by Microsoft, Office 365 has more than 135 million commercial monthly active users and nearly 700 million connected Windows 10 devices.
Amazon's presence in this segment has become a notable event. Last August, Microsoft and Amazon announced the integration of two voice assistant products Cortana and Alexa, Alexa users can use Cortana on their devices, and Cortana users can also summon Alexa.
Cortana takes the stage with Alexa
Under the premise of such cooperation, Tom Taylor, Amazon's senior vice president in charge of Alexa, was also able to appear at this year's Build conference to exchange messages with the head of Microsoft's Cortana through two voice assistants, determine itineraries and call Uber. This is also the first time Amazon has appeared at the Microsoft Developer Conference.
Another interesting scenario demonstration took place in the meeting room built by Microsoft on site.
Conference System Demo
A 360-degree camera and microphone array can accurately identify all participants, not only that, but also record and translate what everyone is saying in real time, and help you extract the key points - those that need to be the next step. Once someone said he would "follow up", it was automatically recorded by Microsoft's meeting system.
Improving work efficiency is the key point that Microsoft tries to emphasize in this link. From this perspective, "meeting" is undoubtedly the most suitable scene.
值得一提的是，在纳德拉演讲的最后，微软宣布推出“人工智能无障碍计划（AI for Accessibility）”，称其将在未来五年内投入 2500 万美元，用于研发能够增强人类能力的人工智能技术，以服务全球各地超过 10 亿残障人士。
今年 3 月，微软进行了重大重组，新设“体验与设备”部门与“AI 与云计算”部门。而在刚刚发生的 Build 大会上，即使是在 Microsoft 365 的产品演示环节，“AI”与“Azure”也作为基础能力频繁出现在演讲者的口中。过去三年，微软凭借云业务成功转型，在最新发布的财报中，其云业务已贡献了近1/3 的营收，该业务部门的增速已经连续十一个季度实现 90% 以上的同比增长。
在这一次的 Build 大会上，微软没有发布消费级的硬件产品。看起来，这家公司将仍然在云与 AI 的道路上明确走下去。