Maluuba for Microsoft

Microsoft has acquired Maluuba, a Montreal-based startup that uses natural language processing and machine learning to achieve Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). By acquiring it, Microsoft has proven its commitment to AI, hoping to create machines that can perform tasks at least as good as humans.

Maluuba reinforces machine learning and deep learning to train computer-based systems to perform general tasks. The focus is to improve machines in understanding what it sees or hear.

As Microsoft describes it:

"Imagine a future where, instead of frantically searching through your organization’s directory, documents or emails to find the top tax-law experts in your company, for example, you could communicate with an AI agent that would leverage Maluuba's machine comprehension capabilities to immediately respond to your request. The agent would be able to answer your question in a company security-compliant manner by having a deeper understanding of the contents of your organization’s documents and emails, instead of simply retrieving a document by keyword matching, which happens today. This is just one of hundreds of scenarios we could imagine as Maluuba pushes the state-of-the-art technology of machine literacy."
Maluuba logo

Early versions of the Maluuba's products were on display at the company's launch on 2012. The prototypes were able to move between tasks and domains. For example, they were able to shift between domains like Yelp, Google Calendar, Rotten Tomatoes, Facebook Twitter, and Wikipedia, without much problems. This is a feat that is difficult for most AI.

With the acquisition, Maluuba co-founders Sam Pasupalak and Kaheer Suleman will join Microsoft's team. Yoshua Bengio, one of the experts in deep learning and head of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms and also an advisor to Maluuba, will also be advising Microsoft and interacting directly with Harry Shum, the Executive Vice President for Microsoft's Artificial Intelligence and Research Group.