Microsoft creates Microsoft Research AI (MSR AI).
The lab that is based at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, involves a team of more than 100 scientists from across various sub-fields of artificial intelligence research, including perception, learning, cognitive psychology, reasoning and natural language processing.
According to Eric Horvitz, the director of Microsoft Research Labs, the aim is to combine these disciplines to work toward creating a more general artificial intelligence.
With MSR AI, Microsoft is trying to develop a general-purpose AI that can address problems in a range of different areas, rather than focusing on a single specific task.
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With the MSR AI lab, Microsoft is entering the race to develop more general learning systems, competing with Google's London-based DeepMind and San Francisco-based Google Brain, both divisions of Alphabet Inc., as well as OpenAI, GoodAI and others.