A big week in Data Science and AI– BOTS, Functions, GPU

This week Harry Shum announced a partnership with OpenAI focused on making significant contributions to advance the field of AI, while also furthering our mutual goal of using AI to tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems,”

Microsoft’s Harry Shum the Executive Vice President, Technology & Research at Microsoft. says.

“We’re also excited that OpenAI chose Microsoft Azure as their primary cloud platform.”

OpenAI’s use of Azure will help OpenAI advance their research and create new tools and technologies that are only possible with the cloud

We Also announced some major updates to the following services

Azure Bot Service. Available now in preview, the Azure Bot Service helps developers accelerate the development of bots using the Microsoft Bot Framework and then deploy and management them in a serverless environment on Azure. Microsoft has over 50,000 developers already creating bots with the Microsoft Bot Framework for companies as diverse as Skyscanner to Uber. https://docs.botframework.com/en-us/whatsnew/#navtitle

Azure Functions. Now generally available, Azure Functions can maximize development agility and operational efficiency for nearly any app or service. and do so at lower costs. Azure Bot Service also runs on Azure Functions, which allows the bots to scale on-demand,  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/functions/

Azure N-series virtual machines. Coming in December 1st 2016, the Azure N-series VMs are designed for the most intensive compute workloads, including deep learning, simulations, rendering and the training of neural networks. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-n-series-general-availability-on-december-1/

“Azure has impressed us by building hardware configurations optimized for deep learning,” the OpenAI explains. “They offer K80 GPUs with InfiniBand interconnects at scale. We’re also excited by their roadmap, which should soon bring Pascal GPUs onto their cloud.”