Global Governance: Goals and Lessons for AI

As AI policy conversations expanded last year, they started to be punctuated by repeated references to unexpected abbreviations. Not the usual short names for new AI models or machine learning jargon, but acronyms for the different international institutions that today govern civil aviation, nuclear power, and global capital flows.

This piqued our curiosity. We wanted to go deeper and learn more about how approaches to governing civil aviation might apply to a set of technologies that would never be assembled in a hangar or guided by air traffic control officers. And we were eager to learn about nuclear commitments that emerged in an entirely different geopolitical era to regulate technology that showed promise as a tool but had only been used as a weapon read more…

Our 2024 Environmental Sustainability Report

Accelerating innovation and partnership for people and the planet

Four years ago, Microsoft committed that, by 2030, we would become carbon-negative, water-positive, zero waste, and protect more land than we use. Since that announcement, we have seen major changes in the technology sector and our understanding of what it will take to meet our climate goals. New technologies, including generative AI, hold promise for new innovations that can help address the climate crisis. At the same time, the infrastructure and electricity needed for these technologies create new challenges for meeting sustainability commitments across the tech sector. As we take stock as a company in 2024, we remain resolute in our commitment to meet our climate goals and to empower others with the technology needed to build a more sustainable future read more…

Introducing GPT-4o: OpenAI’s new flagship multimodal model is now in preview on Azure

A step forward in generative AI for Azure OpenAI Service

GPT-4o offers a shift in how AI models interact with multimodal inputs. By seamlessly combining text, images, and audio, GPT-4o provides a richer, more engaging user experience.

Launch highlights: Immediate access and what you can expect

Azure OpenAI Service customers can explore GPT-4o’s extensive capabilities through a preview playground in Azure OpenAI Studio starting today in two regions in the US. This initial release focuses on text and vision inputs to provide a glimpse into the model’s potential, paving the way for further capabilities like audio and video read more…

Roadmap to empowering your workforce with AI: How Moody’s copilot ignited AI innovation

It’s time to turn the hype about AI at your company into real outcomes. While many companies spent the past year talking about AI, a team of innovators at Moody’s, a leading risk assessment firm, developed and quickly launched their custom enterprise copilot to thousands of employees. The approach drove productivity and innovation across the company and led to a series of AI product launches throughout the year read more..

Cassidy founder Justin Fineberg champions AI accessibility

AI at the intersection of creativity and technology

Originally, Fineberg considered a career in film.

“I kind of saw myself as a filmmaker when I was younger: building a great product is in many ways about telling a great story. And that kind of ties back to my background in film.” Justin Fineberg, CEO/Founder, Cassidy

In 2022, Fineberg decided to leave his job as a product manager at Blade to team up with his long-time collaborator and engineer, Ian Woodfill. Woodfill’s understanding of the no-code space and Fineberg’s passion for accessible AI solutions led them to start Cassidy, which provides easy ways to build custom generative AI for business organizations read more…

Top Benefits and Features of Microsoft Copilot

In the tech space, 2023 is the year of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google developed AI tools and products. After witnessing the meteoric growth of ChatGPT (by OpenAI) and its various offshoots, tech giants have started developing AI-powered solutions for their services.

In 2023, we have seen the implementation of AI tools across numerous fields. Meta incorporated AI into Facebook Messenger, Google introduced its Bard AI, NVIDIA started leveraging AI for developing cutting-edge GPUs, and several other tech companies also utilized artificial intelligence to enhance the user experience (UX) and make different solutions more user-friendly.

Microsoft’s Copilot is another AI-powered tool that offers numerous benefits to professionals & companies using it. Microsoft works closely with OpenAI to improve the AI tools used on different verticals. Numerous professionals globally with varying work roles, such as data analysts, transcription specialists, programmers, content engineers, Human Resources (HR) specialists, etc., work closely with AI tools like Copilot for work efficiency.

This article is a quick walkthrough of the top benefits and features of Microsoft Copilot.

What is Microsoft Copilot?

Microsoft Copilot, a unique AI-powered chatbot and AI service tool, was developed by Microsoft and launched on February 7, 2023. It stands out with its large language model (LLM) and machine learning (ML) techniques that enable it to cite sources, write songs, create poems, assist in coding, and more. It’s a boon for Microsoft 365 products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams) users, offering automation features that significantly boost work productivity. Its Natural Language Processing capabilities ensure precise understanding of user queries. Copilot is the next generation of client-side AI tools, following in the footsteps of Clippy and Cortana.

Various Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like the popular Visual Studio Code support Copilot as a plugin to deliver context-aware code suggestions, efficient coding suggestions, autocomplete functionality, & deliver code based on natural language prompts from programmers. Today, we can see Copilot in the Microsoft operating system and Microsoft search engine called Bing. Professionals who want to become software developers or are on the journey to becoming software engineers must know how to integrate Copilot in their IDEs & how to leverage them through prompt engineering.

Features of Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is a game-changer for work-related productivity. It’s particularly effective in minimizing repetitive tasks such as drafting monotonous emails, summarizing documents, setting daily reminders, and writing repetitive or similar code modules. Let’s delve into some of the key features of Microsoft Copilot.

1. Intelligent documentation: With Microsoft Copilot, users can generate state-of-the-art documentation, comments, and summaries for products that are otherwise difficult to read and understand. It saves time and increases work productivity.

2. Language support: For software developers and programmers, Copilot is a blessing in disguise. It supports numerous programming languages, such as Python, Typescript, JavaScript, Java, C, C++, etc. Copilot also allows any form of code conversion for better understanding. Due to its versatile understanding of programming contexts, software engineers can use it in multiple development projects.

3. Code autocompletion: The AI-powered Copilot also comes with intelligent suggestions for coders. Blending with various Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) as a plugin, Copilot can analyze the code snippet & provide code-related indications to increase coding speed.

4. Increase data analytics and reporting abilities: Integrating Copilot with Excel offers highly automated data analysis for complex datasets. Hence, it becomes easier for users to manage and deal with large datasets and extract meaningful insights. It also increases accuracy over less time.

5. Improves collaboration and communication: While working with Outlook, Microsoft Copilot helps manage communications over emails efficiently. Copilot’s AI assistance understands and addresses essential messages promptly and accurately. It also helps facilitate virtual meetings in Teams and Loop for effective collaboration, leading to a better project outcome.

6. Legal document drafting: Many firms find it difficult and complicated to draft legal documents quickly while preserving accuracy. By enabling Microsoft Copilot in MS. Word or its chatbot service, lawyers and advocates can draft complex legal documents more efficiently. Through NLP, Copilot can understand the context of the laws and draw effective suggestions for lawyers.

Benefits of Microsoft Copilot to the Company

Businesses and professionals who leverage Microsoft Copilot can extract a wide range of benefits. It can significantly transform work productivity from traditional development techniques to AI-assisted techniques. Here are some notable benefits of Microsoft Copilot.

Increases productivity:

By harnessing the power of Microsoft Copilot, employees can significantly accelerate their work productivity. Whether it’s creating a PowerPoint presentation, writing a software code snippet, or preparing the project documentation, Copilot is there to assist. For coding, it offers context-aware code suggestions and an autocomplete feature that can boost overall software development productivity.

Enhance work accuracy:

With the help of Microsoft Copilot, developers, content engineers, lawyers, and other professionals can generate content that delivers high accuracy. Programmers can receive precise & correct suggestions for code modules by Copilot’s code generation techniques. Such a feature reduces human error and boosts the overall delivery speed of any task across any organization.

· Enhance code quality:

With Copilot, programmers can write error-free & efficient code. Copilot helps developers stick to the coding standards and enforce coding best practices. Its auto-suggestion features also help developers write highly readable, clean, and maintainable code. With clean & easily maintainable code, companies can upgrade it or generate patch modules seamlessly.

· Identify & fix errors:

One of the standout features of Copilot is its ability to identify and handle errors in documentation and code snippets. It can analyze grammatical errors, programming syntax, coding logic, and common human errors, making it an intelligent and versatile tool for software development and documentation. This feature instills confidence in professionals, knowing that Copilot has their back when it comes to error detection and correction.

Reduce Time-to-Market:

Another benefit businesses can get from Microsoft Copilot is the rapid prototyping and development of software products. With AI-powered assistance, developers can build error-free prototypes quickly and help deploy a working model for the stakeholders. Quick development reduces the overall time to market a product, which increases a business’s return on investment.

Conclusion

This article clearly outlined the potential of Microsoft Copilot in day-to-day work for different employees. If you are a working professional who wants to escalate your career by leveraging AI-powered solutions for assistance in software development, content marketing, quick documentation, data analytics work, etc., it is high time. Professionals can upskill by learning how to use an AI tool like Copilot.

Microsoft and LinkedIn release the 2024 Work Trend Index on the state of AI at work

One year ago, generative AI burst onto the scene and for the first time since the smartphone, people began to change the way they interact with technology. People are bringing AI to work at an unexpected scale — and now the big question is, how’s it going?

As AI becomes ubiquitous in the workplace, employees and businesses alike are under extreme pressure. The pace and intensity of work, which accelerated during the pandemic, has not eased, so employees are bringing their own AI to work. Leaders agree AI is a business imperative — and feel the pressure to show immediate ROI — but many lack a plan and vision to go from individual impact to applying AI to drive the bottom line.

At the same time, the labor market is set to shift and there’s a new AI economy. While some professionals worry AI will replace their job, the data tells a more nuanced story — of a hidden talent shortage, more employees eyeing a career change, and a massive opportunity for those willing to skill up read more…

Leading in the era of AI: How Microsoft’s platform differentiation and Copilot empowerment are driving AI Transformation

A Copilot on every desk, every device and across every role is core to Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. By bolstering the services customers know and love with our Copilot capabilities across the Microsoft Cloud, we are enabling zero-shot innovation — the ability to effectively gain value out of the box — for their businesses to increase productivity, creativity, and inclusive collaboration. ISVs, digital natives, startups, and the rest of our partner ecosystem are leveraging our Copilot stack to build AI solutions that are reshaping business processes across industries. We continue co-innovating directly with customers on our open cloud platform to bend the curve on innovation by identifying AI design patterns; then integrating and applying data to solve their most pressing challenges faster and more efficiently than ever before. Underpinning it all is the need for a strong cybersecurity foundation and the work we are doing to ensure this critical imperative is met. No one is immune from bad actors, and we remain committed to transparency and trust in our approach to protecting customer and partner data. By empowering organizations with industry-leading cloud and responsible AI solutions, paired with our focus on security, we are helping them unlock opportunities that deliver pragmatic business outcomes. I am proud of the work we have done this past quarter that exemplifies our approach to enabling AI Transformation, and the success of our customers and partners across industries who have embraced it read more…

4 strategies to accelerate AI Value Creation: Advice for chief AI Officers

What can we learn from organizations that consistently see significant, measurable value from AI?

While multiple elements play a part in AI success, the most powerful factor—by far—is that leadership consistently communicates a clear vision and commitment to AI. In fact, according to The AI Strategy Roadmap, 100% of organizations at the most advanced stage of AI readiness report strong vision and commitment from senior leaders, compared to 1% of organizations at the earliest stage.

To learn more about his role and the emerging best practices for AI leadership, I sat down with Florin Rotar, Chief AI Officer (CAIO) at Avanade. Rotar is the company’s first-ever CAIO and has been tasked with leading the company to deliver sustainable AI value for clients and Avanade itself. We discussed a range of topics, including reading more…

Leading in the era of AI: How Microsoft’s platform differentiation and Copilot empowerment are driving AI Transformation

A Copilot on every desk, every device and across every role is core to Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. By bolstering the services customers know and love with our Copilot capabilities across the Microsoft Cloud, we are enabling zero-shot innovation — the ability to effectively gain value out of the box — for their businesses to increase productivity, creativity and inclusive collaboration. ISVs, digital natives, startups and the rest of our partner ecosystem are leveraging our Copilot stack to build AI solutions that are reshaping business processes across industries read more…