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Microsoft's secret weapons to get back to the top of the tech mountain: machine learning and artificial intelligence, some of the company's top R&D brains said Monday.
微軟(Microsoft)的一些高層研發人員周一表示，微軟擁有一些能讓該公司重返科技高峰頂端的秘密武器：機器學習和人工智能。
Harry Shum, head of technology and research at Microsoft, said the big trends that his team is working on involves how a person interacts with a computer. 'We are now moving from the personal computer to personal computing,' he said at Microsoft's Think Next 2014 conference in Tel Aviv.
微軟技術和研究負責人Harry Shum稱，他的團隊正在研發的一些大趨勢涉及人與電腦如何互動。他在微軟于特拉維夫舉行的
Think Next 2014會議上表示，目前微軟正從個人電腦向個人運算轉變。
Microsoft is investing heavily in 'invisible user interface' technology, said Yoram Yaakobi, who heads up Microsoft's research and development center in Israel. Yaakobi said people in the future won't need to touch, type or speak to their devices -- the devices will 'know' what we want them to do before we ask. He called it 'UI.Next.'
微軟以色列研發中心負責人Yoram Yaakobi稱，微軟對“無形用戶界面”技術進行了巨大投資。Yaakobi表示，未來人們將無需通過觸碰、打字或是說話的方式運行自己的設備，設備在用戶發出請求之前就“知道”用戶想讓它們干什么。他把這種技術稱為“UI.Next”。
'User interface started with the command prompt, moved to graphics, then touch, and then gestures,' Yaakobi said. 'It's now moving to invisible UI, where there is nothing to operate. The tech around you understands you and what you want to do' -- and that's what people expect, he said. 'We're putting this at the forefront of our efforts.'
Yaakobi稱，用戶界面一開始是命令提示符，后來變成圖形界面，然后是觸摸界面，在接下來是手勢界面，現在開始向無形用戶界面轉變了，在這種界面下用戶將沒有什么可以操作。周圍的技術會了解用戶以及用戶想要做什么，這也正是人們所期待的。他表示，微軟正把這種技術的開發當作其首要任務。
Cortana, the virtual personal assistant Microsoft announced last week, is part of the company's push into machine learning, Yaakobi and Shum said. Microsoft has positioned Cortana as a challenger to Apple's Siri and Google Now.
Yaakobi和Shum表示，微軟上周發布的虛擬個人助理Cortana是該公司大力發展機器學習舉措的一部分。微軟對Cortana的定位是，這是一款挑戰蘋果(Apple)的Siri和Google Now的產品。
Microsoft is pretty high on Cortana. Jeannette Wing, a vice president for research and one of Microsoft's experts in 'computational thinking' (read: machine learning) , said interacting with Cortana is more like a conversation than a response to a question.
微軟對Cortana的期望非常高。Jeannette Wing是主管研發的副總裁，也是微軟在“計算思維”（也就是機器學習）方面的專家之一，她表示，與Cortana互動更像是一次談話，而不是對某一個問題做出回答。
'I speak to Cortana, Cortana responds. I speak back to it, and it understands that we're still in the same conversation. It knows from the first sentence I said what I'm referring to,' she said at the conference. 'That seems like such a small thing for human beings, but it's huge.'
Wing在Think Next 2014會議上表示，她跟Cortana說話，Cortana做出回答，她再跟它說話，Cortana就知道雙方仍然在進行同一次談話。Wing稱，Cortana從她說的第一個句子就知道她指的是什么。她還表示，對人類而言，這似乎是很小的一件事，但它的意義非常重大。
Most major technology companies in the world are looking into machine learning, she said, and Microsoft is making major strides. 'We were in an AI winter, and now we're in an AI spring,' Wing said.
Wing稱，世界上大多數大型科技公司都在研究機器學習，微軟正在這方面取得長足的進步。Wing表示，微軟過去處于AI（人工智能）的冬天，現在則處于AI的春天。
