peshkov - stock.adobe.comNewsMicrosoft Ignite: AI capabilities double every six monthsIf Moore's law promised a doubling of tech every 18 months, the pace is three times quicker with AI developments, says Satya NadellaByCliff Saran,Managing EditorPublished: 20 Nov 2024 9:38 During his keynote presentation at the start of Microsofts annual Ignite conference in Chicago, CEO Satya Nadella discussed artificial intelligence (AI) scaling, through which the capabilities of the tech is doubling every six months.Just like Moores Law, we saw the doubling in performance every 18 months with AI. We have now started to see that doubling every six months or so, he said.He believes a new scaling law will emerge for AI based on the amount of computational time needed to run AI inference. This ability to scale is leading to three major shifts in technological development, according to Nadella.The first is what he describes as a universal multimodal interface universal interface, which supports speech, images, videos, for both input and output.Second, he said: We have new reasoning and planning capabilities, essentially neural algebra to help solve complex problems and can detect patterns involving people, places and things.You can even find relationships between people, places and things using this new algebra.The third is what Nadella calls support for long term memory-rich context, adding: If you put all these things together, you can build a very rich agentic world defined by this tapestry of AI agents, which can act on our behalf across our work and life across teams, business processes, as well as organisations.The company kicked off the Ignite event announcing previews of new AI capabilities. Among these is Copilot Actions, now in private preview, which is designed to enable anyone to automate everyday tasks in Microsoft 365 using simple prompts.Microsoft also unveiled new agents in Microsoft 365, including a natural language AI assistant for Sharepointfor finding and querying content more quickly, and a new Teams agentprovides what Microsoft describes as real-time, speech-to-speech interpretation in meetings. According to Microsoft, meeting participants will also have the option to have the agent simulate their personal voice.Another new agent is for employee self-service. Available on Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat in private preview, this can be used to expedite answers for common policy-related questions and, according to Microsoft, simplifies action-taking on key HR and IT-related tasks, such as helping employees to understand their benefits or request a new laptop. The agent can be customised in Copilot Studio to meet an organisations unique needs.Other agents in public preview take real-time meeting notes in Teams and automate project management from start to finish in Planner.On the developer support side, Microsoft has introduced Azure AI Foundry, which it said gives customers access to all existing Azure AI services and tooling, plus new capabilities. Among these is the Azure AI Foundry software developers kit. Available in preview, this provides what Microsoft calls a unified toolchain for designing, customising and managing AI apps and agents.According to Microsoft, the Azure AI Foundry provides enterprise-grade control and customisation. It offers 25 prebuilt app templates and can be accessed from familiar tools such as GitHub, Visual Studio and Copilot Studio.Read more AI development storiesHow open source is shaping AI developments: The Linux Foundation outlines efforts to bolster enterprise AI adoption through a framework for managing and deploying AI applications, standardised tooling and open data alternatives.Microsoft aims at AI development: New data management and analytics suite features include databases and a data catalog to enable enterprises to develop and operationalize advanced applications.In The Current Issue:Interview: Rahul Todkar, head of data and AI, TripadvisorGartner Symposium: Why the chance of digital success is randomDownload Current IssueDomino fall release topples challenges across AI assembly, scale & governance CW Developer NetworkClearly smart, SAS acquires Hazy: A wider vision for synthetic data CW Developer NetworkView All Blogs