Writer and storyteller @Microsoft Formerly economics and financial journalist for @NBCNews @Todayshow and @CNBC.
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Articles by Allison Linn
Microsoft researchers reach human parity in conversational speech recognition
Microsoft researchers from the Speech & Dialogue research group include, from back left, Wayne Xiong, Geoffrey Zweig, Xuedong Huang, Dong Yu, Frank Seide, Mike Seltzer, Jasha Droppo and Andreas Stolcke. (Photo by Dan DeLong) Microsoft has made a major breakthrough in speech recognition, creating a technology that recognizes the words in a conversation as well as a person does.
The next evolution of machine learning: Machine teaching
Microsoft researchers are at the forefront of efforts to help people without a machine learning background teach their systems to get better based on experience. They’re calling this new evolution machine teaching. “No one has really built a machine learning tool for the layman,” said Patrice Simard, a distinguished engineer with Microsoft Research who is leading a new machine teaching research project at Microsoft Research.
Yahoo's new baby leave policy is generous. Yours? Probably not so much
Getty Images stock Not all parents can expect to get generous paid parental leave, experts say. By Allison Linn, TODAY Hey working moms and dads, just because Yahoo employees are getting more generous parental leave benefits doesn’t mean you should expect those perks, too. Under Yahoo’s new policy, new moms who give birth are eligible for up to 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, with benefits. New dads can get up to eight weeks of paid paternity leave with benefits, according to Yahoo.
Using AI, people who are blind are able to find familiar faces
Cambridge, United Kingdom – Theo, a 12-year-old boy who is blind, is seated at a table in a crowded kitchen on a gray and drippy mid-December day. A headband that houses cameras, a depth sensor and speakers rings his sandy-brown hair. He swivels his head left and right until the camera in the front of the headband points at the nose of a person on the far side of a counter. Theo hears a bump sound followed by the name “Martin” through the headband’s speakers, which are positioned above his ears.
What NOT to buy your boss for the holidays
For many workers, the holiday season means making a list, checking it twice—and trying to decide whether to put your boss on it. Experts say it's a potential minefield because even though many workers may want—or feel the need—to give their boss a small token of appreciation, even the best intentions can quickly go wrong. "It's a sensitive time of year," said Phyllis Davis, chief executive of the American Business Etiquette Trainers Association, based in southern Florida.
Older Americans are falling short financially
Get the latest from TODAY The golden years aren’t turning out to be that golden for many current seniors and retirees, according to two reports that shed light on which older Americans are most likely to be economically vulnerable. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute finds that black, Hispanic or female seniors, or people 80 and older are more likely to face economic woes than other older Americans.
Less stress, less time: How a Brazilian startup is using Azure AI to make car repairs easier
Car10’s app uses AI to help give customers a quick estimate of how much a car repair might cost. Photo by Car10. SÃO PAOLO, Brazil – For most people, the worst part of getting into a minor car accident is figuring out how to get your car repaired. There’s the trouble of figuring out who to call, the hassle of driving around to get estimates and the constant worry that whoever you work with will end up taking advantage of you. That’s where Car10 comes in.
Million-dollar job: Public college president
E. Gordon Gee in 2009. Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images At a time when the cost of college is an increasing worry for many families, running a public college is becoming a more lucrative job. Nine public-college presidents earned more than $1 million a year in total compensation in the 2012-2013 fiscal year, a new analysis from The Chronicle of Higher Education finds. That's up from four in 2011-2012 and three in 2010-2011.
Opt out or left out? The economics of stay-at-home moms
Allicyn Willix plays with children, 4-year-old Conner, and 15-month-old Parker. Willix has been a stay-at-home mom since her second child was born. She quit her low wage job because it was costing her more to pay day care fees and says,Benjamin Krain for NBC News Conventional wisdom holds that stay-at-home moms do so because they can afford not to work. Instead, experts say, many moms appear to be staying home with their kids because they can’t afford to work.
Millennials hit 30: It's the economy, not us
Ben and Erika Trowell leave home for work in the car they share in Phoenix, Ariz.John Brecher / NBC News Turning 30 used to mean hitting your stride as an official adult. But for many of the country’s millennials, it feels like being stuck in perpetual late adolescence. Marriage eludes many. Children? Not anytime soon. Most millennials have some sort of job, but for many a career seems unobtainable. A home of their own? Lots of them have had to move back in with mom and dad or shack up with roommates.
Sorry, students: Higher loan rate still good option
Allison Linn, CNBC Published 8:03 a.m. ET July 13, 2013 Stafford loan still one of best deals around, despite higher rates, experts say.
Microsoft doubles down on quantum computing bet
Microsoft executive Todd Holmdahl will lead the scientific and engineering effort to create scalable quantum hardware and software. (Photo by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures.) Microsoft is doubling down on its commitment to the tantalizing field of quantum computing, making a strong bet that it is possible to create a scalable quantum computer using what is called a topological qubit.
Station B: A platform that could help boost production of lifesaving biological therapies
CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom – In recent years, companies have figured out how to engineer bacteria to make cement, helping reduce the pollution involved in traditional manufacturing. Using more advanced techniques, scientists have even programmed patients’ immune cells to recognize and kill leukemia cells, giving children who had virtually no chance of survival years of prolonged life.
HoloLens 2 gives Microsoft the edge in next generation of computing
Chelsey Potts felt so much pressure to succeed when she first stepped from the manufacturing floor into the cab of a Kenworth truck. “When you get a job at Kenworth, most people are doubling what they made at their last job. And, you know, they’re nervous,” she said.
As last paychecks roll in for federal workers, frustration and fear sink in
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Nov. 2, 2015 / 11:54 PM GMT / Updated Oct. 6, 2013 / 6:35 PM GMT By Allison Linn and Erin McClam, NBC News It’s one thing for the government shutdown to sink your family vacation to Dry Tortugas National Park. But the budget fight is shifting from annoyance to hardship as thousands of federal workers get their last paychecks until — well, nobody knows.
As AI breakthroughs abound, businesses look to score benefits
Identify the right AI opportunities One of the most important responsibilities CEOs will have in charting a company’s AI strategy is aligning the business with a set of beliefs around how it will be developed and managed, Judah said. To lead employees and earn customers’ trust on the use of responsible AI, a company must transparently outline the organization’s position on issues of trust, fairness, transparency, privacy, safety, inclusiveness and more.
Microsoft is teaching systems to read, answer and even ask questions
From left, Rangan Majumder, Yi‐Min Wang and Jianfeng Gao on Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, campus. Photo by Dan DeLong. Microsoft researchers have already created technology that can do two difficult tasks about as well as a person: identify images and recognize words in a conversation. Now, the company’s leading AI experts are working on systems that can do something even more complex: Read passages of text and answer questions about them.
Microsoft unveils AI capability that automates AI development
The tedious but necessary process of selecting, testing and tweaking machine learning models that power many of today’s artificial intelligence systems was proving too time-consuming for Nicolo Fusi. The final straw for the Microsoft researcher and machine learning expert came while fussing over model selection as he and his colleagues built CRISPR.ML, a computational biology tool that uses AI to help scientists determine the best way to perform gene editing experiments.
How AI is building better gas stations and transforming Shell’s global energy business
In one part of the solution, they applied a machine teaching framework developed by Bonsai, which was acquired by Microsoft last summer, that allows subject matter experts with little background in data science or AI to tell the system what it wants the intelligent agent to do and what key information it needs to know to do that job successfully.
With Project Torino, Microsoft creates a physical programming language inclusive of visually impaired children
From left, Lexy Ryan, 13, and Theo Holroyd, 10, use Project Torino. The physical programming language is designed to be inclusive of children with visual impairments. Photo by Jonathan Banks. These days, most kids get their first introduction to coding through simplified tools that let them drag and drop blocks of commands, creating programs that can do things like navigate mazes or speed through space.
Role reversal: Employers say they can't find workers
With 13 million unemployed people seeking work in this country, it would seem like anyone who wants to hire someone would have little difficulty doing so. But that’s not what many employers are saying. More than half of U.S. employers surveyed by the staffing firm Manpower Group last year said they were having trouble filling job openings because they couldn't find qualified workers.
What companies are, and aren’t, doing to find qualified workers
It’s been a familiar lament over the past few years: The idea that even though millions of Americans are unemployed, companies across the country just can’t find enough qualified workers. New data suggests that although many companies continue to complain about the so-called skills gap, only a minority of companies are taking steps to fix it.
AI news from Microsoft’s Build developers conference
At Microsoft’s Build developers conference in Seattle this week, the company is unveiling a series of new and updated tools that will help developers incorporate artificial intelligence into their processes and applications, regardless of their background and training in the fast-emerging field of AI.
Microsoft’s mission: AI for every developer
Microsoft also will showcase updates to its conversational AI tools, including a public preview of Bot Builder SDK v4, and the capability to do things like add personas to bots, learn conversational patterns and extract questions and answers from documents. In addition, Microsoft is announcing support for deploying Microsoft Cognitive Services on the edge – or on a device such as a vehicle or camera that doesn’t have a constant connection to a network or the cloud.
Real-time AI: Microsoft announces preview of Project Brainwave
Jabil is working with Microsoft to look at how it could use Project Brainwave to quickly and accurately use AI to scan images and flag false positives – or items that aren’t actually defective. That more detailed analysis will free up the people who manually check for defects to focus on the more complex cases. All those seconds saved add up, said Ryan Litvak, Jabil’s IT manager, as manufacturing customers are always eager to find any efficiency gains they can pass on to their customers.
AI technology helps students who are deaf learn
Growing demand for access services When Gary Behm enrolled in 1974, he was one of about 30 students who are deaf and hard of hearing registered for classes at RIT. ASL interpreters interpreted his professors’ spoken words into sign language, as interpreters do in classes across campus today. He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering and pursued a successful career at IBM.
Like a phone call: XiaoIce, Microsoft’s social chatbot in China, makes breakthrough in natural conversation
A user tries out the new functionality in XiaoIce, Microsoft’s social chatbot in China. Photo courtesy of Microsoft. When people interact with most personal digital assistants or chatbots today, the experience is a lot like speaking into a walkie-talkie or texting: First one party says or writes something, and then the other party digests that information and responds. Li Zhou, engineer lead for XiaoIce. Photo courtesy of Microsoft.
Microsoft reaches a historic milestone, using AI to match human performance in translating news from Chinese to English
Xuedong Huang, technical fellow in charge of Microsoft’s speech, natural language and machine translation efforts. Photo by Scott Eklund/Red Box Pictures. A team of Microsoft researchers said Wednesday that they believe they have created the first machine translation system that can translate sentences of news articles from Chinese to English with the same quality and accuracy as a person.
Microsoft announces general availability of cloud-based tools for genomics research
In order for scientists to make breakthroughs that could help lead to cures for pediatric cancers, researchers around the world need to be able to easily share and collaborate on genomic data. That’s why, in 2010, computational biologist Jinghui Zhang and her team at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis started uploading anonymized genomes of their patients’ healthy and cancerous cells to public data repositories.
Microsoft announces expansion of Montreal research lab, new director
Microsoft plans to significantly expand its Montreal research lab and has hired a renowned artificial intelligence expert, Geoffrey Gordon, to be the lab’s new research director. The company said Wednesday that it hopes to double the size of Microsoft Research Montreal within the next two years, to as many as 75 technical experts. The expansion comes as Montreal is becoming a worldwide hub for groundbreaking work in the fields of machine learning and deep learning, which are core to AI advances.
Microsoft researchers build a bot that draws what you tell it to - The AI Blog
If you’re handed a note that asks you to draw a picture of a bird with a yellow body, black wings and a short beak, chances are you’ll start with a rough outline of a bird, then glance back at the note, see the yellow part and reach for a yellow pen to fill in the body, read the note again and reach for a black pen to draw the wings and, after a final check, shorten the beak and define it with a reflective glint. Then, for good measure, you might sketch a tree branch where the bird rests.
Microsoft creates AI that can read a document and answer questions about it as well as a person - The AI Blog
Microsoft researchers have created technology that uses artificial intelligence to read a document and answer questions about it about as well as a human. It’s a major milestone in the push to have search engines such as Bing and intelligent assistants such as Cortana interact with people and provide information in more natural ways, much like people communicate with each other.
Researchers use AI to improve accuracy of gene editing with CRISPR
A collaboration between computer scientists and biologists from research institutions across the United States is yielding a set of computational tools that increase efficiency and accuracy when deploying CRISPR, a gene-editing technology that is transforming industries from healthcare to agriculture. CRISPR is a nano-sized sewing kit that can be designed to cut and alter DNA at a specific point in a specific gene.
‘Aha, now I get it!’ Microsoft is building technology to put numbers in perspective - The AI Blog
When people in the United States ask Microsoft’s search engine Bing how big Syria is, they learn the country is 71,498 square miles and about equal to the size of Florida. When they ask Bing how many calories are in a serving of ice cream, they learn that a scoop contains 137 calories, which is equal to about 11 minutes of running.
The future is quantum: Microsoft releases free preview of Quantum Development Kit - The AI Blog
So you want to learn how to program a quantum computer. Now, there’s a toolkit for that. Microsoft is releasing a free preview version of its Quantum Development Kit, which includes the Q# programming language, a quantum computing simulator and other resources for people who want to start writing applications for a quantum computer. The Q# programming language was built from the ground up specifically for quantum computing.
Debugging data: Microsoft researchers look at ways to train AI systems to reflect the real world - The AI Blog
Artificial intelligence is already helping people do things like type faster texts and take better pictures, and it’s increasingly being used to make even bigger decisions, such as who gets a new job and who goes to jail.
Microsoft looks to healthcare partners for ways to bring AI benefits to cancer patients
A team of artificial intelligence experts at Microsoft’s Cambridge, U.K., research lab has spent more than a decade looking at ways that AI could be used to make cancer treatment more targeted and effective.
AI’s sharing economy: Microsoft creates publicly available datasets
Samira Ebrahimi Kahou and her colleagues at Microsoft Research Maluuba recently set out to solve an interesting research problem: How could they use artificial intelligence to correctly reason about information found in graphs and pie charts? One big obstacle, they discovered, was that the research area was so new that there weren’t any existing datasets available for them to test their hypotheses. So, they made one.
AI wave rolls through Microsoft’s language translation technologies
A fresh wave of artificial intelligence rolling through Microsoft’s language translation technologies is bringing more accurate speech recognition to more of the world’s languages and higher quality machine-powered translations to all 60 languages supported by Microsoft’s translation technologies. The advances were announced at Microsoft Tech Summit Sydney in Australia on November 16.
Zo’s new best friends are some adorable black cats - The AI Blog
If you get a chance to hang out with Microsoft’s AI-powered social chatbot Zo anytime soon, you might notice that she’s got a new passion: helping homeless cats. Like a lot people with a newfound interest, Zo is likely to talk about why she’s interested in helping cats, share pictures of some of her favorite cats and even let people know how they, like her, can sponsor a cat at Best Friends Animal Society.
Microsoft is using machine reading to create a ‘literate machine’
If you asked most people, they’d probably say that computers and other gadgets are pretty good at communicating information to us, whether it’s by providing directions to an important business meeting or finding the best recipe for gluten-free apple pie. And yet, computers still don’t communicate with us nearly as intuitively as we communicate with each other. If you type a query into a search engine, for example, chances are you’ll get a list of websites to click on.
Microsoft Pix captures better pictures of people, and now whiteboards too
From the outset, Microsoft Pix has used artificial intelligence to help people more easily capture better pictures of family and friends with an iPhone. Now, you can use the smartphone camera app to take better pictures of documents, whiteboards and business cards, too. Because, let’s face it, we all use our cameras to take photos of more than just people and places.
Microsoft researchers test AI-controlled soaring machine
As the Jeep bumps along, two members of a Microsoft research team, Jim Piavis and Rick Rogahn, steady themselves against the roll bar, their feet planted on the seats and their upper bodies jutting out of the open roof. They are scanning the bright blue sky, tracking a type of glider known as a sailplane. The delicate black, white and red sailplane swerves wildly and unevenly at first, and then gradually begins to make wide, soaring circles.
For women, asking for a raise is damned if you do or don't
Nicolas Hansen | E+ | Getty Images "You don't get if you don't ask"—or so we're often told. But when it comes to women and pay, researchers say it's too often, "If you ask, you'll pay." The gender gap on income can start as soon as women enter the workforce, and get wider as workers age, and some believe one reason for that is that women don't always ask for more money. That seems like a simple problem, but experts say it doesn't have a simple solution.
Science mimics nature: Microsoft researchers test AI-controlled soaring machine - News Center
HAWTHORNE, Nevada – In the searing midday heat of the Nevada desert, a white Jeep Wrangler heads down a desolate strip of dirt road, surrounded on either side by miles of sagebrush and sand. As the Jeep bumps along, two members of a Microsoft research team, Jim Piavis and Rick Rogahn, steady themselves against the roll bar, their feet planted on the seats and their upper bodies jutting out of the open roof. They are scanning the bright blue sky, tracking a type of glider known as a sailplane.
AI for security: Microsoft Security Risk Detection makes debut - Next at Microsoft
Microsoft is making a cloud service that uses artificial intelligence to track down bugs in software generally available, and it will begin offering a preview version of the tool for Linux users as well. Microsoft Security Risk Detection, previously known as Project Springfield, is a cloud-based tool that developers can use to look for bugs and other security vulnerabilities in the software they are preparing to release or use.
AI’s big leap to tiny devices opens world of possibilities - Next at Microsoft
Sometimes the best place to showcase the potential of a bold, world-changing technology is a flower garden. Take the case of Ofer Dekel, for example. He manages the Machine Learning and Optimization group at Microsoft’s research lab in Redmond, Washington. Squirrels often devoured flower bulbs in his garden and seeds from his bird feeder, depriving him and his family of blooms and birdsong.
How Microsoft used AI to help crack down on tech support scams worldwide
The scam works like this: There you are, using your computer just like any other day, when suddenly a pop-up appears, warning you that your computer has been infected by a virus and you need to call tech support immediately. If you try to get rid of the pop-up, it just keeps coming back.
Divide and conquer: How Microsoft researchers used AI to master Ms. Pac-Man
To master the game Ms. Pac-Man, Maluuba researchers assigned a number of AI agents different tasks, and created a system that allowed them to work collaboratively. Photo courtesy of Microsoft. Microsoft researchers have created an artificial intelligence-based system that learned how to get the maximum score on the addictive 1980s video game Ms. Pac-Man, using a divide-and-conquer method that could have broad implications for teaching AI agents to do complex tasks that augment human capabilities.
Divide and conquer: How Microsoft researchers used AI to master Ms. Pac-Man - Next at Microsoft
Microsoft researchers have created an artificial intelligence-based system that learned how to get the maximum score on the addictive 1980s video game Ms. Pac-Man, using a divide-and-conquer method that could have broad implications for teaching AI agents to do complex tasks that augment human capabilities.
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