All Things Microsoft AI

  DirectML (Direct Machine Learning) is a low-level API for machine learning.  It was developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows AI platform. DirectML integrates with DirectX 12 compatible hardware. It’s designed to provide hardware-accelerated machine learning capabilities across a wide range of GPUs, not tied to any specific vendor.  DirectML is a low-level hardware abstraction layer that enables machine learning workloads on any DirectX 12 compatible GPU.   ML.NET (Machine Learning .NET) is an open source and cross-platform framework also developed by Microsoft.  It provides the capability to train and build custom machine learning models using C# or F#. ML.NET also provides model building capabilities using various features: AutoML (automated machine learning) that automatically attempts various algorithms to find the best fit for a given set of data ML.NET CLI (Command Line Interface) for building models through the command li...

Phi models are Small Language Models (SLM) developed by Microsoft.  They’re designed to handle various tasks, including text, image, and speech processing, while requiring less computing power.  The models are open-source, available with the MIT License.   The diagram below shows the evolution and capabilities of various Phi models.        With the recent release of Phi-4 Multimodal model, more features are now available. In addition, here are some of its most notable features: 1. Multimodal Data Processing: Phi-4 Multimodal excels at handling text, images, and speech at the same time. This means it can interpret and generate content across different formats, making it incredibly versatile for various applications. 2. Efficient Performance: Despite its advanced capabilities, Phi-4 Multimodal is designed to be highly efficient. It requires significantly less computing power compared to larger AI systems, making it accessib...

Question:  I need to know if data entered and used in the $30 Copilot service in M365 is secured in the same way that data in the $0 M365 Copilot Chat. I cannot find a reference that explains this. I want to know if my users can use both without the risk of having our content exposed outside of our tenant.   Answer : Yes, both the $30 Microsoft 365 Copilot service and the $0 Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat offer the same level of data security and privacy protections. Both services are covered by the same enterprise data protection (EDP) controls and commitments under the Data Protection Addendum (DPA) and Product Terms. Your data is protected with encryption at rest and in transit. Also, Microsoft does not use your data to train foundation models.  In a nutshell, your data remains yours and yours alone.  For additional references, see the following links: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/privacy-and-protections https://learn.microsoft.com/en...

DeepSeek R1 is an advanced AI model developed by the Chinese startup DeepSeek AI. It has gained significant attention for the following reasons: Open Source, available to for use by anyone. Comparable Performance to OpenAI's GPT-4 and ChatGPT o1 models on various benchmarks. DeepSeek R1 was reportedly trained on 2,788 GPUs at a cost of around $6 million, significantly less than the estimated $100 million cost to train OpenAI's GPT-4. Excels in reasoning tasks and has been trained using large-scale reinforcement learning without supervised fine-tuning. Availability on platforms like Azure AI Foundry and GitHub, making it accessible for developers and researchers. DeepSeek R1's open-source nature and cost-effective training have made it a notable player in the AI community, challenging the notion that larger models and more data always lead to better performance.   To get started, DeepSeek R1 is now available via a serverless endpoint through the model catalog ...

Automated Intelligence refers to the use of technology to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks that typically require minimal human intervention. This includes everything from data entry to workflow management and beyond. The goal of Automated Intelligence is to streamline processes, increase efficiency, and reduce the potential for human error.   Artificial Intelligence encompasses a broader scope, including machine learning, natural language processing, and more. AI is designed to simulate human intelligence and can perform complex tasks like understanding language, recognizing patterns, and making decisions based on data. AI systems can learn and adapt over time, improving their performance with more data and experience.   Automated Intelligence (AI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although they share the same abbreviation, their applications and implications can differ significantly. - Scope: Automated Intelligence focuses on automating specific tasks, w...

In the fall of 2024, I had the opportunity to work with Matt Eland and be one of the editors for his book “ Data Science with .NET and Polyglot Notebooks: Programmer's guide to data science using ML.NET, OpenAI, and Semantic Kernel ”.  Matt is a very intelligent and knowledgeable data science developer and it definitely reflected in his work.  He walks the reader through step-by-step directions to demonstrate key concepts in data science, machine learning, as well as polyglot notebooks.  This was one of the rare books that I could hardly put down.  I urge you to pick-up a copy and upgrade your data science skills.      

On October 29, 2024 at the GroupBy conference, I was moderator for Jeff Taylor's session "How To Tune A Multi-Terabyte Database For Optimum Performance" The video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j51bD0DPZE   Listed below are some take aways and Q&As from his session:   Ideal Latency time: 20ms for IO 10ms for TempDB   Crystal Disk Mark is a simple disk benchmark software: https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskmark/   What is the overhead of running these diagnostics (i.e. diskspd and Crystal Disk)? No adverse effects during mid-day testing, but don't run it during a busy time. It's best to test it during both busy and non-busy times   Mutlipath: multiple network cards between host, switch and SAN appliance   For tempdb storage, what's preferable? Shared space on a disk pool with a lot of drives or dedicated pool with just 2 drives (raid 1)? all drives of the same type (N...