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Ever since Satya Nadella took control of Microsoft, he'southward been referring to the visitor as competing in a "mobile-showtime, cloud-first world." It's a phrase he'south used for years, even as he'southward shut down Windows Phone manufacturing and essentially killed Microsoft's mobile ambitions. The latest sign that Windows 10 Mobile is a dead OS walking is courtesy of Microsoft's annual written report.

The company'southward vision argument in its latest form x-K filing reads:

Microsoft is a engineering company whose mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to accomplish more than. Nosotros strive to create local opportunity, growth, and impact in every country effectually the world. Our strategy is to build best-in-class platforms and productivity services for an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge infused with artificial intelligence ("AI").

In 2016 and 2015, the company led with dissimilar phrasing (2014 didn't include a Vision Statement at all). In both years, the annual report led with the following: "Microsoft is a technology visitor whose mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our strategy is to build best-in-class platforms and productivity services for a mobile-first, deject-offset world."

Nvidia Ray Tracing

AI tin mean anything from more than effective rendering to a self-driving auto, as illustrated by NV's recent ray-tracing demo at SIGGRAPH 2017.

The fact that Microsoft is effectively shutting downwardly its aspirations in mobile is no surprise. The company'south latest annual report doesn't even refer to mobile except when discussing other products, like Office 365, or when discussing providing backend services for other mobile devices. But the accent on AI — it's mentioned in six places throughout the report — is an interesting twist for a company that previously didn't discuss that topic at all:

AI will be pervasive across devices, applications, and infrastructure to bulldoze insights and act on the user'due south behalf. Azure is also unique in its support for emerging applications so that Internet of Things ("IoT") devices can deed locally at the border while taking advantage of the cloud for global coordination and machine learning at scale.

That'due south a remarkably fast pivot for a company that didn't previously mention AI in whatsoever of its annual reports, just information technology's also a sign of how trendy it's become to talk about artificial intelligence.

Is AI the New Deject?

Nosotros included the Azure reference in the quote above to highlight an interesting trend in how Microsoft talks nigh its own products and services. AI may be new, but Azure isn't — and Microsoft'due south previous 10K reports hash out Azure in most identical linguistic communication to what nosotros see to a higher place, except that the phrases nigh Azure equally an IoT backend or AI platform aren't mentioned.

I don't doubt Microsoft's determination to push into AI, deep learning, and like markets; we're seeing the unabridged hardware ecosystem move in this direction. Anybody — anybody — wants to talk almost AI, deep learning, self-driving cars, the Internet of Shitty Things, and similar technologies. It's far from the first time we've seen an industry pivot on this kind of topic. When cloud calculating became officially A Affair, companies savage all over themselves to rebrand previously available products equally "cloud" products, oft past slapping a new logo on them as opposed to including whatever new features.

It may seem odd to raise this result, given how much coverage has been dedicated to AI and how many companies are pursuing it, but there's reason to exist skeptical. The tech industry scarcely has a perfect record on predictions of the future, and the term "bogus intelligence" is so vague every bit to be easily abused. Azure didn't magically evolve AI-friendly hosting capabilities in the past twelvemonth, it'southward being rebranded to talk over a hot topic in computing.

On the other hand, Microsoft's shifting vision argument could indicate that the company is now diverting far more resources into AI research and evolution. Simply if it is, nosotros haven't heard well-nigh the products or services that volition feature this capability just withal. Expanding Cortana's ability to perform searches without opening a browser, for example, may be an advance, but it'southward scarcely AI.