Windows 10: New institute explores the future of Cortana

Brink · Jan 31, 2018

Today marks the establishment of the Cortana Intelligence Institute – a new, co-funded collaboration between Microsoft Research, Cortana Research and RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, to work on next-generation capabilities for Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana.

At Microsoft, we are constantly looking for opportunities to learn from colleagues – both inside and outside of the company.
Andrew Shuman, Corporate Vice President of Cortana Engineering, told me that Cortana especially needs this energy because it is such a nascent area. “Working with RMIT on the Cortana Intelligence Institute,” he said, “is an amazing chance to inject new thinking in what we build.”

Mark Sanderson is a pioneering information retrieval researcher at RMIT University and a co-chief investigator of the institute. He noted that the institute also represents a novel opportunity for RMIT’s experts in data retrieval, analysis and modeling to ensure their research is relevant to industry.

“Working collaboratively with industry is a key to ensuring our research provides practical solutions to real-world problems,” he wrote in one of our email exchanges. “We are excited that our students and researchers can work with the Cortana Research team on such high-impact research that has potential to significantly benefit so many people.”

Applied computer science
The Cortana Research group is an applied science organization in Microsoft Cortana that was recently established to integrate research seamlessly into the digital assistant. The group is led by Ryen White, an expert in search interaction and information retrieval who co-conceived the Cortana Intelligence Institute with me.

Ryen’s team is focused on task intelligence, which aims to move digital assistant interactions beyond basic queries for weather and traffic reports, and one-turn actions such as setting meeting reminders, to supporting more complex tasks. For example, in the future, Cortana may assist with chores from cooking to calendar management, which involve multiple steps, contextual awareness and a rich dialogue with users.

The planned research at RMIT enhances what the Cortana Research team is working on and aligns well with what is important to Cortana, according to Ryen. Their focus is largely around using context to better understand the tasks that people perform and help complete them.

Multidimensional dataset
The RMIT University research team will collaborate with Microsoft researchers to create and draw on a multidimensional dataset. Flora Salim, a senior lecturer at RMIT University and co-chief investigator of the Cortana Intelligence Institute, explained that her group wants to know the physical activity and location of the user, their online and app behavior, and their interactions with their social groups or peers in order to understand the tasks they are working on and intend to complete.

The research at RMIT for the institute is focused on work-related tasks, an area with strong potential to help make Cortana a more proactive and context-aware digital assistant that truly amplifies human capabilities. Microsoft’s researchers will collaborate with RMIT team members on the development of algorithms that use the novel dataset to improve Cortana.

We look forward to sharing the results of the Cortana Intelligence Institute with the research community and, ultimately, using them to help Cortana assist us in new ways.

RMIT team from left to right: Flora Salim, Yongli Ren, Falk Scholer, Mark Sanderson, Jonathan Liono

Microsoft Cortana team from left to right: Robert Sim, Allen Herring, Ryen White, Ahmed Hassan Awadallah, Nirupama Chandrasekaran, Paul Bennett, Vanessa Murdock
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Source: New institute explores the future of Cortana - Microsoft Research

Cr00zng · Jan 31, 2018

Source: New institute explores the future of Cortana - Microsoft Research
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From the link above:

Flora Salim, a senior lecturer at RMIT University and co-chief investigator of the Cortana Intelligence Institute, explained that her group wants to know the physical activity and location of the user, their online and app behavior, and their interactions with their social groups or peers in order to understand the tasks they are working on and intend to complete.
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That's a bit too ambitious for me and it would be nice, if there would be an easy way to disable Cortana...

:)

Vijay B · Jan 31, 2018

Windows 10 education edition

Hi,

Thank you for being a part of Windows 10.

The licensing agreement differs from institution to institution. I would suggest you to contact dreamspark for more information about the licensing agreement.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other issues with Windows in future.

sister_bliss · Jan 31, 2018

new idea for a future version of the pc suite

not really, in itunes you can set an auto sync for everything but not one folder. but being a sync that would still pick up your new podcasts (wouldnt be to slow if you are not using a full 60gb for instance)

you can do the same with windows media player 10, so maybe there is no need to do this for pc suite?

Brink · Jan 31, 2018

There is an easy way to disable Cortana in Windows 10. *Smile

*Arrow Enable or Disable Cortana in Windows 10 Apps Features Tutorials

Cr00zng · Feb 1, 2018

There is an easy way to disable Cortana in Windows 10. *Smile

*Arrow Enable or Disable Cortana in Windows 10 Apps Features Tutorials
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Easy is relative...

A simple radio dial and/or check mark to disable Cortana is easy. Hunting down group policy and/or registry settings are not for everyone.

By the way...

Your tutorial is excellent, maybe it should have more details on how to access the group policy editor. Logging in as administrator is one way, but running the policy editor as an administrator with a standard user account logged in works just as well.

Brink · Apr 4, 2018

Your tutorial is excellent, maybe it should have more details on how to access the group policy editor. Logging in as administrator is one way, but running the policy editor as an administrator with a standard user account logged in works just as well.
Click to expand...

Thank you. The link in step 1 of Option 1 will include all that information.

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