By Jay Greene
Microsoft Corp.'s $26.2 billion deal to buy LinkedIn Corp. is
the latest step in a tight race among tech giants to give their
wares a semblance of human smarts. The software giant and its arch
competitors aim to mine vast quantities of data -- searches,
emails, text messages, social networks, browsing behavior, and so
on -- for insights that would help them serve and even anticipate
customer needs.
As Microsoft announced the largest acquisition in its history,
Apple Inc. revealed plans to bring advanced computer vision to its
photo software so devices can identify the faces of family and
friends in pictures and categorize images more easily. Last month,
Alphabet Inc. unveiled Google assistant, a software helper designed
to predict what users want by analyzing their behavior and learning
their preferences so that it might, say, offer to make dinner
reservations when a restaurant was mentioned in a text message.
Such capabilities are the province of the technology known as
machine learning, in which computers examine huge amounts of
existing information -- so-called training data -- in search of
patterns that it can use to understand new information as it
arrives. With LinkedIn, Microsoft is gaining a trove of details
about the work lives, colleagues and employers of the business
social network's 105.5 million monthly active users: a unique set
of training data that the software giant hopes will give it an
advantage in serving business customers.
"That's really what this next wave of technology innovation is
about," Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said during a
conference call Monday, referring to machine learning. "But in
order to be able to do that, you need data, and LinkedIn represents
that."
Microsoft, which has adopted spreading "intelligence" throughout
its offerings as an explicit goal, aims to enhance, rather than
replace, human performance. Where Google's autonomous cars stop,
turn, and change routes without human intervention, Microsoft has
focused on using machine intelligence to provide insights that can
inform human decisions.
Forrester Research Inc. analyst Jeffrey Hammond refers to the
technology as "augmented intelligence" to distinguish it from
artificial intelligence.
"It adds a whole lot of rich contextual information," Mr.
Hammond said.
The fruits of this approach are already available in the
company's products. Last month, it revamped its SharePoint
collaboration and networking program to analyze lists of meeting
attendees, frequent email correspondents, collaborators on
documents, and the like. The software uses the results proactively
to deliver information, such as internal reports or news articles,
that might be useful to a given user.
If Microsoft can deliver on that promise, LinkedIn data will
feed Microsoft products such as SharePoint, the Office productivity
suite, or Dynamics sales tools, to streamline projects and pinpoint
prospects. Microsoft, as part of its presentation to analysts about
the deal, described a scenario in which Cortana, its digital
assistant, notified a user that a coming meeting included someone
who attended the same college and shared a LinkedIn connection.
Then, Cortana offered to link to the attendee's profile and share
the meeting presentation.
Other tech giants have their own versions of Microsoft's Cortana
strategy. Apple's voice-activated assistant Siri is now smart
enough to work with non-Apple apps to perform tasks like calling
for car service or sending messages through text networks like
WeChat. Facebook is fine-tuning a concierge called M whose digital
brain passes along to human attendants any requests that it isn't
sure it can fulfill. IBM's Watson has been studying medical data in
hope of helping doctors make faster, more accurate diagnoses.
Amazon.com Inc.'s Echo, a smart household gadget in the form of
a small cylinder, functions as ears and voice for Alexa, an
artificial intelligence that answers spoken questions about topics
like weather and traffic. Google intends to roll out Google Home,
an Echo competitor that taps the search giant's vast data
repository to understand what users want.
Like Microsoft, all the tech behemoths aim to distribute
intelligence throughout their products.
"The next big step will be for the very concept of the 'device'
to fade away. Over time, the computer itself -- whatever its form
factor -- will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your
day," Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai wrote in an April letter
to shareholders.
Artificial intelligence, though, has proved remarkably foolish
at times. In March, Microsoft introduced Tay, a Twitter feed that
mimicked the texting habits of an American woman aged 18 to 24. But
online pranksters gamed Tay's learning mechanism, which led the bot
to tweet anti-Semitic rants.
As tech giants train their machine learning engines on ever
larger stores of data, the potential grows for users to feel
unnerved. To derive value from LinkedIn, Microsoft will need to
keep tabs on users' contacts, communications and activities. Its AI
will be informed by updates to LinkedIn profiles, which may
indicate that a user is considering a career move, and project
management systems, which may contain designs of future products
and other strategically sensitive information.
"How do they use that data to provide a truly convenient
experience without crossing the border into creepy ones?" asked
Forrester's Hammond.
At LinkedIn, users control how they share their data. Mr.
Nadella said that customers would decide what to share. But
Microsoft, like its peers at the center of the digital universe, is
betting those customers will let it mine their information because
they will get value from the insights it generates.
"When it comes to machine learning and analytics, it is a
tremendous opportunity for us," Mr. Nadella said.
Deepa Seetharaman, Jack Nicas and Daisuke Wakabayashi
contributed to this article.
Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 14, 2016 18:20 ET (22:20 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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