[Abstract]

We all know that AI is likely to transform society as a whole. However, even now, the foundation of AI still has significant gaps. First, we will examine some of the foundational capabilities of AI. If AI is to become pervasive and serve as infrastructure for society, what gaps do we need to fill? What are the innovation frontiers for the foundational aspects?Second, the world has been fascinated by AI’s capabilities, particularly in natural language processing, vision, speech, and other cognitive functions. However, when discussing AGI or human intelligence in general, there are many dimensions of human intelligence that we still do not know how to replicate using AI technologies. For AI to be truly successful and continue pushing boundaries, we must understand how to advance towards these other dimensions of human intelligence. This is another focus area for our lab.Third, we must go beyond merely having AI-enabled chatbots. People speculate that AI will solve many societal challenges. We need to transition from merely addressing research problems to figuring out how to create real-world impact and ultimately solve these societal challenges. There are still significant gaps today, and this is one of the areas where Microsoft Research has been dedicating considerable effort. In this talk, I will share brief information about how Microsoft Research is working to fill these gaps. Additionally, I will discuss the R&D Talent Fostering Platform of Microsoft Research that I am running in Korea to encourage more students to apply.

[Biography]

Miran Lee is the Director of the Microsoft Research Accelerator Group at Microsoft Research, responsible for academic collaboration in Korea and the Asia-Pacific region. Miran joined Microsoft Research Asia in 2005 as a university relations manager to build long-term and mutually beneficial relationships with academia. She is based in Korea, where she engages with leading research universities, research institutes, and relevant government agencies. She establishes strategies and directions, identifies business opportunities, designs various programs and projects, and manages the budget. She works with students, researchers, faculty members, and university administrators to build strong partnerships and works closely with the research groups at Microsoft Research, focusing on research collaboration, curriculum development, talent fostering, and academic exchanges. She has successfully run many global and regional programs such as Gaming & Graphics, Web-Scale NLP, Machine Translation, eHealth, SORA (Software Radio), Kinect, Microsoft Azure for Research, and Content Creation. She is currently leading three themes: ‘Discovery’, ‘Health and Life Science’, and ‘Brain-inspired AI’ as a member of the global v-team. Before her current role, Miran Lee co-founded Smart Systems, which specializes in IT outsourcing services in Illinois, United States. As CEO of Smart Systems, she successfully led the business with more than 100 percent annual growth. From 1993 to 2002, she worked at British Telecom Korea in various positions ranging from systems engineer to account director to vice president. Lee also worked at Samsung SDS, where she was responsible for International VAN (Value Added Network) businesses and led the International VAN business team. She started her business career as a system developer at General Electric Information Services, where she developed email, EDI, and in-house applications.