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Serious Gaming: Building Better Communities Playing Minecraft

Who says playing video games is a waste of time? Surely not the adults and kids around the world who are “playing” Minecraft and building 3D models of safer and more livable public spaces and communities in collaboration with Block by Block and UN-Habitat.

Pamela Rentz's picture
Pamela Rentz
group at table The World Has Product Ideas—and So Can You

From where do organizations—both big and small—get product ideas? Most often, pioneers and revolution makers have ideas that are homegrown, but today the market is such that the world has ideas. Our industry has plenty of patterns, trends, and ideas to work on and augment.

Mukesh Sharma's picture
Mukesh Sharma
blurry photo The Blurred Lines between the Open Source and Closed Source Worlds

The open source and closed sourced worlds need each other—not only for healthy competition, but more importantly, for healthy collaboration, too. Mukesh Sharma looks at recent collaborative efforts between the open source and closed source communities and what is driving these changes.

Mukesh Sharma's picture
Mukesh Sharma
meaning Understanding the True Meaning of Quality

Day-to-day testing techniques, strategy, approach, and automation are all things that teams understand and will continue to implement, but how many teams understand the elements of purpose, belonging, transcendence, and storytelling as they apply to software quality?

Mukesh Sharma's picture
Mukesh Sharma
Expanding AI for Earth in 2018

In an ambitious undertaking, Microsoft is pledging $50 million over the next five years to expand Microsoft’s AI for Earth program and put artificial intelligence technology in the hands of individuals and organizations around the world who are working to protect our planet.

Pamela Rentz's picture
Pamela Rentz
artificial brain Google and Microsoft Expand Artificial Intelligence Research

Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting smarter, but there’s still a lot to learn about this growing field. To that end, several tech giants recently announced programs to help take AI and machine learning from the nascent stage of development to solving sophisticated challenges across virtually every industry.

Pamela Rentz's picture
Pamela Rentz
minecraft Building Collaborative AI by Catching Minecraft Pigs

For artificial intelligence (AI) to become useful in our everyday lives, AI must have the ability to work with other agents and humans in order to function in complex environments. At Microsoft, one AI research approach involves creepers, endermen, zombies, skeletons, Iron Golems and, yes, those pigs.

Pamela Rentz's picture
Pamela Rentz
partnership on AI logo Artificial Intelligence Needs Best Practices

Many predict artificial intelligence will someday cure cancer, clean up our environment, drastically improve our cities, and send us to Mars. However, with the potential benefits come risk and concern about what exactly are artificial intelligence best practices and a need for guidelines.

Pamela Rentz's picture
Pamela Rentz