Microsoft's secret weapons to get back to the top of the tech mountain: machine learning and artificial intelligence, some of the company's top R&D brains said Monday.
微软(Microsoft)的一些高层研发人员周一表示，微软拥有一些能让该公司重返科技高峰顶端的秘密武器：机器学习和人工智能。
Harry Shum, head of technology and research at Microsoft, said the big trends that his team is working on involves how a person interacts with a computer. 'We are now moving from the personal computer to personal computing,' he said at Microsoft's Think Next 2014 conference in Tel Aviv.
微软技术和研究负责人Harry Shum称，他的团队正在研发的一些大趋势涉及人与电脑如何互动。他在微软于特拉维夫举行的

Think Next 2014会议上表示，目前微软正从个人电脑向个人运算转变。
Microsoft is investing heavily in 'invisible user interface' technology, said Yoram Yaakobi, who heads up Microsoft's research and development center in Israel. Yaakobi said people in the future won't need to touch, type or speak to their devices -- the devices will 'know' what we want them to do before we ask. He called it 'UI.Next.'
微软以色列研发中心负责人Yoram Yaakobi称，微软对“无形用户界面”技术进行了巨大投资。Yaakobi表示，未来人们将无需通过触碰、打字或是说话的方式运行自己的设备，设备在用户发出请求之前就“知道”用户想让它们干什么。他把这种技术称为“UI.Next”。
'User interface started with the command prompt, moved to graphics, then touch, and then gestures,' Yaakobi said. 'It's now moving to invisible UI, where there is nothing to operate. The tech around you understands you and what you want to do' -- and that's what people expect, he said. 'We're putting this at the forefront of our efforts.'
Yaakobi称，用户界面一开始是命令提示符，后来变成图形界面，然后是触摸界面，在接下来是手势界面，现在开始向无形用户界面转变了，在这种界面下用户将没有什么可以操作。周围的技术会了解用户以及用户想要做什么，这也正是人们所期待的。他表示，微软正把这种技术的开发当作其首要任务。
Cortana, the virtual personal assistant Microsoft announced last week, is part of the company's push into machine learning, Yaakobi and Shum said. Microsoft has positioned Cortana as a challenger to Apple's Siri and Google Now.
Yaakobi和Shum表示，微软上周发布的虚拟个人助理Cortana是该公司大力发展机器学习举措的一部分。微软对Cortana的定位是，这是一款挑战苹果(Apple)的Siri和Google Now的产品。
Microsoft is pretty high on Cortana. Jeannette Wing, a vice president for research and one of Microsoft's experts in 'computational thinking' (read: machine learning) , said interacting with Cortana is more like a conversation than a response to a question.
微软对Cortana的期望非常高。Jeannette Wing是主管研发的副总裁，也是微软在“计算思维”（也就是机器学习）方面的专家之一，她表示，与Cortana互动更像是一次谈话，而不是对某一个问题做出回答。
'I speak to Cortana, Cortana responds. I speak back to it, and it understands that we're still in the same conversation. It knows from the first sentence I said what I'm referring to,' she said at the conference. 'That seems like such a small thing for human beings, but it's huge.'
Wing在Think Next 2014会议上表示，她跟Cortana说话，Cortana做出回答，她再跟它说话，Cortana就知道双方仍然在进行同一次谈话。Wing称，Cortana从她说的第一个句子就知道她指的是什么。她还表示，对人类而言，这似乎是很小的一件事，但它的意义非常重大。
Most major technology companies in the world are looking into machine learning, she said, and Microsoft is making major strides. 'We were in an AI winter, and now we're in an AI spring,' Wing said.
Wing称，世界上大多数大型科技公司都在研究机器学习，微软正在这方面取得长足的进步。Wing表示，微软过去处于AI（人工智能）的冬天，现在则处于AI的春天。