Microsoft announces 100 new services and updates to help accelerate AI transformation

Microsoft announces 100 new services and updates to help accelerate AI transformation

Microsoft has introduced around 100 new services and updates as part of its
AI-forward strategy, including key developments within its productivity and security offerings. The
announcements were made at Microsoft Ignite 2023 – the company’s annual conference for
developers and IT professionals.

As we reach the end of 2023, nearly every industry in Africa is undergoing a collective transformation,
with estimates that AI could expand the economy as much as 50 percent of current GDP by 2030 if
the continent could capture just 10 percent of the global AI market.

Forward-thinking organisations and enterprising startups alike are discovering entirely new ways of
working and harnessing the power of AI to address some of society’s most daunting challenges—from
improving access to quality legal services in South Africa to extending the reach of healthcare
professionals in low-resourced communities in Nigeria.

Microsoft Ignite is a showcase of the advances being developed to help customers, partners and
developers achieve the total value of Microsoft’s technology and reshape the way work is done.

There are strong signals of AI’s potential to transform work across the continent. As it stands, more
than half of employees in Africa and the Middle East say they would change their minds about
seeking out a new job if their current employer invested in new technology like automation. Eight
months ago, Microsoft introduced Copilot for Microsoft 365 to reduce digital debt and increase
productivity so people can focus on the work that is uniquely human. Already, the company’s
research, from a combination of surveys and experiments, demonstrates significant productivity gains:

  • 70 percent of Copilot users said they were more productive, and 68 percent said it improved
    the quality of their work; 68 percent say it helped jumpstart the creative process.
  • Overall, users were 29 percent faster at specific tasks (searching, writing and summarising).

The company’s latest announcements are geared towards helping accelerate existing progress,
enabling faster and more profound transformation across sectors. Key updates include:

  • Rethinking cloud infrastructure
    Microsoft has led with groundbreaking advances like partnerships with OpenAI and the integration of
    ChatGPT capabilities into tools used to search, collaborate, work and learn. As we accelerate further
    into AI, Microsoft is rethinking cloud infrastructure to ensure optimisation across every layer of the
    hardware and software stack.

    At Ignite we are announcing new innovations across our datacentre fleet, including the latest
    AI optimised silicon from our industry partners and two new Microsoft-designed chips.

  • Microsoft Azure Maia, an AI Accelerator chip designed to run cloud-based training and
    inferencing for AI workloads such as OpenAI models, Bing, GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT.
  • Microsoft Azure Cobalt, a cloud-native chip based on Arm architecture optimised for
    performance, power efficiency and cost-effectiveness for general purpose workloads.
  • Additionally, we are announcing the general availability of Azure Boost, a system that makes
    storage and networking faster by moving those processes off the host servers onto purpose-
    built hardware and software. 

Complementing our custom silicon, we are expanding partnerships with our silicon providers to
provide infrastructure options for customers.

  • We’ll be adding AMD MI300X accelerated virtual machines (VMs) to Azure. The ND MI300
    VMs are designed to accelerate the processing of AI workloads for high range AI model
    training and generative inferencing, and will feature AMD’s latest GPU, the AMD Instinct
    MI300X.
  • The preview of the new NC H100 v5 Virtual Machine Series built for NVIDIA H100 Tensor
    Core GPUs, offering greater performance, reliability and efficiency for mid-range AI training
  • and generative AI inferencing. We’re also announcing plans for the ND H200 v5 Virtual
    Machine Series, an AI-optimised VM featuring the upcoming NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPU.

Extending the Microsoft Copilot experience
To go beyond individual productivity, we are extending Microsoft Copilot offerings across solutions to
transform productivity and business processes for every role and function.

Top Copilot-related announcements include:

  • Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365: The new Microsoft Copilot Dashboard shows
    customers how Copilot is impacting their organisation. To empower teamwork, new features
    for Copilot in Outlook help users prep for meetings, and during meetings, new whiteboarding
    and note-taking experiences for Copilot in Microsoft Teams keep everyone on the same page.
  • Microsoft Copilot Studio: This is a new end-to-end conversational AI platform that allows
    organisations to build their own copilots from scratch or adapt out-of-the-box copilots with
    their own data, logic, and actions relevant to their business needs.  
  • Bringing Copilot to everyone: Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise will now simply become
    Copilot. With these changes, when signed in with a Microsoft Entra ID, customers using
    Copilot in Bing, Edge and Windows will receive the benefit of commercial data protection.

Unlocking more value for developers with Azure AI

We continue to expand choice and flexibility in generative AI models to offer developers the most
comprehensive selection. With Model-as-a-Service, a new feature in the model catalog we
announced at Build, pro developers will be able to easily integrate latest AI models such as Llama 2
from Meta and upcoming premium models from Mistral and Jais from G42 as API endpoints to their
applications. They can also customise these models with their own data without needing to worry
about setting up and managing the GPU infrastructure, helping eliminate the complexity of
provisioning resources and managing hosting.

With the preview of Azure AI Studio, there is now a unified and trusted platform to help organisations
more easily explore, build, test and deploy AI apps – all in one place. With Azure AI Studio, you can
build your own copilots, train your own, or ground other foundational and open-source models with
data that you bring.

And Vector Search, a feature of Azure AI Search, is now generally available, so organisations can
generate highly accurate experiences for every user in their generative AI applications.

The new GPT-3.5 Turbo model with a 16K token prompt length will be generally available and GPT-4
Turbo will be in public preview in Azure OpenAI Service at the end of November 2023, GPT-4
Turbo will enable customers to extend prompt length and bring even more control and efficiency to
their generative AI applications.

GPT-4 Turbo with Vision is coming soon to preview and DALLE·3 is now available in public preview
in Azure Open AI Service, helping fuel the next generation of enterprise solutions along with GPT-4,
so organisations can pursue advanced functionalities with images. And when used with our Azure AI
Vision service, GPT-4 Turbo with Vision even understands video for generating text outputs, furthering
human creativity.

Introducing new experiences in Windows to empower employees, IT and developers
To further our mission of making Windows the home for developers and the best place for AI
development, we announced a host of new AI and productivity tools for developers, including
Windows AI Studio.

Announcing NVIDIA AI foundry service

Aimed at helping enterprises and startups supercharge the development, tuning and deployment of
their own custom AI models on Microsoft Azure, NVIDIA will announce their AI foundry service
running on Azure. The NVIDIA AI foundry service pulls together three elements – a collection of
NVIDIA AI Foundation models, NVIDIA NeMo framework and tools, and NVIDIA DGX Cloud AI
supercomputing and services – that give enterprises an end-to-end solution for creating custom

generative AI models. Businesses can then deploy their models with NVIDIA AI Enterprise software
on Azure to power generative AI applications, including intelligent search, summarisation and content
generation.

Strengthening defenses in the era of AI
Microsoft is combining the power of leading solutions in SIEM, XDR and generative AI for security into
the first unified security operations platform to help defenders by simplifying the complexity of their
environment. We are also adding new embedded experiences of Security Copilot across the Microsoft
Security portfolio.

Microsoft is offering a free Data Science course to help you with your Data Science Career

Microsoft is offering a free Data Science course to help you with your Data Science Career

Azure Cloud Advocates at Microsoft are offering you an opportunity with a free Data Science course to get on track with a Data Science Career. It features a 10-week, 20-lesson curriculum on Data Science. Each lesson includes pre-lesson and post-lesson quizzes, written instructions to complete the lesson, a solution, and an assignment.

The course lets you build projects as you learn, which the Advocates say is “a proven way for new skills to ‘stick’. “I hope this curriculum helps you reach your data-focused goals“, the team shares.

free Data Science course for beginners made with sketchnote with other details

The free Data Science course teaches you how to deal with data. How you can get, store, process, and make sense of data. You will also learn how to train, deploy, and consumer model in Azure.

Students will be able to get free certification vouchers through the Microsoft Student Hub page. By verifying your enrollment at an accredited academic institution.

Check out the course here for more information or open it in GitHub here https://aka.ms/datascience-beginners.

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Mecer Inter-Ed and Microsoft are giving 10 South African ladies the opportunity to break into tech

Mecer Inter-Ed and Microsoft are giving 10 South African ladies the opportunity to break into tech

Mecer Inter-Ed (MIE) and Microsoft are giving 10 South African ladies the opportunity to break into tech or advance their IT careers with an internationally accredited Microsoft certification. The initiative dubbed #SheCanDoIT aims to evolve the ICT sector through the growth and enablement of women. It targets South African ladies between the ages of 21 and 30 who are passionate, curious, and have the desire to learn about technology.

Each selected lady will receive a laptop, Microsoft course, and exam vouchers. They will get mentorship sessions with female leaders in the ICT field, as well as step-by-step assistance from Mecer Inter-Ed’s qualified talent acquisition department. This Mercer says is “to ensure these South African ladies are ready and equipped for their new careers in IT“.

MIE and Microsoft are committed to investing in programs that support equality. This is why we are launching the #SheCanDoIT campaign, which aims to bring a fresh approach and offer unique opportunities to women in the tech field.

a young lady or woman siting and smiling with an open laptop infront of her,  mecer inter-ed iand microsoft logos and details of initiative for south african women

Mecer Inter-Ed, Microsoft #SheCanDoIt initiative requirements and steps

You must be a South African lady between the ages of 21 and 30.

Apply to participate in the program via this link https://forms.office.com/r/dsp6bFbBg4 

Kindly NOTE: Only applicants who meet the eligibility criteria will be selected.

– Successful applicants will be required to complete at least one Microsoft certification course and exam

– As part of this initiative, you will receive a complimentary laptop sponsored by Mustek Ltd

– If you are chosen, you will get to meet inspiring female leaders in the ICT field

– You will receive step-by-step assistance from Mecer Inter-Ed’s qualified talent acquisition department

Don’t forget to share this with your friends looking for an opportunity to break into tech or advance their tech careers.

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New Microsoft Skills for Jobs Learning Pathways program brings 350 courses, 6 career certificates

New Microsoft Skills for Jobs Learning Pathways program brings 350 courses, 6 career certificates

Microsoft is introducing a new Skills for Jobs Learning Pathways program that brings free access to 350 courses and six career essential certificates. This program builds on the success of the Microsoft global skilling program which has since reached over 80 million people worldwide with digital skills. With the company seeking to increase access to digital and foundational skills.

In Kenya, the global skills program has impacted an estimated 189,000 people, with 4,471 Kenyans completing the Learning Paths through the initiative. The Microsoft Skills for Jobs Learning Pathways program is focused on ensuring that economic opportunity is inclusive. So that job seekers all over the world have access to the skills, technology, and opportunities they need to succeed in a changing economy.

LinkedIn, Microsoft and GitHub logo's on background showing company offering Skills for Jobs Learning Pathways mapped to jobs

Digital transformation has accelerated across all industries, resulting in the creation of new tech and tech-enabled jobs and driving economic growth. However, Microsoft has discovered that skills alone are insufficient for people to obtain the jobs they desire, particularly in the most in-demand positions. People, particularly those changing careers, must be able to demonstrate these skills to hiring managers.”

Phyllis Migwi, the Microsoft Kenya Country Manager.

The Microsoft Skills for Jobs Pathways provide people who have been excluded from the digital economy with in-demand foundational, role-based, and technical skills, certifications, and connections to jobs and opportunities.

As part of the new initiative, Microsoft and LinkedIn will provide free access to 350 new courses and easy-to-follow learning paths, as well as six Career Essentials Certificates for six of the most in-demand jobs. The courses will be available in eight languages, including English, French, and Arabic, to help job seekers showcase their skills to employers and land jobs.

LinkedIn learning pathways for several in-demand roles and the skills needed

Microsoft Skills for Jobs Learning Pathways

Microsoft is helping learners prepare for tech and tech-enabled roles with new learning paths and certificates for some of the most in-demand roles in the digital economy including Administrative Professional, Project Manager, Business Analyst, Systems Administrator, Software Developer and Data Analyst,” explains Migwi. “To ensure a better fit for learners, the company has invested not only in unlocking content but also in developing content for each of the career essential certificate paths.”

Foundational Skills will be established through three new learning paths: digital literacy and productivity, soft skills, and entrepreneurship. For learners progressing from Foundational Skills to the next level, there are six career certificates available.

The courses combine the knowledge from experts in the field, Microsoft product expertise, and a purposeful building of introductory courses. All the courses are available on LinkedIn at opportunity.linkedin.com.

In addition, Microsoft-developed courses are also available on Microsoft Community Training (MCT) and in downloadable format for use on other Learning Management Systems (LMS) for partners. Microsoft is also collaborating with 200 nonprofits around the world, governments, intergovernmental organizations, foundations, and other private sector partners. It is estimated that by 2025, Microsoft will help train and certify 10 million people with new skills.

Check out what’s new on our YouTube channel. Subscribe to follow for the latest videos and news in the ecosystem.

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How Python is used in Cryptocurrency

How Python is used in Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency is something that most people are familiar with. If you are not, then it is a form of digital currency that’s used primarily for investment purposes. However, there are other sides outside of investment, like gambling, and even buying one’s groceries. Countries all around the world are starting to regulate it and are encouraging stores of all kinds to accept it as a form of payment.

Python, a programming language, is one of the most used programming languages in the cryptosphere. This article will explore  Python, explaining what it is, how it’s used for crypto, as well as why you should be using it for your projects.

What Is Python?

Python is a computer programming language, used for many different things. Its most popular uses are to build websites and to test software, though. It is without a doubt one of the world’s leading programming languages. You could even go as far as to say that it is the most popular. Ordinary crypto users have no use for Python. It’s only ever used by people who’re building cryptocurrencies or creating their own platforms. It is, therefore, not something the average trader needs to know much about.

How Is It Used?

Python is most commonly used to create cryptocurrencies. Many major cryptos were made using the Python language. It can of course also be used to build platforms and sites, like gambling sites. Most of the web’s BNB gambling sites (BNB being one of the major cryptocurrencies) use Python. The same is also true for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP sites. However, if you plan on making your own currency using Python, then you are going to need a lot of experience. It’s not easy making a cryptocurrency, or a site for that matter. There are a number of courses you can take on Python specific to crypto development.

Algorithmic Trading

Another use of Python in the cryptosphere is the creation of algorithmic trading bots. If you are somebody who’s interested in trading crypto but does not have the time to manage investments personally, then the creation of an algorithmic trading bot is something that’s worth considering. Most algorithmic trading bots are made using Python. The creation of an algorithmic trading bot will mean that you do not have to manage your investments yourself. That said, it’s still a good idea to set stop loss and take profit, just in case your bot malfunctions.

Trading Crypto

Deviating from this post’s topic for a moment, it’s important to briefly discuss crypto. If you plan on using Python to create bots (or your own currencies) then you will no doubt be handling crypto. You need to manage crypto carefully. Unfortunately, crypto has cost a lot of people a lot of money. Not carefully managing your investments could lead to you bankrupting yourself. There are various courses available online, that you can use to learn how to trade. Taking a course before getting involved with crypto is something that most experts recommend.

a computer screen shwing python lines of code
Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash

Benefits of Using Python

Easy to Use

While Python is a high-level programming language, it’s still easy to learn. This is because Python has an English-like syntax. Learning to use Python is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is take a course in it online or read guides. Taking a course is probably the better option because you will receive instructions from somebody who’s experienced in the language. Before taking a course, research the person leading it. Ensure they are qualified, experienced, and know what they are talking about.

Python is Free

You do not have to pay anything to use Python. However, you might have to pay to sign up for a course. If you are on a budget, then it is without a doubt one of the best programming languages for you to learn. Something else worth noting is that because it’s free, it means that you will have more money to set aside and use for crypto. With Python, everything can be built from scratch. Bear in mind you will have to pay for things like website hosting and domain names if you are going to use it to create websites. Those things are not free.

Huge Library

Python’s standard library is huge. In it, you can find more or less any function that you could ever need. If you are trying to make crypto, then you will be able to find many functions there that can be of use to you.

Python is a popular programming language, and it’s not hard to see why. If you want to use it to make a cryptocurrency, create a platform, or design an algorithmic trading bot, then consider the points outlined here, and take some time to master Python first.

Featured image: Photo by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash

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AI Accelerator Africa 2022 – Black and Brilliant, Codecademy present AI bootcamp

AI Accelerator Africa 2022 – Black and Brilliant, Codecademy present AI bootcamp

Black and Brilliant is partnering with Codecademy to launch the second edition of the AI Accelerator Africa program. The free 10-week applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) bootcamp will focus on upskilling in data science, programming and data engineering, and user experience. Program participants will use Codecademy’s self-guided, hands-on learning platform for the courses. 

The program will provide participants with mentorship from industry leaders and subject experts from global companies. Google, Fujitsu, and Shopify mentors will guide on topics like user experience, ethics and bias, and the business of AI.

AI Accelerator Africa program 2022

Applications for the AI Accelerator Africa 2022 bootcamp open March 1st. It will start on 14th March through to May 16th 2022. The course will have small group discussions and panels as well as one-on-one sessions with coaches. The program is open to everyone irrespective of their professional or educational background. It is however giving higher priority to people with previous experience with Python in this cohort.

The Black and Brilliant Advocacy Network is working with Codecademy to bring the program to Africa and empower a new generation of tech talent in the region. Noting “We want to on-ramp people who have potential to be the next generation of AI Superstars – regardless of their backgrounds or educational attainment. From people that did not graduate High School but acquired coding skills along the way, to those with advanced STEM degrees looking to change lanes.”

The program is a chance to kill two birds with one stone says Tony Effik, co-founder of Black and Brilliant. He tells TechRepublic it will help blacks get higher-paying AI jobs and make AI less discriminatory towards communities of color. Effik adds that there is also a need for artificial intelligence capacity building across Africa. Telling ZDNet that talented young African technologists need to be better supported.

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