Live hearing start this week in russia and the u. S. Elections. Tomorrow executives from google, facebook and twitter will testify on russias use of social media. That will be before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee meeting. Live at 230 eastern on cspan2. Hearings continue wednesday is a social Media Executive text to fight for two committees. The first is at 9 30 a. M. Before the Senate Intelligence committee and later at 2 00 p. M. Eastern before the house intelligence committee. Both live on cspan three. You can also watch the hearings streaming live online at cspan. Org or listen live with the cspan radio app. The communicators visited several Technology Fairs this year. Heres a look at two of them beginning with researchers at microsoft washington d. C. Headquarters. I am a researcher at Microsoft Research and i work on project permission. The reason we think about that is because 60 to 70 of the epidemics are caused by pathogens who are maintained in animal populations. They are very difficult to monitor because if you take ebola, for example, these people. [inaudible] how do you monitor the population and whether or not they have ebola. Its very hard to do. Imagine using mosquito as a device because they go out and they take little blood samples for theres 30 million species of mosquitoes and they bite everything from animals, and for amphibians, reptiles, humans and chickens. Why would microsoft work on a project like that. Only think about Machine Learning, when we think about robotics, one of the things we want to understand is how will it be useful . This is an example where we know thats getting the right data is incredibly challenging so we believe there are some really important points where Machine Learning and robotics can sort of unlock the new data set to allow us to be more predictive. All right. Walk us through your model. Great. So in order to do this, to using mosquito as a device, we basically have to get through a few things. One, we need to collect mosquitoes which is actually harder than it sounds. Imagine we go outside and we get bitten by mosquitoes, but thats not really how works. They kind of sneak around and creep around and they get you when you least expect it. The First Technology was a robotic field biologist. This one stayed in the environment for over 20 hours and had to understand the insects that were. [inaudible] an interesting mosquito is one like this. Its a mosquito that is an example that where we collected it was very interesting. You really want to understand whats going on with that particular mosquito. When Something Like this flies into the trap, theres a sensor that looks at how its wings are moving and uses it as a fingerprint to tell it apart from other insects and other types of mosquitoes. Theres that moment where they make a decision on whether to captured or not. That sound that your hearing, its capturing another type of mosquito. So thats the trap right there. Yup and whats flying around right here is a type of mosquito that carries malaria in india so these are buzzing around and of course theres this little Smart Phone App and its trying, its analyzing those signatures, the shadows that they make to determine if it can be captured or not. At the moment, we get all of the digital data, what does the shadow look like, the environmental condition, temperature. People try to control them, but it turns out its very difficult to do because you have to apply things like insecticide at the right time. This will give you much more insight into the right place at the right time because we know exactly when they showed up and we can use those productive models of when they will show up in the future. Did you import these mosquitoes from india and are any of them carrying malaria. None of them are caring malaria. Their uninfected. These are very safe and actually, this room does not have a climate of india so they will die very quickly which is why theyre in this nice humid. Is there a i attached to this. Absolutely. So theres ai in this device which is in real time trying to make a decision. As i mentioned before, its looking at the movement of the shadows and has information about when and where these things showed up in the past so its really thinking about whether to capture this insect or not. And thats the ai component running in real time. This machine here in the middle, what is it communicating with. Right now im using bluetooth and its being recorded and it has on stronger memory so when you bring it out of the environment, that data set, im going to demonstrate ai. Im in a show you that as it thanks about these signals. Should we keep an eye. Keep an eye on the phone. Lets see. So im an issue for four right in the center. You will see them . Were trying to figure out if youre mosquito or not. Youre turning up red. So the red means. [inaudible] you can see some of the other selves that are closed seem very much like a shield. What is going to do with those mosquitoes. So once we get the mosquitoes back, we want to understand what theyve encountered in the environment. We dont want to presume we know. An example where we didnt know we needed to worry about this. We dont want to presume we know. They want to turn them into data. We do that through frequency. It turns it into digital data. To put that into perspective we get Genetic Information and any other bacteria that might be in there got. Now they want to reconstruct that picture. Thats where cloud scale ai comes in. We want to compare it against all known Genetic Information to give you back a recipe that says you have 90 mosquito, 5 dna in the mosquito, 1 malaria and if youre very unlike the it might present zika. In an unbiased way, we want to scan for everything. Thats what we do. If you look at that poster there, this is an example of this kind of mosquito in which we performed the scan in houston texas. What you see from this mosquito is that we reconstruct the ratio of components. Some homo sapiens, the virus in the same family of rabies which is very different from rabies nobody really understands what this virus is. As we do more and more experiments, which correlates known and known types. Another look at how microsoft is using technology. And now on the communicators, we want to introduce you to doctor eric of microsoft. What is your role here . My title is managing executive of microsoft. And what does that mean. It means in my purview are several laboratories across the world some called Microsoft Research, research and Development Lab for microsoft corporation. So we layman, are you the are in the d. Theres r d everywhere in microsoft. We are the big r and d. We do both and we work closely with teams as well as why we look to the blue sky and innovate over the horizon. What kind of projects are here. We span the gamma of what is called the computing sciences. Weve been getting into things like biology and fields that rely on computation. These days we hope to see a hard push on ai research. Theres been an Inflection Point in the technologies, it will be central in our mission at microsoft, which i love to say, empowering people and organizations to achieve more world. We look at iai and we see learning in automation and planning and so on as really being honest to empower people and organizations in new ways to get more done, to inspire and visualize. Many of the technologies where showing today in washington for that notion of how we empower people. How can we communicate how we do agriculture and complex data sets. Whats the definition of ai. It has several definitions. I like one that says its a science of intelligence to understand how it is that people thank you can get things done, how can we understand and harness those principles of intelligence in computational systems. Some people say that ai is doing things that have previously required people to do and that was one of the early definitions of the 1950s when the phrase ai was first used. How long have you been working in ai. Been working in ai since 1984. Im still passio in passion to get things done. In 1984, what was that project. Our team was learning and looking at core logical methods, as and bees to uncertainty. Even probability, science to grapple with the complexities of the open world. That paradigm, which back in those days was a small bunch of rebellious grad students became the dominant paradigm. How we invoke and understand how to take data and advise in the broad open world. The open world is typically far more complex than the machines that we build. These machines had to be humbled enough to understand what it is they dont know as well as what they do know to make progress in the world. You mentioned earlier, theres been an Inflection Point in Artificial Intelligence. What was that . To be clear to your viewers , the field of ai has been making advances continually for almost 45 50 years. However, the public sees these kinds of scaling and demonstrations like jeopardy being one by a computer or the chest leader of the world being beaten by machines. When i say Inflection Points, whats happened is in the past 15 years, the combination of incredible data resources becoming available now and people dont realize that in the late 80s, early 90s they had like a 100megabyte drive that was hard to come by. All of a sudden you can store data and all of a sudden almost all of the discourse has been digitized. That together has given us incredible quantities of data. That data has become the fuel of many algorithms including Machine Learning that learn to predict an act based on that data. Secondly, at the same time its really increased and its clear that the smart phone in our pocket today are on several dimensions as powerful or more powerful than those Gray Computers you saw the 1980s with the blue towers, and now theyre in our pocket. So the data plus incredible applications and an edible terrain to get their first and we have what i would call an Inflection Point. Last question, on a daily basis, how are we using ai. Whats a good example. In many examples, i drive to work, maybe half the way under complete automation in my car. Theres places we see it under the hood so many people forget that in windows ten, there was machinery going on in the os guessing what you are gonna do next and precomputing to jump ahead to make the computer more smarter and faster. Those under the hood applications are popping up everywhere now. Places like hospitals there is Incredible Opportunity to predict outcomes and guide patient therapy in a costeffective way to where its really needed. Our team has been looking at how to take large quantities of data and work to build models that can predict being readmitted within 30 days. If we do that within advance, we can do special things for those patients that would be too costly to do for all patients. Thank you for your time. Thank you we want to introduce you to William Mendoza of microsoft. What are you demonstrating. Im demonstrating how microsoft views Artificial Intelligence to make customer expenses better whether its for a company or an agency or some organization. What is your definition of ai in your definition of cognitive ability. You think about what humans do, being able to look at something and understand what it means and then be able to make intelligence actions. Has microsoft about the software that is starting to do that. Exactly. We have capabilities available we also offer framework to help an organization build out chat box. All right. What have you got to demonstrate. In this example i basically want to ensure my second car. I said hey, i need insurance and so itll pick up on insurance and offer these various experiences. So in other words are not talking to a human being. This is software responding to you. Correct. So now i flag auto and ask if im in existing customer. Ill pretend im lance for the moment no asked me for my pin number. There is capability to china to recognize your voice to your given a few prompts but if youre anything like me i always read my password and login. In this case is as a, this is a case for the customer has already provided information. I want to ensure this part of my daughter. Despite my best. [inaudible] selectively quote the ford. Okay analyses of ford taurus. In this, i will upload a photo and just to keep things interesting, this is demonstrating ca Computer Vision capability. I upload an image and ill do so but ill throw in a non card to see how it reacts. I threw in harry potter and not only did it recognize harry potter but it also describes what hes doing. Its not perfect but the computer hasnt been taught to know what the differences between a want or assigned. Im a good customer and i want to be honest, i can upload this picture of afford, and as i do that it was okay have got all the information i need to provide you this quote. Now takes a back and starts thinking and its pulling together information about me to figure out what it will charge me. That they get this quote in snl where, that is too expensive. Now, if you think about that, im not just saying no, im really offended that thats so expensive. Now this is where its done all it can and will bring in a live agent now she can have this dashboard of dynamics and continue to work the lead and give recommendations. We are here in washington. How do you see Government Agencies using this. If you think of 311, the nonemergency service line, first with a phone line and then they went to Customer Center available on the web. Theres a big event that occurs, rather than calling the call center, you could go with this website and say these are the top five common things. I dont know exactly where to go but if i can go to a bot which is quicker to call someone, those are ways you can save your resources. Is the Technology Online now. This is being used. This is made for demo, but all capabilities are there. William mendoza, thank you for your time. Thank you so much. The indicators oslo visited the taxpayer with developers showing their technology to members of congress and their staff. Here on capitol hill is doctor humana of phone to action. Doctor, what is phone to action. Its a platform that connects people. [inaudible] how did it come about. I used to be in government. I realized the need for technology that will connect people. At the time there were no tools, especially mobile that will connect people easily so they can take action about issues they care about. [inaudible] for example, a person can come in and say okay. [inaudible] and then take a picture. Okay, we take this picture. Its all set and it will go to the lawmakers immediately. How does it know where to go . We program it so all we need is an address and email or facebook because they are all lawmakers. You very set it up so if you put in a zip code it knows which lawmakers. Exactly. And its not just congress. A lot of changes happen at the local level. State legislatures, everyone. What was the biggest challenge setting that up. I think in the beginning it was the lack of interest. Three years ago it was hard to talk about it but today everybody is talking about politics. [inaudible] we also wear with a lot of other technologies like facebook and amazon and alexa. For example here, i can ask alexa to contact my legislature and i will get a phone call. Alexa ask him to contact my legislator. I will need more information. What is your phone number. 22304. Thank you. 202, 577, 9317. Calling now to talk to your legislature. When it calls, it would patch me through. It would patch it through to the member of congress. And you know you just gave your phone number out on tv. [inaudible] the other one we have is for text messaging. Also with the lawmakers about issues we care about, all i have to do is say take action and then i will be able to take action. Its another way to connect with lawmakers, in the past we always thought you can just talk to them in person and today, we can connect with them and participate in public policy. Are you finding that lawmakers are responding to this technology . Are you getting responses back. Yes, actually, a couple lawmakers are very interested, lawmakers actually want to hear from their constituents. If they give one side only, that is what they are going to believe. Does phone to action have a point of view . We are a technology company, we believe technology has the power to amplify people. In the past, you had to have rally with thousands and thousands of people. Today, one person can make a difference. We been talking. [inaudible] thank you. Ray able, what is the. At the company that allows people with disabilities to connect to technology. They take varying input and allows it to work with things like video games and things like that. Where you from. We are from pittsburgh. What is your background. My background, im on the business side of things, i have a personal connection. Talk about that. What is the connection,. So we grew up close to someone with cerebral palsy. When they were trying to play game when they were younger, the only game they could play was mario kart dash. The idea was if it works for that, how can we make it work for all games. Then we said lets make it work for smart homes and robot voice and whatevers out there, we would make sure its assessable. As far as looking at a regular gaming products, the assessable market is full of custommade oneoff solutions that are very expensive and proprietary. If you want to work with an xbo xbox, you to buy controller thats custommade which would be 12 or 1500 and only works for them. With our system, you can plug in whatever device you own and were not asking them to buy new ones, new devices. Well make it work. You do the configurations pick the device and its easily customized and a lot less expensive. Who is kevin. Kevin is a user of hours who wrote his neck playing hockey. After that he was unable to play on the ice, obviously, but he also was unable to play video games. So we adjusted his joystick and hes playing hockey again onlin online. Give us a quick demonstration. The user will come out and plug in their devices, whether its bluetoo