preface

With nearly 30 years of experience as a developer and applied researcher, I have been involved in fundamental technology shifts from the early days. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is one of those areas where the hype and the fear of missing out reach stratospheric levels! Organizations are trying to understand this new technology and how to implement it. Some of this means trying to gain an edge; in other cases, it is responding to the market and the pressure from the board and CEOs to join the trend.

At Microsoft, I have the privilege of being part of the Azure AI platform engineering team, helping develop some of our advanced AI technologies, such as Azure OpenAI, and Azure AI Services, including speech, vision, and small language models (e.g., the new Phi family of models). Part of my role has been collaborating with many Fortune 500 companies that are our clients. These companies are scattered around the world, representing different industry domains, with many of them being leaders in their fields.