Microsoft Analysis 2024: A yr in overview

We live in a rapidly changing world.

Demographic shifts, climate change, political dynamics, and many other forces are creating urgent challenges in critical areas like global health and scientific discovery, environmental sustainability, food security, and societal resilience.

In this new AI era, technology is changing even faster than before, and the transition from research to reality, from concept to solution, now takes days or weeks rather than months or years.

“Today we are seeing so much AI research happening at the speed of conversation, to the point where even our top researchers feel that their heads are spinning, but working together, providing openness, providing greater access, we can see that we’ve made tremendous progress.”

– Peter Lee, President, Microsoft Research

In 2024, Microsoft Research continued its foundational research (opens in new tab) to expand the capabilities of large language models, but we also explored more deeply how smaller models (opens in new tab) can be trained for specific tasks. We discovered that by using smaller datasets and fewer compute resources, some small language models can demonstrate enhanced reasoning and other complex capabilities that were once considered the exclusive province of large-scale models.

Microsoft Research and its external collaborators used AI to enable earlier detection and treatment of esophageal cancer, which could lead to dramatically improved survival rates, and to accelerate the discovery of new drugs needed to treat infectious diseases that kill millions of people every year. And we continued to use AI to develop new tools for scientific discovery so that we and others in the scientific community can confront some of humanity’s most important challenges.

One team of Microsoft researchers created the world’s first large-scale model of the atmosphere, which could transform weather forecasting and our ability to predict and mitigate the effects of extreme weather events. Another team worked with global experts to create a generative AI tool that empowers non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to fight human trafficking.

We also opened a new research lab in Tokyo this year. It joins our other labs in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. And we launched a series of quarterly Research Forums to help update the global research community about some of the pivotal work we’re doing at Microsoft Research. Register for future episodesview presentations from previous forums, and explore our briefing book content.

This post highlights some of the work that Microsoft Research has done in 2024, along with academic and industry colleagues, to help drive real-world benefits for people worldwide.