Alicia Moniz - Beginning Azure Cognitive Services: Data-Driven Decision Making Through Artificial Intelligence

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During the holiday season of 2019, Microsoft debuted an ad campaign featuring a little girl using her tablet to have a conversation with reindeer in her yard. The tablet was translating reindeer grunts into English the little girl could understand. The graphic at the end said Microsoft AI, but what the commercial was really showing you was some of the ability of Cognitive Services (although Reindeer is not a currently supported language must still be in preview!).

Unfortunately, we will not be presenting a demo within this book of how to use a device to speak to reindeer as theyre unable to sign a book contract. The good news is that we will be presenting to you a wide variety of demos, labs, and case studies about what you can do with Cognitive Services. We five authors came together as a group of AI and data professionals that have been fortunate enough to speak all around the world about the exciting things that can be done with this suite whether or not youre in data or AI or somewhere between the two. We all followed different paths to our work in AI and our work on this book some as data professionals and some as AI-focused professionals.

What all of us hope you take away from this book is that no matter your career path or role, the abilities of Cognitive Services are within your reach. This book will walk you through a variety of no-code, low-code, and code-heavy methods of using these Cognitive Services to put the power of AI in your apps, websites, personal projects, professional projects, and everything in between. All of us have had people help us along the way as we learned these technologies, and our hope is that this book provides a useful kick start to you on your AI journey whether youre embarking on that for fun, for money, or both.

The intended audience for this book is really anybody who is interested in playing around with AI technologies. Whether youre interested in applying AI to language, vision, speech, chatbots, or anything surrounding those abilities, this book is for you. Many of the examples contained in this book have been refined over the years as weve presented and discussed these at various conferences, events, and workshops. If you are looking for a fun side project, this book should help you. If youre looking to bolster your understanding of how some of these technologies work, this book is for you. If you are looking to add some AI projects to your resume, this book will help you do that as well.

Finally, we would be remiss if we did not also mention the ethical issues in play with how these algorithms are created, trained, and tested. Our book covers that as well because its truly important, especially if you plan on using this book as a jump start to a professional AI journey.

AI has been, is, and will be a part of our world for a very long time. If youre interested in how it works and interested in being a part of seeing what it can do for you and others, this book is for you. Lets get started!

Thank you to Laurie Carr for finding me at my first SQL PASS conference and encouraging me to get involved. My lifes path was altered the day your kindness found me. I will forever be grateful to my #SQLfamily and my family at Avanade for the opportunities that I have been given to grow and contribute to the Microsoft community. Thank you, mom, for instilling in me my capabilities for hard work and lifelong learning. And my eternal gratitude to my family Tiana, Isaiah, and David for their patience in giving me the space to chase my passions and, of course, write this book!

Alicia Moniz

Id like to thank Roger Bennett, Michael Davies, and Jonathan Williamson of Men in Blazers, whose crap podcast inspired me to look into using sentiment analysis in Cognitive Services for the Premier League Mood Table on the show. Thanks also go to the best boss Ive ever had, Brad Ball, for his sentiment analysis blog that started me on the journey that led to this book. Finally, thanks to my wife Jennifer for putting up with me while this book came together, my daughter Anna for complaining that the donut bot doesnt bring donuts, and my son Eric for noting that AI is really just a bunch of if-then statements that run quickly.

Matt Gordon

For my mom and dad, #Data #PowerPlatform community friends, and Avanade for inspiring and supporting me.

Ida Bergum

To my grandma and my family, for your unconditional love. To my co-authors, for being part of this journey together.

Mia Chang

I would like to thank a number of people who made this book possible, including my fellow authors and Apress. I would also like to thank Chris Johnson for getting her started with computers, my dad for encouraging me to study computers in college and I hope this book will inspire my two favorite students, Stuart and Corinne, to be inspired to see their names on a cover of a book someday.