Ed Price - Hands-on Azure Cognitive Services: Applying AI and Machine Learning for Richer Applications

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In about 400 BC, the Greek tale of Talos was told (and vividly illustrated). It was later chronicled in the epic poem, Argonautica, and its namesake is a giant automaton made of bronze, by Hephaestus, as requested by his father Zeus. This first robot (mythically speaking) sported wings, protected Europa (a woman) in Crete (an island), threw rocks at ships, and met his demise when Medeas spirits drove him crazy enough to pull out his own nail (thus, disassemble himself). In the 300s (BC), Aristotle brought us his syllogistic logic, a deductive reasoning system. Hero of Alexandria applied mechanics, basic robotics, and wrote Automata in the first century AD. AI in robots continued in myths with Pandora, who was also created by Hephaestus (you know, its the story about the box), Pygmalians Galatea (thanks to Venus, this is a statue of a woman who came alive to bear a child; dont ask), and then Jewish lore brought us Golems (in the early 1200s, AD), who are intelligent clay automatons that cannot speak.

Likely, in 1495, Leonardo da Vinci expanded on the many clockmakers mechanical novelties to construct an automaton knight, and in 1515, we believe he continued his efforts to create a walking lion (presented to Francis I, the new King of France, and its said to have been able to open its chest to present the gift of lilies). In 1642, Pascal invented a mechanical calculator. Swifts Gullivers Travels (1726) seemed to have described an engine thats an AI computer and that forces knowledge on the poor Lilliputians. Punched cards came out in 1801, Mary Shelley scared us all with her intelligent Frankenstein in 1818, and in 1884, IBM got its start when Herman Hollerith invented a punched card tabulating machine to conduct the 1890 US census (thats the simplified explanation). At the 1939 Worlds Fair (in New York), Westinghouse unveiled Elektro, the mechanical man (he smoked), and Sparko, his mechanical dog.

Isaac Asimov wrote about robotics in 1950. Walt Disney (after having his Imagineers hack European wind-up novelties) developed a Dancing Man in 1961, he unveiled his tiki birds (which are in the tiki room) in 1963, he also recreated Abe Lincoln in 1963 for the 19641965 Worlds Fair, and he put the first animatronics in film with a bird in 1964s Mary Poppins. Ever since then, as computers evolved, weve been focused on building increasingly improved artificial intelligence in software and robotics (and weve been really hoping that our intelligent creations never take over and destroy us, like in Terminator, Matrix, or even WALL-E).

We intended this book to act as an introduction to Azure Cognitive Services, but also for it to become your guide to implementing Cognitive Services in real-world application scenarios. That means that we take you on a tour of everything that Cognitive Services has to offer, and, as you can imagine, thats quite a journey.

Azure Cognitive Services are broken down into services and APIs that explore decision, language, speech, and vision. With these APIs and technologies, you can create the future software that powers our computers and robots for centuries to come! (Or you can just make a silly website.) In this book, we take you on a journey to build an application, one step at a time. Please join us. After all, youre now walking in the footsteps of Aristotle, Hero, Hephaestus, Rabbi Loew (chief Golem mischief maker), Leonardo (not the turtle), Pascal, Gulliver, Mary Shelley, Hollerith, Elektro, Asimov, Disney, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and countless others. Its time to make a creation thats all your own.

To Rohit, our technical editor, for being so thorough, meticulous, detailed, careful, conscientious, diligent, scrupulous we are running out of synonyms, but seriously, you rock.

To Shrikant for his extreme patience and regular follow-ups; thank you for putting up with us. Ghosting you is virtually impossible; we tried!

To Smriti for believing in us and this project!