Microsoft Consolidates Agent Development: AI Frontiers Merges from Research into MAI

Perceive Beating AI Newsletter: Microsoft has moved AI Frontiers from Microsoft Research to Microsoft AI (MAI) under the leadership of Mustafa Suleyman. This lab was established in October 2023, focusing on research on small models and agents.

Projects such as AutoGen, FARA, Magentic-One, Magentic-UI, and Phi have been previously developed by this team. The multi-agent open-source framework AutoGen later merged into Microsoft's unified agent development framework, the Microsoft Agent Framework, along with the AI application development SDK Semantic Kernel.

AI Frontiers will continue to conduct cutting-edge research on agents and models. MAI itself is training a series of models and has formed the Superintelligence team, aiming to develop a "Humanist Superintelligence." Microsoft defines this as AI that is problem-specific, remains under human control, and serves humanity with high capability.

The former head of AI Frontiers, Ece Kamar, recently left Microsoft after a 16-year tenure. She considers establishing AI Frontiers as one of the highlights of her Microsoft career and has not yet announced her next destination.