It seems that Microsoft thought that Windows didn’t have enough artificial intelligence, and so decided to add it right into «Settings». After all, you need something to load the neural units available in modern chips. Company introduced a small language model Mu that will help users find settings faster in Windows 11.
Small models are better suited for local execution right on your laptop or NPU PC. Mu will run concurrently with the familiar Phi Silica language model that Microsoft has integrated into Copilot+ PC. Both language models should work together to provide a «agent» experience in system settings in the future. In other words, instead of digging through dozens of submenus, you can simply write: «Make the screen dimmer» or «How do I turn on night mode?», and Mu will do it or tell you.
Microsoft describes Mu as an efficient model with 330 million parameters optimized for small deployments. It is based on a transformational encoder-decoder architecture. The model has been trained to recognize and respond to user requests so that everything works quickly, accurately, and without cloud delays. Mu will run entirely on the system’s local NPU, providing responses at a speed of over 100 tokens per second. This is what should ensure a smooth user experience in the setup.
Microsoft designed Mu to be a highly optimized «sibling» of Phi Silica, using several techniques to reduce the number of parameters and increase efficiency. The small language model was trained using GPUs NVIDIA A100 on the Azure Machine Learning platform, going through several phases and applying methods developed while working on Phi models. Thanks to various optimizations, Mu delivers performance levels similar to Phi-3.5-mini while taking up ten times less space. The company has worked with Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm to ensure Mu is compatible with processors that have embedded NPUs.
As a result, Mu will be at the heart of the new settings interface in Windows 11. This model will provide a new «agent» experience in «Settings» with improved AI. Microsoft says it was a major challenge to create an AI that can navigate hundreds of Windows settings and explain them to a person without experience. First, they had to create a confusing «Settings» section and then bring in AI to clean it up? For many users, the good old «Control Panel» seemed friendly enough and didn’t require a separate AI assistant to set up the system.
Source: techspot
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