Windows 10 April 2018 Update Now Available For All With The Help Of AI
Today, Microsoft announced that the April 2018 Update is now available for all Windows 10 PCs. The company says that it was able to achieve broad availability in a relatively short period of time thanks in part to machine learning.
"Our AI approach intelligently selects devices that our feedback data indicate would have a great update experience and offers the April 2018 Update to these devices first," writes Microsoft's John Cable, Program Management Director for Windows Servicing and Delivery. "As our rollout progresses, we continuously collect update experience data and retrain our models to learn which devices will have a positive update experience.
"Our AI/Machine Learning approach started with a pilot program during the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update rollout. "For the April 2018 Update rollout, we substantially expanded the scale of AI by developing a robust AI machine learning model to teach the system how to identify the best target devices based on our extensive listening systems."
Microsoft's leveraging of artificial intelligence and machine learning allowed the company to achieve 250 million installs of the April 2018 update in less than two months. According to Microsoft, it took the Fall Creators Update twice as long to achieve the same feat.
The AI model has also allowed the company to react faster to problems that crop up with major operating system updates. We've seen this recently when Microsoft cut off access to the April 2018 Update for systems with certain Intel or Toshiba SSDs installed. In the case of the former, systems were experience constant crashes or UEFI screen reboots, while the latter experienced reduced battery life in laptop systems.
Microsoft also identified a problem with Avast's antivirus software, which was causing problems for some customers. Once the problem was isolated, Microsoft was again able to block the update to prevent more people from encountering issues.
Microsoft says that if you haven't already received the Windows 10 April 2018 Update (version 1803), you should be receiving it automatically soon from Windows Update.
