6 ms·

Great video. I met Leslie once, sat on the bus beside him on the way to a conference around 8 years ago. He wasn't the chattiest, but you bring up his work, he

Great video. I met Leslie once, sat on the bus beside him on the way to a conference around 8 years ago. He wasn't the chattiest, but you bring up his work, he likes to talk. I think he was just over 70 years old, but still incredibly sharp. At the time Microsoft Research were shutting down their valley office, but they would still let him come in there - last one to put the lights out (metaphorically for computer science research at the big IT companies). Nowadays, he couldn't do the research work he did there and at other places at any big IT company - it's R&D, with the emphasis on "D".

peppertree 4y ago
I believe VMWare "adopted" Microsoft's research team, but that's the last I heard of the team. These days the most interesting corporate research happens at Google, Nvidia, OpenAI. I guess the forefront of research has moved onto ML and many old school researchers got left behind.
- InefficientRed 4y ago
  There is tons of formal methods research happening in industry. Way more than in the days of Microsoft research silicon valley
  - shadowfox 4y ago
    Out of curiosity, which companies do this sort of research?
    - mirker 4y ago
      AWS had a paper in SOSP on verifying parts of S3 https://assets.amazon.science/07/6c/81bfc2c243249a8b8b65cc2135e4/using-lightweight-formal-methods-to-validate-a-key-value-storage-node-in-amazon-s3.pdf https://assets.amazon.science/07/6c/81bfc2c243249a8b8b65cc21...
- metadat 4y ago
  There's lots of other research happening all over, but gets little attention probably due to non-existent or otherwise poor marketing beyond publishing papers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rhplus 4y ago
  TLA+ and other formal language research is pursued by the RISE group in Microsoft Research: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/research-software-engineering-rise/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/research-soft...
avgcorrection 4y ago
> I think he was just over 70 years old, but still incredibly sharp. Nice... I don’t think someone at his level becomes dull at such a young senior age.
IMTDb 4y ago
> Nowadays, he couldn't do the research work he did there and at other places at any big IT company - it's R&D, with the emphasis on "D". I, on the other hand, am amazed by the progress being done today, and the research paper released on an almost weekly basis by companies like Google, Microsoft and co. Just look at the language and image models that are released, the progress on computer vision etc. I played with the playground of OpenAI GPT-3 and I am blown away at the result. It's not perfect, but it's orders of magnitude better than what we had easily access to just few month ago. I have started using it in my day-to-day life on some specific tasks, and I can't wait to see the next versions. I can't even start to fathom the amazing products people are going to build around it in the next decade. It's absolutely true that these models/research serve the purpose of the company building them... but even Leslie says in the video that he did his entire career in the industry because that's where he saw many interesting challenges, and that his whole research was a means to an end. R&D is still alive and kicking, and is going faster than ever. You might just be looking at the past with rose tainted glasses, and needlessly undermining the present.
- vfclists 4y ago
  AI and ML are not true computer science because no one knows how these models work, not even the developers
  - ryanklee 4y ago
    Why does epistemic purity matter? The results are astounding.
  - mirker 4y ago
    People knew how AI worked when AI meant “graph search.” But now solving chess is not AI and linear (and nonlinear) regression is…
    - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
      The problem is the usage of the label 'AI'. There are basically 4 uses of the the label: 'General AI' (popular among layfolk), 'stuff computers can't do yet' (popular among developers), 'stuff we just figured out how to do' (popular among sales people), and '2nd order solutions' (popular among academics).
penguin_booze 4y ago
A friend used to joke that "we're doing R&D, too: run and debug".

peppertree 4y ago

I believe VMWare "adopted" Microsoft's research team, but that's the last I heard of the team. These days the most interesting corporate research happens at Google, Nvidia, OpenAI. I guess the forefront of research has moved onto ML and many old school researchers got left behind.

InefficientRed 4y ago
There is tons of formal methods research happening in industry. Way more than in the days of Microsoft research silicon valley
- shadowfox 4y ago
  Out of curiosity, which companies do this sort of research?
  - mirker 4y ago
    AWS had a paper in SOSP on verifying parts of S3 https://assets.amazon.science/07/6c/81bfc2c243249a8b8b65cc2135e4/using-lightweight-formal-methods-to-validate-a-key-value-storage-node-in-amazon-s3.pdf https://assets.amazon.science/07/6c/81bfc2c243249a8b8b65cc21...
metadat 4y ago
There's lots of other research happening all over, but gets little attention probably due to non-existent or otherwise poor marketing beyond publishing papers.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rhplus 4y ago
TLA+ and other formal language research is pursued by the RISE group in Microsoft Research: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/research-software-engineering-rise/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/research-soft...

avgcorrection 4y ago

> I think he was just over 70 years old, but still incredibly sharp. Nice... I don’t think someone at his level becomes dull at such a young senior age.

IMTDb 4y ago

> Nowadays, he couldn't do the research work he did there and at other places at any big IT company - it's R&D, with the emphasis on "D". I, on the other hand, am amazed by the progress being done today, and the research paper released on an almost weekly basis by companies like Google, Microsoft and co. Just look at the language and image models that are released, the progress on computer vision etc. I played with the playground of OpenAI GPT-3 and I am blown away at the result. It's not perfect, but it's orders of magnitude better than what we had easily access to just few month ago. I have started using it in my day-to-day life on some specific tasks, and I can't wait to see the next versions. I can't even start to fathom the amazing products people are going to build around it in the next decade. It's absolutely true that these models/research serve the purpose of the company building them... but even Leslie says in the video that he did his entire career in the industry because that's where he saw many interesting challenges, and that his whole research was a means to an end. R&D is still alive and kicking, and is going faster than ever. You might just be looking at the past with rose tainted glasses, and needlessly undermining the present.

vfclists 4y ago
AI and ML are not true computer science because no one knows how these models work, not even the developers
- ryanklee 4y ago
  Why does epistemic purity matter? The results are astounding.
- mirker 4y ago
  People knew how AI worked when AI meant “graph search.” But now solving chess is not AI and linear (and nonlinear) regression is…
  - OkayPhysicist 4y ago
    The problem is the usage of the label 'AI'. There are basically 4 uses of the the label: 'General AI' (popular among layfolk), 'stuff computers can't do yet' (popular among developers), 'stuff we just figured out how to do' (popular among sales people), and '2nd order solutions' (popular among academics).

penguin_booze 4y ago

A friend used to joke that "we're doing R&D, too: run and debug".