41–50 of 62 posts
Is Google X anything more than a PR heavy version of Xerox PARC or any other R&D lab that tech companies have had?
Sergey Brin, in my view, represents part of the problem here. Too powerful to be told that he's not delivering much.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That headline is confusingly worded, but Microsoft only laid off 50-75 people in one MSR location. That was far from the entire division: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/default.aspx
That's not all. There are other parts being shutdown too - Robotics apparently https://twitter.com/AshleyFen/status/513392391467048960
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people I've seen calling MOOCs a dud seem to have had the expectation that they'd see completion rates somewhere near traditional courses, which is laughable when you consider the differences in structure, demographics, and buy in. Even despite the high dropout rates, I think they end up teaching more students than the comparable class session at a university. I took a grad class to completion on Coursera, and I…
Is how to effectively teach an online course the problem to focus on? It's interesting to note that if MOOCs turn out to be a dud, yet people are learning effectively from MOOCs, then it's proof that people pay for a college degree, not for education. In other words, prestige seems to be the issue, not education.
Statistically speaking, they aren't, that's the problem. Completion rates with Coursera are ~5%. Some argue that many people don't _want_ to finish the courses, but this views the product as something fixed. For any other kind of business, is "people sign up but then don't value it enough to continue" an excuse for lack of retention?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not all. There are other parts being shutdown too - Robotics apparently https://twitter.com/AshleyFen/status/513392391467048960
Still, probably proportionally less layoffs in MSR than the rest of the company overall during these cuts. The insinuation was that Microsoft is shuttering Research entirely, which is very far from true.
That doesn't seem unfair, given the layoffs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My former boss (CTO of Panasonic) once told me that the only way to do real R&D is to have a monopoly that allows you to hide the margins in cutting edge R&D. Everyone else was doing just product development. Google X is amazing in that it is about the only one left doing true bluesky R&D. Everyone else is just doing product development.
I heard an old timer describe it well ... true research needs to be altruistic. Today, I think this can only be done through govt sponsorship. In places like Canada, my impression is that even the stewards who dole out govt funding have forgotten what true research means. They dole out money for commercializing innovation, which is not research by definition. From what I've heard from other scientists, the US is doin…
Ironically, if he has left to concentrate on Udacity, my own belief is that he is a poor teacher. Of course it depends on which pedagogical teat you are sucking from, but my experience of Thrun's delivered Udacity courses is poor. Many of his video segments seem to involve him slavishly following his 'script', occasionally hissing out encouraging phrases such as 'Isn't this great!'. He hasn't sequenced a series of lo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still, probably proportionally less layoffs in MSR than the rest of the company overall during these cuts. The insinuation was that Microsoft is shuttering Research entirely, which is very far from true.
I think the insinuation is the Microsoft Research is beholden to business drivers, and therefore not truly 'free, blue-sky' research. That doesn't seem unfair, given the layoffs.
For what it's worth, MSR historically hasn't been beholden to find commercial applications for their work. If anything, it's usually disappointing how much really cool stuff they come up with that isn't ever productized in an accessible way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is how to effectively teach an online course the problem to focus on? It's interesting to note that if MOOCs turn out to be a dud, yet people are learning effectively from MOOCs, then it's proof that people pay for a college degree, not for education. In other words, prestige seems to be the issue, not education.
> yet people are learning effectively from MOOCs Statistically speaking, they aren't, that's the problem. Completion rates with Coursera are ~5%. Some argue that many people don't _want_ to finish the courses, but this views the product as something fixed. For any other kind of business, is "people sign up but then don't value it enough to continue" an excuse for lack of retention?
Of course, the reason completion rates are so bad with MOOCs is free access. If you force people to filter themselves out unless they are willing to pay a lot, you will see more normal "completion rates" expressed as a percentage of those who paid a lot.
It would be perverse to argue, however, that MOOCs should be pay-only for this reason. It's a confusion about the meaning of completion rate as a performance metric for MOOCs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google X is amazing in that it is about the only one left doing true bluesky R&D. Everyone else is just doing product development. That is quite wrong, really. There are many industrial research labs that are pursuing 'bluesky' research, in pretty much all sectors, including computer science, EE, chemistry, pharmacology, etc. Just to name a few, Mitisubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL), IBM Almaden/New York/Zurich…
Microsoft killed their Microsoft Research Silicon Valley lab last week. It's not at all clear at the moment what the future of blue sky research is at Microsoft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because there are research labs, it doesn't mean that they are doing truly free blue-sky research. Lots of the labs you mention have very antiquated IPR focus, especially Mitsubishi and IBM. And as an example, Almaden still feels closer to the lair of a a James Bond enemy in the 60s than a free spirited R&D lab.
If IBM's Watson does not count as "free blue-sky" AI research, I don't know what else counts. http://youtu.be/P18EdAKuC1U?t=2m20s https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=an+acco... Funnily, Google completes my phrase "an account of the principalities of wallachia and moldavia inspired this author's famous novel" but is completely clueless. As the other poster said, Google seems to be winning the advertis…
It is not blue-sky research, though: it's pretty clear what the value proposition is, who the (potential) customers are, etc.; IBM just put on the publicity upfront with their "winning Jeopardy!" grand challenge to put themselves on the map in a space that is currently dominated by small boutique companies and a very limited numbers of bigger players such as Thomson-Reuters and (partly) Nuance.
Which means that IBM will have an easier time selling to existing enterprise customers who want to get in on this "big data" thing using text analytics (and, frankly, it's also good advertising for their existing data analytics business).