Kevin Scott, Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer, appears on Reddit and conducts 'CTO, do you have any questions?'


by Vetala Hawkins and Microsoft

On May 27, 2022,

Kevin Scott , CTO of Microsoft, appeared in the technology news community 'r / technology' on the Internet bulletin board Reddit. We conducted a so-called 'Ask Me Anything (AMA)', so-called 'Are you asking a question?' And answered many questions from users.

I'm Kevin Scott, Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft, author, woodworker, perpetual learner, and podcast host. Ask me anything about AI, software development, or what I think about the future of tech.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/uz33f3/im_kevin_scott_chief_technology_officer_of/

After starting his career at Google, Scott became Senior Vice President of Engineering at LinkedIn, a business social network. After that, he moved to Microsoft, where he concurrently served as CTO and Senior Vice President of Technology & Research, co-inventing several patents on search and information extraction, and writing documents on dynamic binary rewriting.

Reddit users asked Scott technical questions about Microsoft, such as AI and Windows 11.

Q: Q:
How will the general public sentiment for privacy protection for deep learning and AI be resolved? Recent proceedings against Clearview AI (Privacy authorities have fined £ 7.55 million for collecting facial image data of British citizens because it is illegal for Clearview AI to develop facial recognition technology) As you can see, some companies act against the public interest and see fines as 'the cost of doing business.' How does the CTO intend to stay competitive while maintaining ethics?

Mr. Kevin Scott (hereinafter referred to as Mr. Scott):
I once had my teacher tell me that trust is a long-term consistency. In order for people working on AI to gain the trust of the general public, AI systems that humbly work on what they are doing, listen to their concerns, and finally solve problems that people are interested in I think I have to build a product. For us, it means creating something like GitHub Copilot that increases the productivity of cognitive people, and in thinking of AI as 'a set of tools to help cognitive people.' increase. This means making the work we do in the big model available to the general public in the API so that people can solve problems that are important to them.

Also, when launching a new product or tool, think about ways to anticipate damage, protect against the harm before launch, and quickly fix 'bugs' in AI systems that weren't discovered before launch. , We are paying close attention. And when we make a mistake, we admit it and strive to take action to prevent similar mistakes.

Q: Q:
You said, 'AI software development tools translate the spoken language we use every day into a language that computers can understand and enable us to build software.' What do you most expect from this feature in the near future (1 to 2 years from now)?

Scott:
I'm very excited about some of the things that these features may bring. We are trying to overturn the concept of software development. Since Ada Lovelace wrote the world's first program, programming has been like training to find a way to transform human thoughts about a problem into a machine-solvable form. But with something like Open AI 's ' Codex ,' I think programming will be more natural. You can express what you want your app to do in natural language, improve what the model outputs, and repeat it until you have something that solves the problem.

I think this means the following three things. First, as GitHub Copilot shows, you can be more productive as a programmer. Second, programming may become more accessible to more people, allowing more diverse people to solve larger, wider range of problems. And third, it may be possible to solve many problems that were previously too complex to be solved by other methods.

Q: Q:
What do you think about the potential of AI to rob software engineers of their jobs?

Scott:
I hope AI doesn't rob engineers of their jobs. Software engineering is a daunting task. Throughout the history of software, I believe that we programmers have been constantly working to create new abstractions, tools and techniques to deal with the complexity of our work. We believe that AI tools for developers are just one step in this advancement, meaning that for all of us, we will be able to tackle more difficult and complex issues. Given the role that software will play in the future, I think that even with the advent of super-powerful AI, we will continue to have problems that humans cannot solve.



Q: Q:
What is the CTO of a software company?

Scott:
I spend most of my time technically, not in any of the company's large engineering departments. AI is a good example. AI has become ubiquitous as we think about building software, what every group of Microsoft thinks or should think about, and it's one of the areas where I spend a lot of time. I did. We also spend time on everything about the tech platform to help Microsoft and non-Microsoft teams.

Q: Q:
Why did Windows 11 come out? Is Windows 10 Sufficient?

Scott:
We are always trying to improve the PC experience and try to achieve this in different ways. A method like

Windows 365 Cloud PC is one of them. This means that if for some reason you don't want to manage your Windows PC, we can run it in the cloud. Also, like Windows 10, we strive to provide a better experience with regular updates. On top of that, if there are significant changes that make regular updates difficult, we will create a new version of the operating system and give users the opportunity to update. Every time we make a change, we learn what people like and don't like, and we strive to apply that learning to future product improvements.

Q: Q:
What advice would you give to people learning software development? How do people keep up with the ever-changing technology?

Scott:
The most positive thing about my career, rather than my life as a whole, is to stay curious and to live up to that curiosity and learn as much as I can. How old are you? I'm 50 and have been programming since I was 12. Everything about programming has been and will continue to change during that time.

One of the jobs of an engineer is to always give yourself permission to learn new things and give yourself time to do so. To that end, it is important to find a good source of learning. I'm always trying to learn from the people around me, but sometimes I feel timid or uncomfortable when asking for questions or advice. However, there are always people who know what they do not know, and many are incredibly generous in sharing their knowledge and wisdom with others. The open source community is full of good code to read. And finally, read as many articles and dissertations as you can about the part of development that interests you. I have plenty of reading material for when I go on a trip or vacation. Learning new things is one of the ways I can relax.



in Posted by log1p_kr