Key takeaways
- John Langford wrote on November 6 that Microsoft Research's AI Frontiers group, about 50 people, is over.
- He says it was reorganized into Microsoft AI in early September and its founding leaders have left.
- The reasons he gives are his own view; we found no comment from Microsoft.
Microsoft Research's AI Frontiers group is finished, according to John Langford, one of the researchers who ran it. In a post dated November 6, Langford wrote that the roughly 50-person group was folded into Microsoft AI in early September and that he and the other founding leaders of the group have since left. Microsoft has not commented in anything we found.
AI Frontiers was created in 2023, after the release of ChatGPT, to pull Microsoft Research's AI work together. Langford lists the AutoGen agent framework, the Fara computer-use agent and the fundamental research done by the New York group among its output.
Langford says the move was not something the group chose, and he puts the blame on how Microsoft AI, the unit led by former Inflection people, sees its job. In his words, its core philosophy is "scaling, and aggressively not research." He says he thinks that focus is wrong, and that he had the impression Microsoft AI "just did not really want us." He also says he chose not to return to Microsoft Research itself, because he saw no path from research there to real use.
What changes
Langford says there will be no AI Frontiers internships next year. He does not say where the other members went, and we could not confirm any destinations.
The post is one person's account, and the details about leadership motives and reasons are his view, not Microsoft's. What can be checked is the reorganization itself: a research group that built open agent tools is no longer a separate team. Anyone who depends on AutoGen or Fara should watch the repositories for changes in who maintains them.
Sources
- The End of AI FrontiersJohn Langford (hunch.net)
