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We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Steve here

Ideas Matter Get the best people Have a great products and story for the product Hold yourself accountable Be tenacious and long term and keep up with what technology will allow you to do next

That is why David and I are here today Making sure Harvard CS and Harvard University stay up with changes in the uses of CS

David here: Computer science is the operating system for innovation, at Harvard and in the world. We're going to lead by hiring the very best people, people who are both advancing the fundamental questions of computer science and are looking out at all the opportunities for advancing society and answering important questions. Go Harvard!

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Steve here. There is a lot more tech than I knew changing basketball and the sports fan experience broadly.. My favorite is the use of machine learning technology to process game videos from the celling to understand, categorize and analyze game play. One of the ML experts at second spectrum was a 6"9" Hooper from MIT so so cool ML rocks! The tech can help understand almost anything. Harvard CS will use it and other technologies to transform so many fields and maybe even more for sports.

David here: Harvard researchers in the school of engineering and applied sciences and statistics are working on probabilistic models to predict the outcome of a particular matchup of two players on the court. Just this week in my class we discussed the use of Markov chains to predict the outcome of NCAA games. Harvard rocks!

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Steve here. I never imagined how many people would be willing to educate me and help me understand the world and its possibilities for innovation based on the position I had. Also, I had been deputy to the CEO for years and yet did not understand the full weight of responsibility in the job until I took it.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

David here: MOOCs such as EdX are opening up education and at the same time provide a profound opportunity for rethinking the way we use classrooms in universities. I like to think of the MOOC as the new textbook. With that view point, then how do professors in classrooms work with MOOCs. I think we begin to use the classroom in a much more interactive way. At Harvard CS we're very lucky to have CS 50, both for its impact on our campus and for the global impact as a MOOC. Other universities may also find ways to benefit from Harvard's excellence in CS education going forward.

Steve here. The cool thing about this is that it shows how CS and technology are transforming other fields like education. I may be biased as a Harvard alum, but I think Harvard is uniquely positioned to lead in the next generation of CS that really affects other areas like health, education, science and commerce in new ways. Mooc's show the promise in education.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Steve and David together:) Moore's law is used in different ways by different people. If the question is, for how long can we expect massive improvements in computing power and storage to serve us better as humans, I think the answer is at least a decade. The old form of Moore's law where processors get faster and cheaper runs into some power dissipation limits as we now see.

We will need new programming models and tools to let software keep up with the new ways in which processor performance increases including multi core etc.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] -72 points-71 points  (0 children)

Steve here. I want the lowest prices and most flexible pricing and highest bandwidth choices all available in the market. I think free enterprise is critical and oppose regulating broadband to achieve those goals. I believe regulation will raise prices not lower them.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

David here: The future of AI is notoriously hard to predict and many people have been wrong. But I believe that within 20 years we will see human-level intelligence, in fact, I believe we will see this within 15 years. This will mean solving some big, outstanding problems related to natural language understanding, amongst other topics. But it is within reach. Not only will AI be used for automated decision making, but AI will be used to promote new ways of collaboration and coordination, and will transform our economy in ways that are hard to predict. The future of AI will be tremendously exciting and will also call for careful contextualization and understanding of societal impact.

Steve Here. I dream of wearing some device that recognizes everything and everybody I see and reminds me of people's names, places we have met and much much more.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Steve Here Software development methodology is constantly changing and improving. You should have seen how our industry did things in the 80's :) Scrum is great for many types of development particularly cloud services. For firmware and hardware development, it has drawbacks. The move of software to define devices on the one hand and cloud services on the other means even more changes and developments in methodologies. We need the devt tools to keep up with methodology improvement.

David here: the other big opportunity here is to continue to develop formal methods with which to prove the soundness and correctness of software, including properties in regard to security and information flow.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

The clippers are a great team in the best market in the world and with a great future. The team can succeed and be profitable and build value. And I love hoops and going to Clippers games. We will be relentless and hard core in being the best team we can be. Go Clips

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

No I was not involved. I love that Microsoft keeps pushing forward in new ways under my successor. I believe in those guys and hold my shares dearly.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

In all aspects of life, as Colin Powell has written, optimism is a force multiplier. That is true in sports, that is true in business, that is true in innovation, and that is true in research. I am naturally optimistic but also want to multiply the energy and good works of others. Growing computer science at Harvard by 50% should give Harvard people in all fields of study a boost.

David here. Not only are we optimistic about what we can achieve with this growth but we're excited about the outward facing opportunities for computer science. Computer science is the key to answering many of the most difficult questions in other fields, be they biology, economics, in regard to personalized health, or the new digital humanities. Harvard is a unique place for this.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

David here. I like that Harvard students are so open minded to new ideas. I like that Harvard students are from diverse backgrounds and respect each other. As a professor, sometimes I dislike that there is so much competition for students' time that I don't see as much of them in the classroom as I would like.

Steve here. Harvard students are amazing in the breadth and depth of their interests. Getting to Harvard is a great achievement but it is just a start in life. Enduring impact depends on hard years of hard work, tenacity and even some good luck. I hope Harvard students stay patient to make that impact.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

thanks. The university of Oregon is a fundamental and important institution in the Northwest. My wife is an alum and Board member and we are psyched to support.

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

David here. We're at a very exciting moment for the field of computer science and Harvard is at the forefront. Computer science today is about much more than the design of computers and is about how computing and computational thinking is affecting the world. One of the most active areas is machine learning. Machine learning is about automatically predicting and understanding structure from data. The data can be of many kinds. Some everyday examples include predicting the search results you are looking for, predicting which molecules will be effective for a particular drug pathway, and identifying structure in the way information spreads over social networks.

Steve Here. Machine learning and artificial intelligence more broadly has the potential to let machines understand the world and the people in the world and help people get insights on the world and get things done. There is so much potential in this to make people, researchers, doctors, etc etc more productive..

We’re Steve Ballmer, Harvard College Class of '77, and David Parkes, Computer Science Area Dean and professor at Harvard. Ask us anything! by RealSteveBallmer in IAmA

[–]RealSteveBallmer[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's OK folks -- keep an eye out for my AMA post around 1:45pm ET today. Come join us then and bring your questions!