Today’s guest is Gurdeep Singh Pall (’89, MS Computer and Information Science), Corporate Vice President for Business AI at Microsoft. He is an "intrepreneur," a product strategist, and an enthusiastic technologist.

Having spent more than three decades at Microsoft, Gurdeep is now focusing on creating scalable and ethical Autonomous Systems. His tenure at Microsoft began during the advent of the internet, and he played a key role in developing critical technologies such as TCP/IP, VPN, and cloud-based communications that underpin today's digital economy.

When he arrived in Eugene in the late 1980s, Gurdeep secured a teaching assistantship to support his graduate studies at the University of Oregon. It's been rumored that he spent long hours in the computer lab, even sleeping there with a sleeping bag to finish his thesis. He joined Microsoft in January 1990.

He’s being interviewed by Dr. Ramón Alvarado, a Philosophy faculty member at UO and a key contributor to the Presidential Initiative in Data Science, which led to the creation of the UO School of Computer and Data Sciences. His areas of expertise include Data Ethics, AI Ethics, Epistemology of Computer Simulations, and Philosophy of Computation. Dr. Alvarado designed and teaches the first Philosophy course required by another major on campus, demonstrating the importance of philosophical thinking in a rapidly changing technological society. In 2023, he was awarded the Tykeson Teaching Award.

Dr. Alvarado’s publications on philosophical issues related to computational methods and data science can be seen here https://ramonalvarado.net/

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Music credits: "Leaving Home" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed  under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ • "Funkorama" Kevin MacLeod  (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0  License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/