Unfortunately MSR as you knew it is gone. The Technology and Research division has been quietly shuttered and the org is now reporting up through Azure Security. It's been slowly parted out over the last 9 months and its one few departments in C+AI where most if not all employees are being given the severance offer.
replyCoincides with an EMNLP keynote sharing a tweet saying “big lab people now ignore NeurIPS/iclr/ etc papers and regard them as full of lies”.
replyWell, AI research outside of frontier labs had a good run. Gonna suck when competing with the other 30% unemployment white collar workers. When you say what work you used to do, some of them may end up trying to be violent towards one who is seen as having worked on the tech that killed the golden goose.