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Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Christopher J. Parnin, Microsoft Research
Date: Thursday, 3 April 2025, 17:15
Location: room BIN 2.A.01 at the Department of Informatics (IfI), Binzmühlestrasse 14, 8050 Zürich
Details about the format of the talk shall be checked always just ahead of a certain presentation date: (information here)
The integration of advanced AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), into software products is transforming how users interact with technology and how software is built. Moving beyond button clicks, a user can now expect to communicate with software with natural language messages such as “I have extra vacation days to use up. Go ahead and create an OOF event for every Friday without any scheduled team meetings for every remaining vacation day”—and expect it to work. Traditional software architectures were not designed to handle such open-ended user interactions, introducing unprecedented challenges for software engineers and their development processes. In this talk, drawing on interviews with over 50 practitioners and a survey of 332 professionals, we discuss the pain points, challenges, and emerging solutions for overcoming these challenges. Additionally, we connect these challenges to experiences building product Copilot at Microsoft, including Visual Studio and Office products. Finally, we discuss the many challenges associated with evaluating AI-powered software, including the role of LLMs-as-a-judge in task evaluation. This colloquium offers a comprehensive overview of the challenges, research opportunities, and actionable strategies for shaping the future of robust, user-centric AI-powered systems.
Dr. Chris Parnin’s research spans developer productivity, cognition and learning, and automated infrastructure. He has published over 90 papers, received five SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards, a 10-Year Impact Paper Award, a Google Faculty Award, and an NSF CAREER Award. His work has been featured in hundreds of international news articles, magazines, and frequently discussed in industry forums.
Currently, Dr. Parnin leads research efforts at Microsoft focused on building and evaluating Copilots for Visual Studio and the Office Suite. His experience also includes serving as a tenured professor at NC State University, contributing to Microsoft Research's Human Interactions in Programming group, conducting field studies with ABB Research, and over a decade of professional programming in the defense industry.
Dr. Parnin has collaborated with industry partners to bridge research and practice, including developing mentorship programs for Stack Overflow, creating anxiety-reducing features for CoderPad, and advancing equitable hiring solutions with Byteboard. He also co-organized five Continuous Deployment Summits, hosted by leading companies such as Facebook, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter. These summits fostered collaboration and innovation in continuous deployment practices, resulting in impactful publications and educational resources for students and professionals.
