Breakthrough Builders The Spirit of Possibility: Gurdeep Pall
Gurdeep Pall is a monumental builder whose constant curiosity, occasional audacity, and lifelong penchant for asking “what if” and “why?” positioned him as one of the key creators of and contributors to the most foundational Internet and communications technologies of the Third Industrial Revolution. Now in his 32nd year at Microsoft, Gurdeep has turned his attention to the scalable and ethical development of high-utility Autonomous Systems.
HIs conversation with Jesse touches on the sources of Gurdeep's fascination with technology, the inventive culture of Microsoft during the internet revolution, Gurdeep's role in inventing technologies central to today's digital economy like TCP/IP, VPN, and cloud-based communications, his personal reflections on working directly with Bill Gates, and a philosophy for moving from Comprehension to Creation that Gurdeep has applied in his stewardship of technologies and teams. The conversation closes on a discussion of the enormous potential of Gurdeep’s present-day work in AI.
Throughout, you’ll learn how Gurdeep brought together a lifelong love for learning, a disciplined technical expertise, and a deep interpersonal empathy to not only invent practical technologies - but to reimagine and help advance our world in the process.
Guest BioGurdeep Singh Pall is the Corporate Vice President for Business AI at Microsoft and member of Technology & Research Leadership Team. He is an intrepreneur, a product thinker, and foremost a passionate technologist.
Gurdeep’s team of research scientists, engineers and business leaders is bringing digital transformation to business tasks through the power of AI, including a recent effort to train autonomous systems with reinforcement learning efficiently. Gurdeep is also responsible for Microsoft Garage and Hackathon, a hyper-scale, grassroots innovation program.
Teammates had the following to say about Gurdeep:
“A visionary builder of great products and businesses.” -Amey Parandekar
“I was struck by his authenticity.” -Moz Thomas
“He never let hierarchy get in the way of engaging with us personally.” -Kavita Kamani
“Gurdeep reaffirms for me that the role of a leader is to inspire.” -Ross Smith
Helpful Links
Autonomous Systems: Gurdeep’s current world at Microsoft: https://innovation.microsoft.com/en-us/autonomous-systems
Gurdeep on the future of autonomy on the Microsoft Blog:
https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai-for-business/autonomous-systems-vision/
A perspective on Gurdeep’s life published by The Global Sikh Trail:
https://theglobalsikhtrail.com/story-english/gurdeep-singh-pall/
Gurdeep on LinkedIn: