Mitsubishi Breaks Up Famous Computer Science Lab

Andrew Koyfman writes "Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories is falling apart. Top researchers and scientists are being poached by the competitors, including BAE, Adobe, and others. The lab was responsible for much breakthrough research in the areas of computer vision, computer graphics, AI, and machine learning. They were the first group to develop the Diamond Touch table, an early precursor to Microsoft's Surface Computing. Now it looks like the famous lab will be no more, at least not in their original glory."

Comments

Early precursor

[EmbeddedJanitor]

suggests the Microsoft table is a vast step forward. Hardly!

Evolve or die...

[binaryspiral]

There's really no surprise here... if a lab doesn't spin off something valuable or at least has something big in the pipes that could be marketable in a a few years - cut your losses and shut them down.

Coming up with a table computer is really not cutting edge - even before Microsoft stole the idea.

Trusting Corporations for Research

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is a CLASSIC example of why we need academic institutions and government funded research into the great unknown.

A significant number of these types of labs, doing pioneering work under the name of a parent company, have been gutted with the intent of making them more "product focused" with the intent of converting brain power straight into $$$.

Well, here's a news flash - that's not how real research (as opposed to product development) works. With research into new stuff, you DON'T KNOW what you will find or what it will be worth. NO ONE does, BY DEFINITION.

A corporation can only do this type of work when a) they have a decades long focus and b) have sufficient profit margins to soak up the cost of research without immediate returns. That's a rare situation, and it's becoming rarer in a more competitive world economy.

Rather than bemoan this behavior (after all, money making is at the heart of commerce) we should be funding basic research at universities at much higher levels. Funding at universities has gotten tough enough that they will undertake a wide variety of investigations for commercial companies just to pay the bills. This makes them de-facto corporate research labs, and takes away time from their exploration into the unknown. Grad students become extremely cheap labor for companies, just indirectly.

Right now, it won't matter commercially. Product cycles don't get impacted by long term research for years or decades, so for a while we won't see this problem. But it's going to hurt us in the end. As products stagnate, foreign plants will catch up and learn how to produce at higher quality. They will begin to match or even exceed the performance of existing outputs domestically, and we will not be able to compete because there will be nothing in the long term pipeline that might convince people to stay with us.

Pure Research HAS A POINT. Even if the profound social and philosophical questions surrounding the pursuit of knowledge for its own stake don't register, it can also be viewed as a long term investment in our future. Balance sheets and profit statements do not define the whole of human existence, nor do the look far enough ahead to see long term consequences.

Again, it is unrealistic to expect this of businesses - that is not how the system is encouraged to behave. However, the government SHOULD be thinking about these issues. They need to be funding a LOT of basic research into all manner of alternative energy science, and the more basic science behind it - and thats actually a more practically centered goal. Truly BASIC research into the unknown, with no end game in mind, seems to be a tough sell nowadays.

Corporate research works ONLY when the long term is viewed as Very Important. It's dangerous to trust to that in an uncertain amd extremely competitive market.

Re:Trusting Corporations for Research

[Anonymous Coward]

There have always been really interesting pure research labs in the corporate world, and plenty of that work belongs in the corporate world. It is true that eventually they get shut down because some narrow-minded bureaucrat takes over or because financial hardships follow, however there are always new labs popping up (or revived). This is all part of the process, most corporate researchers know this and have come to accept it.

Pure research is not only academia's burden (at least in CS). Young faculty care about getting tenure, so they don't do a lot of research with a long term vision. This is something they get to do after they get tenure (when they are often past their prime, burned-out and effectively retire). Also, reputable CS depts will not risk hiring a quirky new person but instead try to get the student of a well-known professor in an established field. This results into placing some really exciting researchers in the corporate world where they do just fine because labs like MERL have (or had) a 10-20 year horizon. Given the long horizon and the fact that corporate researchers don't have to constantly look for funding, take care of students, teach, participate in career-building meetings, etc; corporate labs can provide an excellent place for basic research.

Re:Trusting Corporations for Research

[CodeBuster]

You suggest that the government should be the primary source of funding for pure research, presumably though our collective and compulsory tax dollars, but I must confess that I did not find your argument to be very compelling, even though I personally support such research, for the following basic reasons.

First, the government derives its resources (i.e. funds) from compulsory payments backed up by threat of coercion (i.e. taxes). There are some countries which run businesses or have national resources to sell, but unless your country is swimming in oil then it is hard for the government, being inefficient at running such concerns, to earn a substantial portion of money from those activities which means that taxes are the rule of the day. Taxes are a good thing when they are used to fund those narrowly defined and specific activities delegated to them by most democratic governments which includes keeping the peace, enforcing the laws, and protecting everyone from coercion and threat thereof in their everyday lives (to the extent that such protection is possible anyway, it is never absolute). What is wrong with using compulsory contributions to fund basic research you ask? Well that leads me into my second point.

Everyone disposes of their money in such a way as to derive the maximum amount of gain, whether that is saving and investing for gain of wealth or spending the money in the ways that make us the most happy (i.e. maximizing one's marginal utility). Now obviously not everyone is happiest with the same things so people, left to their own devices, tend to spend, save, or invest their money in a wide variety of ways and that is good.

You might really enjoy donating time or money or resources to open source projects or other organizations which do things that you feel are important enough to warrant your money and that is fine and good. However, one cannot force another to spend *his* money, or more precisely to spend it for him, in ways that you and everyone else might think is better for him without trampling the notions of self determination, pursuit of happiness, and freedom from tyranny as set down in the Constitution of the United States. I may not like the fact that some people spend money on cigarettes for example, but I would not begrudge them their right to spend their money on them if that is what makes them happy.

There are other ways to fund research besides government grants backed up by taxes. Universities have long been the beneficiaries of grants from the estates of deceased alumni, corporate grants, and other tax deductible and charitable giving. There are probably non-profit organizations out there that engage or fund, through grants, pure research or "interesting" projects which advance the human condition or have the potential to do so despite the fact that they are not immediately profitable or concrete in their applications.

I agree with you that pure and basic research are worthy activities, but I do not support spending the public money (i.e. taxes) on these activities, however noble they may be, because they do not fall within the strict responsibilities of limited government.

NOTE: By way of fairness I should probably say that I am not in favor of the government doing or funding much of anything besides legislation in support of applying and maintaining the powers and responsibilities defined in the Constitution (i.e. legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government), law enforcement and national defense (i.e. protection against coercion through violent force at personal and national levels).

Re:Trusting Corporations for Research

[dunkelfalke]

i never understand why this bullshit is always being modded insightful.
you and your kind think that they have some inherent right to anything.

i have got news for you: you have no inherent rights at all. no right to earn wealth, no right to keep wealth, no right to be protected, no right to live at all.

all rights you have are the rights the society is willing to rent you. taxes you pay are the rental fees for the right to live in the society, the right to be protected by the society, the right to earn wealth from the society and all other rights you claim to have. if you refuse to pay your rental fees you lose all these rights. the landlord has the right to throw someone unwilling to pay the rental fee out, or to sue them until they pay - business as usual. same thing with taxes, really.

it is not the government, who is benefitted by this rental fee, it is the society, but there are too many dicks like you, who want everything for them selves and don't give a damn about the rest. well, if you don't want to be part of the society, then get the hell out of it and stop doing business with it.

Re:Trusting Corporations for Research

[Ohreally_factor]

Sir Tim created the WWW at CERN, but was it a CERN research project? They're a subatomic particle physics outfit. He was a computer contractor. He'd already developed one hypertext system for them during an earlier contract, and when he returned he melded that idea with the internet. Clearly a breakthrough and clearly innovative, but not really what anyone thinks about when speaking of basic research. He had a good idea to build something, got approval to build it,and built it.

Hypertext has a history going back a bit further than Sir Tim or even Apple's Hypercard. Look into the Memex described by Vannevar Bush in 1945. Ted Nelson started Project Xanadu in 1960, although he didn't coin the phrase "hypertext" until 1965.

So, ironically, the main innovation of Sir Tim was to combine hypertext with "on the internet", an innovation often bemoaned by slashdotters when criticizing the validity of a patent.

Anyway, my point is that its a big stretch to say that Tim Berners Lee was doing basic research. He was putting together computer network systems for basic researchers.

Re:Keep in mind

[Amouth]

Tablet's would have done better if the price for them where lower.. i know many people that would like one but to get one that is worth a shit you have to pay way to damn much

Media Center isn't that bad.. my complaint is that they didnt' spend enough time with support for capture devices and the the genral dvr stuff.. but as a "Media center PC" it isn't that bad.. then again not alot of home users have their computer connected to their TV....

Re:All of your examples show why they were shut do

[PsychosisC]

I am sure that Mitsubishi Bank, Mitsubishi Agricultural Machinery, Mitsubishi Estate Co., Mitsubishi Plastics, Mitsubishi Electric, &ct. would disagree with your "Core Competencies" analysis. The core product in the Mitsubishi brand is not cars or electronics. Their core product has always been venture research. Be the first and best in new fields. If anything, I am surprised they don't have a Mitsubishi Pharmaceutical yet.

Re:Keep in mind

[nmb3000]

Ms said that the table was a vast step forward. They did not say that they developed it. Just that they are going to build them.

This is basically true, however the idea behind an "innovative" product is nothing without an implementation. There was nothing especially amazing about the first iPod that Apple released - it was just another MP3 player - except for the software. The iPod's user interface was what set the device apart. In the same manner, Microsoft's implementation of the Surface UI (written completely in C# and WPF - Microsoft's own products) is, from what I've seen, very impressive. And yes, as with any UI concept the basic idea has long been discussed and long been in development by a lot of different people.

Once these tables are more readily available I anticipate seeing some cool new ways to interact with them using F/OSS software. Regardless of how much you might dislike Microsoft, they are one of the few entities that have the capital to bring a device like this to the market. However, once it's out, there is nothing stopping people from digging in and finding other great things you can do with it (see the original Xbox and all the great software now available for it).

And just to preempt the comment I'm sure is coming: I'm sure the tables will have some form of DRM or hardware locking in place. Unfortunately Microsoft will see this as the only way to protect their investment; however, there are a lot of very smart people out there, and if the tables do become popular and more of a commodity item the preventative measures Microsoft puts in place will be blown away - just like every other artificial restriction to date has.

A serving of bias, anyone?

[InakaBoyJoe]

> according to Marks, who spoke with Xconomy at length Monday night.

So, TFA was written on the basis of a lengthy evening tirade by a disgruntled former employee. To their credit, they also interviewed the current CEO, who presented the alternate point of view -- that there was a gradual reorg in pursuit of a better ROI for the parent company.

I fail to see how this equates to "Mitsubishi breaks up MERL." MERL continues to exist. In fact it's a disservice to the newly hired researchers to assume that the "new" MERL can only be a shadow of its former self. Sometimes new people and fresh ideas are a good thing.

There is also a snide element of bias in the article against the "Japanese-style management" -- assumed to be something so horrible that researchers need to be "shielded" from it. While frustrating for some folks who can't bridge the cultural gap, this maligned "Japanese management style" is the same one that brought us innovations we take for granted today, in areas like automotive quality, 3G/4G cellular, the Wii user interface, CCDs and LCDs, and of course hentai anime.

In any case the news itself is interesting, but I'm not sure there is any need to portray it as the end of the world or something...