tl;dr: Microsoft Research's AI Frontiers group, a ~50-person team focused on fundamental AI research (Autogen, Fara, Full Bandwidth Transformer, etc.), was reorged in September into Microsoft AI, whose ex-Inflection leadership prioritizes scaling over research. The author and other founding AIF leaders have left, citing an incompatible "scaling-only" philosophy and no viable path for innovations to reach real use. He declined to return to MSR, arguing the implicit deal of "do good work and good things happen" has broken down there as well.