[HN Gopher] Silicon Valley is pricing academics out of AI research
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Silicon Valley is pricing academics out of AI research
Author : rbanffy
Score : 106 points
Date : 2024-03-13 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| bbor wrote:
| lol I thought this was going to be complaining about how many
| GPUs it takes to create a new foundation model (not really
| anyone's fault IMO), but turns out its "the AI hype is so large
| that all the PhDs want to work in corporations and get paid
| more".
|
| My brother in Christ that's the WHOLE SYSTEM. Thats always true
| because academia is a small corrupted line item in American
| society, and industry is where all the resources flow. The
| solutions are a) invest WAY more in universities, or b)
| socialism. IMO. Anything else would be ineffectually treating a
| symptom
|
| Ofc this doesn't apply to private universities. Haha sucks to
| suck I guess you'll just have to fade into no existence, what a
| shame...
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| The universities have decided instead of paying professors the
| solution is to hire layers and layers of bloated
| administration.
| ta8645 wrote:
| It's part of the grift. It's essentially a ponzi scheme,
| employing graduates holding useless degrees. There's a need
| to prop up the job market in order to incentivize the next
| crop of students to pursue even more useless degrees. The
| bottom will completely fall out of this eventually.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| US spends more research per GDP or per capita than almost
| everywhere in the world. Just because you hate capitalism
| doesn't mean all things wrong stems from it.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_re...
| rjzzleep wrote:
| It actually isn't, or rather it wasn't. A lot of the big open
| source projects came out of people that spent undefined amounts
| of time in or around universities.
|
| It was possible because students didn't need to worry about
| meeting commercial needs because they could a comfortable life
| doing what they like without pressure, and because grants were
| not beholden to commercial interests.
|
| Not only have Bologna accords creeped in a slow Americanization
| of European education but open source has also been hijacked.
|
| A lot of this is on Europe's own self destructive policies
| though. When they try to mimic the US all that comes out of it,
| is a crappier version of the US, with more bureaucracy, where
| they cannot compete on dollars spent.
| bbor wrote:
| Absolutely, well said. Never meant to impinge the reputation
| of the amazing scientists that have brought us our many awe-
| inspiring technologies, as they continue to excel in spite of
| financial concerns. I'm just saying that AFAIK the pay
| disparity has always been around in the 20th century US.
| Godspeed to y'all in staying away from our mistakes!
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Universities have the resources to hire competitively if they
| wanted to.
| anon291 wrote:
| What is 'wrong' with this? Academics at these research labs are
| still doing academic work, including teaching and mentoring
| colleagues. The main 'issue' is likely that some college
| administrator is not getting their cut.
|
| Oh pity the poor colleges... how will they fund their over-the-
| top, debt-financed facilities and football teams?
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| I've read that football teams are actually a revenue generator
| for universities.
|
| However you're absolutely right about insane amounts of wasted
| money on bureaucracy.
| jimbokun wrote:
| They are only revenue generators for the semi-pro teams with
| big TV contracts.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| Which includes most of our best public engineering schools.
| Big 10 and SEC schools pump out a whole bunch of engineers.
| lbrandy wrote:
| > most
|
| Well... "a few" is probably more accurate.
|
| https://twitter.com/tjaltimore/status/1763571057703723344
| ?s=...
| joshuamorton wrote:
| You've subtly changed the argument here.
|
| That's the athletic department as a whole. At my alma
| mater, which is on that list as one where the athletics
| department costs 500-1000 per student, our football team
| (which is consistently mediocre) and basketball team
| were, as far as I know, profitable, and subsidized other
| D1 sports. I believe that cost also covers the funding
| for things like intramural sports, the student athletics
| complex (gym), and various other athletics adjacent
| things that are student-services shaped, and not
| D1-sports shaped.
| anon291 wrote:
| football teams are a revenue generator for the top few
| universities that have football teams worth following. For
| all the strivers out there, they're not.
| croes wrote:
| What wrong with worse researchers and worse teachers?
| munk-a wrote:
| Because this is the internet I can't be certain if you're
| being sarcastic or not but in case you aren't... a lot. Life
| isn't a pursuit of profit and if people's training is solely
| devoted to that they'll miss out on a lot of the stuff that
| actually matters.
| ipaddr wrote:
| What are people missing by working privately? The stuff
| that matters is outside of work
| epistasis wrote:
| Housing prices that restrict the ability of an economy to
| function will strangle that economy.
|
| That's the main issue. Nobody cares about some "cut" that a
| college administrator would get (how? how much?).
|
| Any economy that prices out its labor is doomed.
| oglop wrote:
| The fuck are you talking about. We price out labor constantly
| and it seems to make the economy better. Also things really
| can't be priced by labor. By that logic, a 10,000ft pile of
| shit would be priced at the cost of labor I paid people to
| build it.
|
| No one is going to buy that mountain of shit. The labor had
| only a part to do with the cost.
|
| Everything works that way.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Any economy that prices out its labor is doomed.
|
| I have heard this claimed a great deal, but has it ever
| happened in a major city (heard of it in some tiny rural
| towns)? The places with high housing costs are some of the
| most productive economies out there.
|
| Toronto, New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, etc. should be
| experiencing the worst possible labor shortages were this the
| case.
| NotMichaelBay wrote:
| I don't know of examples on a massive scale but I know
| there are lots of firefighters (and probably police) that
| live 1-2 hours away from their station. They are priced out
| of the neighborhood and even neighborhoods surrounding the
| one they serve.
| abeppu wrote:
| IDK, looking at SF data, I see plenty of firefighters,
| police officers etc whose overtime pay is higher than
| their base salary, and whose cash compensation is above
| 300k.
|
| For example: https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/s
| earch/?q=Police+...
| michaelt wrote:
| Clearly, supply and demand will always be in equilibrium
| for _some_ price.
|
| But it might mean the workers your economy deems most
| worthy of reward can't afford to have children; and the
| workers who clean the offices and suchlike are sleeping in
| bunk beds four to a room.
|
| As visions for the future of our society go, some might
| consider that somewhat unambitious.
| anon291 wrote:
| > But it might mean the workers your economy deems most
| worthy of reward can't afford to have children;
|
| Except it's the exact opposite, and the poorer you are,
| the more likely you are to have children, whereas the
| rich who can afford those homes are not.
|
| > and the workers who clean the offices and suchlike are
| sleeping in bunk beds four to a room
|
| There is nothing 'wrong' with that.
| epistasis wrote:
| Now imagine how much _more_ productive they would be if
| they didn 't restrict entry to the housing market so much?
|
| Is ejecting a person to a lower-cost and lower-income area
| from a higher-income area going to increase or decrease
| overall productivity? I would say decrease.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Cities price out people/businesses all of the time. Some
| more expensive service fills the void. How many flea
| markets exist in those big cities compared to the past for
| an obvious example. The pool of people willing to work
| minimum wage is decreasing in those cities. Other things
| like migrant workers and mass immigration are filling in at
| lower wages for now.
| keiferski wrote:
| There's a little thing called the profit motive. Universities
| aren't perfect but few other institutions have deliberate
| spaces for non-commercial work.
| jimbokun wrote:
| US universities are becoming for profit institutions using
| non-profit status to cook the books.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes and the administrative areas take up to 50% of all
| grant funding as "overhead"
|
| Some overhead is necessary of course, you need buildings
| and offices and the people who take care of them but it's
| likely more bloated than it needs to be.
| jbullock35 wrote:
| > administrative areas take up to 50% of all grant
| funding as "overhead"
|
| I saw them take 60% as overhead at one of my
| institutions.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Are there no caps on admin overhead for grants? (it's
| been awhile since I've been close to academia)
| p4ul wrote:
| At least in the US, an institution's "facilities and
| administrative" F&A rate gets negotiated with the Federal
| government every four or five years.
|
| I know of some institutions with F&A rates at or above
| 70%!! I presume that an institution trying to negotiate a
| higher F&A rate than this would have some significant
| pushback!
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Many grant giving institutions limit what they are
| willing to pay. For example, from my understanding the
| European research council will only pay 25% even if you
| university demands more.
| munk-a wrote:
| Ivy league schools in particular are essentially just
| endowment funds with some teachers around to keep their
| non-profit status. There are plenty of great educational
| institutions out there but the most prestigious ones are
| suffering from their success and attracting money-minded
| management that is more focused on growing their investment
| portfolio and handing out juicy bonuses than attracting
| good staff and ensuring a good educational environment.
|
| And even with all that universities still have better a
| more altruistic profit alignment than most private firms.
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| > There are plenty of great educational institutions out
| there but the most prestigious ones are suffering from
| their success and attracting money-minded management that
| is more focused on growing their investment portfolio and
| handing out juicy bonuses than attracting good staff and
| ensuring a good educational environment.
|
| People keep trotting this line but without any
| substantial proof. Harvard's highest paid employee is a
| faculty member, David Malan, of the popular CS50 course
| earning $1.6 million annually [1]. It's always been
| faculty members earning even more than the President.
|
| I assume you're counting Harvard Management Company, the
| firm managing Harvard's endowment. Yeah, the CEO earns $9
| million annually, which is quite high [2]. But there's a
| catch; were he in the private industry managing a $50
| billion+ fund, he'll easily clear $50 million+ in annual
| compensation, if not $100 million depending on the
| performance.
|
| The endowment managers operate differently from the
| institution, and salaries are actually much lower than in
| the private sector. Maybe you want to complain about
| inequality, sure, but that's another thing entirely.
| They're paying the least they can to get expert fund
| managers..
|
| 1- https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizatio
| ns/421...
|
| 2- https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizatio
| ns/237...
| detourdog wrote:
| The number of $100 million+ buildings a New England town
| of 8,000 can have is staggering. The problem is the idle
| hands and minds these buildings house. The number of
| administrator looks like a make work project to create
| more jobs.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| And researchers without a profit motive are free to continue
| to work for peanuts.
| munk-a wrote:
| But that research is important and benefits us all - so,
| with how much excess and wealth stratification we're seeing
| in the modern world, isn't it worth it to divert some of
| that to supporting that research? If we're too focused on
| profit we'll optimize for a local maximum and miss out on
| highly impactful developments that might initially seem to
| be dead-ends.
| anon291 wrote:
| The NSF and DoE and other government agencies make insane
| amounts of capital available for research. The CHIPS act
| included ~$53 billion in funding on its own.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont think I agree with any of your assumptions.
|
| 1) Private research doesn't benefit all
|
| 2) Private research precludes public research
|
| 3) A local Maximum would be a problem or trap
|
| 4) The underlying view that the public has a right to
| individual wealth and it is underutilized resource.
| majormajor wrote:
| If you want to do AI research along a line that doesn't seem
| to currently represent big immediate profits, you aren't
| going to be competing with SV firms anyway.
|
| You still have to get grants and all for that area, and then
| "profit motive" of one form or another might sneak back in,
| but that would be true even without SV firms as well.
| anon291 wrote:
| I think the profit motive thing is stupid. It only matters if
| the organization itself is a volunteer organization. For
| example, if an organization is being run by nuns, I agree
| that profit doesn't matter because nuns aren't allowed to own
| any assets or have an income (by their own profession of
| course). However, in a 'normal' non-profit organization, the
| various stakeholders (employees, grant recipients, etc)
| actually have a huge profit motive.
|
| To me it doesn't matter if a CEO is working to get money for
| investors or to pad his own pockets. at the end of the day,
| the incentives are the same.
|
| So, no, I don't think this matters at all. While true that
| universities do have space for non-commercial work (which is
| usually funded by outside parties like the NSF or
| corporations anyway), the university leadership have a huge
| profit-motive to get more students (via attracting to
| professors) to pad their own pockets.
|
| In some ways, the non-profit sector is even more self-serving
| than the private one. At least private companies have to seek
| the best for their investors, while many non-profits simply
| seek the best for the CEO.
| brnt wrote:
| Not all universities are overfunded Ivy League.
|
| A risk of proprietary research is that the company can hoard
| knowledge, exploitation thereof, etc. It's the suboptimal
| quadrants of the prisoners dilemma.
| resource_waste wrote:
| This is how it has always been in automotive.
|
| ~15 years ago in automotive, juniors making 60-80k/yr. Most
| engineers were making a nice 100k+/yr. Experts making ~20-60k
| more. Top of field can make your 300k+ with consulting.
|
| Academia? Oof, 40k/yr starting, never breaking 90k.
|
| Your best talent basically goes to industry due to the forces of
| capitalism. The 22 year olds getting masters/PhDs were seen to be
| the failures who didn't get a job.
|
| Now if you talk to the people in Academia, their prestige was
| well worth the cost of living on an assembly line worker's wage.
| quasse wrote:
| My favorite academics in the automotive field were the ones who
| had already been in the the industry for long enough to make
| their bag and had come back to teach because it was fun.
|
| The head of the automotive program at my alma-mater was very
| well off and was completely open about the fact that he did
| consulting on the side if he wanted cash for a new truck or
| something. This also made him considerably more immune to
| administratorial university politics.
|
| A lot of university bloat and wasted resources came from the
| fact that the various regents, deans and heads of so-and-so
| wanted their fingers in every pie and would push various
| "initiatives" that academic staff were expected to support
| (which would then be a notch on the belt of the administrator
| who created it, giving them power to hire more staff and create
| more initiatives).
|
| There were a lot of levers that could be used against academic
| staff who focused too hard on teaching or supporting grad
| students. Loss of lab space, no grad students funneled to them,
| etc. The people who'd already "retired" once and were only
| there to teach were basically the only line of defense against
| this type of stuff, because they simply didn't care.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| In general the one regular report I hear from academics is that
| it was a waste of their time in the first place and that they
| would have been better off spending those two-six years in
| industry anyway. Academia is a fucking scam.
| epgui wrote:
| I could not disagree more vehemently.
| etrautmann wrote:
| this really depends on personal situation, field, and
| institution. It always makes sense to think carefully about
| whether you want to do a PhD, but can certainly make sense for
| the right person in the right place.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Exactly. If you want to study archeology, good luck finding a
| 500K salary in industry. Academia might be your only option,
| full stop.
|
| They're interesting part is that these things change with
| time. Academia might have been the best option for a
| fundamental AI researcher in the 1980s.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Exactly. If you want to study archeology, good luck
| finding a 500K salary in industry. Academia might be your
| only option, full stop.
|
| I don't know what the salaries are, but there is actually a
| private archaeological industry which services the need in
| many countries to do archaeological excavations prior to
| construction.
| reactordev wrote:
| As with everything, it depends. It depends on which school you
| went to, taught by which professor(s), and that had access to
| insiders within the broader academia landscape you are in.
|
| If you got an ML degree from University of Alabama, You have a
| vastly different experience than someone who got theirs from
| Harvard or MIT. It has its place, as with all things, but how
| many of the AI/ML grads with go work at Google or OpenAI? Not
| many.
|
| A degree does not guarantee you success, but in some cases, it
| is a barrier to entry (Physicians).
| layer8 wrote:
| Being constrained by demands of monetization potential isn't
| necessarily better, and sometimes much worse.
| __loam wrote:
| Yes it wouldn't be a hackernews thread without some
| neoliberal telling us about the harmonious society that the
| profit motive is creating.
| zemo wrote:
| that's definitely what I hear from people who leave academia
| and go into industry, but that's not a representative sample.
| Are the people you're referring to as academics all people who
| _left_ academia before you talked to them?
| __loam wrote:
| I mean they left academia because it's ass.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| What fraction leave vs stay? I thought most left because the
| population of PIs was relatively constant, so on average one
| person per lab (not per year, per lab over the lifetime of
| the lab) "made it." In this case, an unbiased sample would
| include mostly people who left academia with a very
| occasional person who stayed.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It probably depends on the place, but I know academic
| institutions that want people to leave eventually because
| indeed not everyone should or can be a professor. It's part
| of their mission to also train people for the industry.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > Academia is a fucking scam.
|
| I think you're describing a system where stagnation is allowed
| momentum, because perpetual innovation of ideas and the people
| promoting them can be stymied by "tenure".
|
| Is this what you mean?
| jedberg wrote:
| If you're getting a PhD with the _intention_ of leaving for
| commercial work afterwards specifically because you want a high
| salary, then yes, the PhD program is probably a waste of time.
| Case in point, all my friends stayed to get PhDs and I left to
| go to industry. By the time they graduated, my income was
| already a lot higher than their starting salaries.
|
| However, people with PhDs have a much easier time getting
| promos at commercial places. They get a built in assumption of
| high competency, especially if the PhD is from a highly
| regarded institution.
|
| But if your intention with a PhD is to _become an academic_ ,
| and you want to spend your time teaching or doing research,
| besides being necessary it's also very worthwhile. Or if you
| just really enjoy learning and don't care so much about salary
| when you're done, then it's extremely fulfilling.
| ajcp wrote:
| That logic doesn't check. How did they get their jobs in the
| first place if not for their academic credentials and research?
| Did they just apply with a blank resume? Maybe the skills they
| use at their jobs one can gain outside of academia for nothing,
| but that still won't get them hired.
|
| "Every rich person I've met has said money doesn't matter."
| Okay, but there's only one way for them to prove it...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| If your metric is compensation, which is the metric for many
| here, then acedemia isn't financially worth it for software
| engineers. You can check any "entry level" research position
| and compare it to a position that required 4-5 years of
| industry experience to compare. Unless you were researching a
| very hot or soon to be hot field (which requires a bit of
| foresight), you're generally not going to end up better off
| by spending those extra years studying such a hyper specific
| topic.
|
| as a CS/SWE, only go for post-grad if convenient (e.g. Some
| schools had a 4+1 program for a MS. That extra year probably
| does pay off), if you have a very specific topic you want to
| work in, or if you want to work in acedemia specifically.
| ajcp wrote:
| We're not talking about software engineers, we're talking
| about research scientist and engineers lured away from
| academia to work in the private sector. To your point I
| agree and don't know of any software engineer aspirant who
| thinks they need even a 4+1. But again, that's not the
| demographic we're discussing.
|
| There's a reason SV is hiring out of academia: because they
| can't hire the same minds out of a 4-year program, and
| certainly not off the street. In this case it shows the
| value of those programs that got them there, so for these
| former academics to report, as OP is suggesting, that it
| was a waste of time/money seems to hold no logic.
| nharada wrote:
| I can think of a whole set of things academia could change to
| attract more talent, and most of it wouldn't even cost much on
| the part of the university aside from professors and
| administration having to take accountability for various toxic
| behaviors of the department.
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| It's hard to feel bad for universities when they've always taken
| whatever money they've had and hired layers and layers of
| bureaucracy instead of paying professors.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's hard to escape Parkinson's Law.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Academia exists to fund research that doesn't have a high enough
| expected financial reward to be taken on by normal market actors.
|
| So WAI?
| addcommitpush wrote:
| I am not sure everybody would agree with that statement. Some
| might say academia exist to do research that extend humanity's
| knowledge, whether there's a financial reward or not.
| bachmeier wrote:
| That's one reason to have research universities.
|
| Another is to ensure that research results are publicly
| available. This is quite important in AI, where a handful of
| large companies could take control of a critical technology,
| and nobody outside the companies would have any understanding
| of it.
|
| A third is to ensure that all types of research are considered.
| One of the results from the economics literature is that using
| algorithms to set prices can lead to the same prices you'd have
| if the firms colluded. It's plausible that some companies would
| be hesitant to have their high-salary employees do that type of
| research and share it with the world (but also plausible that
| they'd be happy to do that type of research and keep it to
| themselves).
| dleink wrote:
| A broader goal is to have the kind of society that engenders
| large vibrant research communities and the benefits that come
| with them.
| tzs wrote:
| Insert "short term" before "financial".
| testfrequency wrote:
| This seems to be the new fad in tech.
|
| It seems like SWEs are a dime a dozen now, and they will "come to
| you" - but I'm seeing more and more internships and roles seeking
| PhD grads/undergrads for roles that traditionally you may have
| seen just this as a nice to have or a plus.
|
| I'm convinced these secret founders Signal group chats are all
| just CEOs saying how scientists and academia persons are really
| who they want working for them. My hunch is that they will most
| likely be less enthralled by the usual tech bubble that these
| companies tend to hire in, less problematic, and "less company
| focused" (focus on the task at hand, don't lean into company
| culture or ask questions, follow the straight line).
| robg wrote:
| Misses the point of academia. Neural nets and back prop came from
| a very small niche at the intersection of computer science,
| psychology, and neuroscience. Working with limited resources is a
| feature, not a bug, of innovation.
| zyang wrote:
| It's not always the money. Many academics labs are toxic work
| environments compare to industry labs.
| aorona wrote:
| Some of them are great but then I remember when I was floating
| around research labs some grad students would cry and tell you
| not to do what they were doing because its miserable. But then
| life has many fun horrors does it not?
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://archive.ph/2024.03.11-102743/https://www.washingtonp...
| evertedsphere wrote:
| sounds more like "SV is pricing universities out of AI
| researchers" to me
| omgJustTest wrote:
| I worked at a lab hired away by SV.
|
| In general our lab was very good at research & the rigidity of
| current academic institutions means that
|
| 1. admins are always the first hiring priority
|
| 2. academics do a ton of free work in publishing, service to
| their institutions on panels and committees, etc.
|
| The leadership above our program head were so entrenched by block
| grants, & their de-facto recipients, that there would be fights
| over post-doctoral salary increases on the $5k level.
|
| We had more money, which we won on competitive contracts, meaning
| if we won new contracts we could pay for better people... this
| was not welcome news to block grant recipients who had,
| essentially, fixed budgets & old mindsets.
|
| The result is, as it typically is, driven by incentive
| structures.
| noqc wrote:
| What are the incentive structures driven by?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The incentive structures of those funding the university's
| research department. In many cases, state governments, who
| themselves are run by congresspeople responding to the
| incentive structures set out by voters. Those voters are
| themselves tactically voting to get the best possible outcome
| in response to the incentive structures set out by voting
| systems. And the people who decide what the voting system is
| are the congresspeople they're voting in, who have an
| incentive to keep the system as it is so they can stay in
| power.
|
| In other words, it's incentives all the way down. At the
| national level, there are other factors that dilute the
| influence of this infinite regression of incentives, such as
| geopolitics, war, etc. But for states the only real factor
| that shines through - the green tint in our infinity mirror -
| is "how much money do we want to spend on secondary
| education" and the answer is invariably "less than last year"
| and "can we find someone else to pay for it?"
| noqc wrote:
| If coal is equally distributed among all people, then the
| utility to each person for burning their coal is more than
| offset by the (negative) utility of everyone burning their
| coal.
|
| Voting is what allows us to _overcome_ this sort of
| prisoner 's dilemma, and prevents coal from being burned
| when it hurts society in aggregate to do so.
|
| If instead, you adopt a system where how much you own
| decides your voting power, then when the coal gets
| concentrated enough, it doesn't matter how bad it is for
| society, that coal will get burned, because the voting
| power is concentrated among the people who benefit from it
| the most.
|
| Saying _voting_ is the source of this incentive structure
| is ignorant.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Look at that, academia figured out how to improve someone's job
| prospects after all.
| Animats wrote:
| Government funding would just result in boondoggles like the old
| national supercomputer centers from the 1980s. Giant, overpriced
| one-off machines of types never sold to commercial customers,
| surrounded by large administrative organizations and located for
| political reasons.
| jyunwai wrote:
| A related read is by Fei-Fei Li, who wrote more details about her
| point of view in a November 2023 article in The Atlantic [1]. The
| submitted article in The Washington Post focuses largely on the
| funding disparities, which she does highlight in her own article.
|
| But her article in The Atlantic places a greater emphasis on the
| effects of a brain drain of AI researchers from academia to
| industry. She gives examples about how 40 roboticists left
| Carnegie Mellon for Uber in 2015, and how her close collaborator
| Andrej Karpathy chose OpenAI in its earlier days over "a faculty
| offer from Princeton."
|
| She most notably recalls a quote said by someone at an OpenAI
| meeting that said that "Everyone doing research in AI should
| seriously question their role in academia going forward," and
| added the reflection: "To be honest, I wasn't sure I even
| disagreed."
|
| [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/11/ai-
| et...
|
| There was also past discussion on HN about her article at:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38362242
| choppaface wrote:
| A key problem is Google alone has displaced academics e.g. at
| NeurIPS
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/185pdax/d_...
|
| This trend heavily biases AI research towards Google problems.
| Perhaps things will swing away as LLMs (and especially smaller
| LLMs) take over the field.
| vinni2 wrote:
| I would say this has a cascade affect and big well funded
| universities are displacing smaller institutions.
| SilasX wrote:
| Beat me to it! The Carnegie Mellon/Uber "scandal" was talked
| about a lot on HN at the time! Some of the big threads:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9638121
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9602655
| hintymad wrote:
| Eh, how about firing 50% of the administrative staff from
| universities per this graph:https://philmagness.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/03/AdminGrow..., and definitely all the DEI
| staff and half the social study programs? And how about cut all
| the sports teams unless they are generating profits? How do
| sports jockeys have to do with academics anyway?
| fnfjfk wrote:
| This article appears to be complaining that laborers are taking a
| job that compensates more. Laborers are not the property of their
| employers ("academia" here). It's good when someone takes a
| higher-paying job, it will drive up wages to replace them.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Academia simply does not have the funding to pay wages driven
| up. Tech pockets are _deep_ comparatively. Is that good or bad?
| -\\_(tsu)_ /- I think it's more a call for private industry to
| run the equivalent of Bell Labs/Xerox PARC as a substitute for
| academia.
| fnfjfk wrote:
| Shrug, it's a market. Try offering 4 day work week or 10
| weeks PTO then.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I think you underestimate how rigid government is. Nearly
| everything is fixed. hours, location, salary raises,
| retirement plans, etc. They are very safe but rarely the
| most compensated in anything except intrinsic benefits
| (There are a lot of veteran programs, for instance) and job
| security.
|
| The main story here isn't so much the headline as it is
| acedemia asking for more funding.
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| University football and basketball coaches are also
| government employees. They have no problem receiving
| millions of dollars in compensation.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| It seems like private industry will win in anything that
| makes money or if it wants to fund something. For everything
| else, there's academia...until it becomes successful and then
| private industry wins again. I think that's okay too as
| hurdles exist on both sides. I did my first government grant
| recently and was blown away by the time and effort it takes.
| It's not a super efficient system.
| detourdog wrote:
| I agree that both the government and academia are for the
| things private industry won't pay for.
| Gud wrote:
| Some of these institutions are extremely rich, especially the
| type of academic institutions companies like OpenAI are most
| eager to recruit from.
| jltsiren wrote:
| That doesn't really matter. Nobody wants to pay more simply
| because they are rich. They may want to pay more if they
| stand to gain something from the investment. AI research is
| a poor investment for a university, because it's expensive
| and highly competitive. The university will likely gain
| more prestige by investing the money in other fields.
| whatwhaaaaat wrote:
| Interesting viewpoint since a university should be
| spending money on the pursuit of knowledge for the sake
| of knowledge and not profit.
|
| The whole notion that universities should be profiting in
| some personal form from research conducted at and for the
| institution is a rot on modern academia.
| jltsiren wrote:
| An investment is an investment, regardless of whether it
| is expected to yield money, prestige, or knowledge. If a
| dollar spent on biological research produces more
| knowledge than a dollar spent on AI research, it makes
| more sense to spend that dollar on biological research.
| rKarpinski wrote:
| Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta each individually
| have more cash & equivalents on hand than the richest
| school Harvard has in its entire endowment ~50B [2] (most
| of which is not liquid)
|
| [1] https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-
| funds/sectors/sp500-compa...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_univ
| ersit...
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| And yet universities can afford to pay millions of
| dollars to football and basketball coaches.
| bawolff wrote:
| They have more cash than most countries
| noqc wrote:
| >Academia simply does not have the funding to pay wages
| driven up.
|
| This isn't true at all. I know people in academia who have to
| be _convinced by their unions_ to not teach for free during
| disputes. Past about the 150k mark, The only thing left to
| optimize is how much you like to do your job. You couldn 't
| pay _me_ more than that do do something I like less.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| No is complaining that the benefits of AI research are all
| privately owned instead of at least being tacitly about
| knowledge.
|
| I think it says more about incentives for people working in
| automation than it does anything else
| bedobi wrote:
| Having recently spent quite a bit of time in Silicon Valley for
| the first time... for the supposedly richest area of the richest
| country in the world, wow, what an underwhelming experience, that
| money you're spending doesn't give you anything compared to NYC
| or even Miami.
|
| Completely unwalkable, no transit, freeways and highways
| everywhere, no bustle or nightlife even downtown on a weekend.
| Extremely limited culturally. Large parts of it feels like a
| third world country. Just what.
|
| Sure there are some redeeming qualities like being near the Bay
| and great hiking, but I can think of countless other places I'd
| rather exist at any compensation level. (including nearby SF
| which has at least some city qualities and amenities)
| csa wrote:
| > but I can think of countless other places I'd rather exist at
| any compensation level
|
| Bye, Felicia.
|
| I hope many others follow your lead.
| gnicholas wrote:
| You've just described every city in California. If you want to
| enjoy CA's weather and environment, this (or rural life) is the
| price you pay. For some of us, avoiding bustle by living in the
| suburbs is a benefit. Do the downtown areas shut down too
| early? I thought so in my 20s, but now that I'm in my 40's I
| don't really care.
|
| Also, some people include "nearby SF" when referring to SV. I
| disagree, but especially since Uber and other companies got
| big, the geographic definition expanded.
| tobias2014 wrote:
| Is academia supposed to compete? I think the researchers wish for
| that, but that's not directly how government funding agencies see
| it. From a government's funding perspective the goal is to train
| tomorrow's workforce. People learn in academia and then
| transition and contribute outside. As far as agencies like DOE
| go, that is an explicit goal.
| Xeronate wrote:
| isn't government funding for academia mainly grants for
| research rather than investments in teaching.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Similar to math teachers and programming. Most great math
| teachers can easily convert to at least mediocre programmers. And
| that translates to a 3x+ salary increase on day 1. I know people
| who converted.
|
| How does academia compete?
| bachmeier wrote:
| A point I've been making for several years is that the pandemic
| changed everything. Academic jobs are no longer viewed as
| having the special status they had even 10 years ago.
|
| How do universities compete? They can't, but they don't need to
| right now, because they've got a large existing stock of
| employees that have heavily invested themselves in the academic
| enterprise. That's a problem for a decade from now, but few
| administrators think ten weeks into the future, much less ten
| years. They'll still have a plentiful supply of humanities
| faculty, so at least that 10% of the university will be okay.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| 10 years from now is likely a different administration and
| it'll be their problem. The "Someone Else's Problem" is a
| very strong motivator.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| They can compete the exact same way that those tech companies
| compete with each other: compensation.
|
| Pay more, or offer enough other perks to entice employees.
| Teachers already have a massive perk in the fact that they work
| ~1/3rd fewer days than other jobs. That's a great draw, if you
| can offer good enough compensation to get over the "not making
| enough money to live a comfortable life" threshold.
|
| If people will risk their lives as cold-water crab fisherman
| for the right price, there's certainly a price to put up with
| highschoolers.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Difference is funding. Good luck convincing the population
| you need to tripple teacher salaries.
|
| I mean we should. But good luck convincing.
| aorona wrote:
| If they tripled teaching salaries I would 100% become a
| teacher because its fulfilling. But the pay is rather shit
| for the role and responsibilities
| Justsignedup wrote:
| I know many who have the same sentiment. And I wish we
| lived in a society where that was the case.
| 23B1 wrote:
| One point that seems to have been lost in the comments is that
| academia is a 'safe space' for tough questions, theoretical
| questions, questions that don't have a profit motive.
|
| The degree to which they actually tackle those things is
| debatable, but there is value in research that doesn't happen on
| the exclusive behalf of shareholders.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Considering the colossal waste of money almost every academic
| institution spends on activities that are entirely peripheral to
| research and teaching, I'd say good riddance.
| dnissley wrote:
| There's something very strange about the phrasing here. "X is
| getting priced out of Y" is generally invoked to get someone to
| feel empathy towards the party that is getting priced out. E.g.
| "The urban poor getting priced out of a gentrifying neighborhood"
| -- this is very much NOT that.
| dekhn wrote:
| In the past when I was in academia, I saw a really interesting
| model: you have a faculty position at a university or a national
| lab. But you also set up an "Institute" which is independent from
| the U or lab. Instead it's an LLC owned by the faculty. The
| institute applies for grants ("wearing your institute hat") and
| the resulting grants are not subject to the university or lab
| overhead. Instead, that overhead goes to fund the admin structure
| for the institute, which can be far more minimal than a typical
| research institute.
|
| With an approach like this you can get $2-5M/year in funding,
| hire 1-2 really good employees, and use the rest of the money to
| pay for cloud infra (or on-prem or other infra if that's your
| preference). And of course, any ideas you have, you spin off into
| startups that you have equity in.
| up2isomorphism wrote:
| Almost all breakthrough in human history are not triggered by
| money but talent meeting opportunity. So why worried about
| someone wants to take a job (research or not) because he is
| getting paid higher?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| We all knew corporations won the AI research game when Uber
| bought the CMU lab
|
| This was in the before transformers times but after alexnet
| revolution
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| This story is at least a few decades old. The only reason to stay
| in acedemia as a computer scientists/software engineer is if you
| want to focus on cutting-edge research or otherwise have a
| passion to teach others. Industry will outbid for everyone else.
| karmasimida wrote:
| And? This is just how economy work. Chip design has been like
| that for decades.
|
| The academia should be rejoiced that it has make an economical
| impact
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Have you heard of the MIT AI lab and Symbolics? During AI spring
| it generally would switch to situations like these. We don't pay
| a good enough wage to researchers so they get out of academia .
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