5 ms·

IMO what would actually drive AI breakthroughs is to support people on a large time scale so they can quit their applied AI/ NLP/ Computer Vision jobs and focus

IMO what would actually drive AI breakthroughs is to support people on a large time scale so they can quit their applied AI/ NLP/ Computer Vision jobs and focus full time on their moonshot research endeavor. For example, I work in AI, and this is not a useful proposal for me, in particular. But I do have at least a couple crazy AI ideas that might take > a year to develop, and I can imagine nothing better than a grant I could live on for a year and develop the AI. I know I'm not the only one. Someone mentioned a catch-22 with this idea, have to agree.

davedx 9y ago
Have you considered academia?
- orthoganol 9y ago
  Oh God no. The last thing in the world I want is to all of a sudden have to be publishing a ton of marginally useful crap or spend time reviewing others' marginally useful crap being sold as contributions because they have to publish. Or working with students. Why? I already have my big ideas, I have enough education and experience in the field to do stuff on my own, I just need a lot of time to hack on stuff and experiment. I know I'm not the only one.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Precisely this. And let me use this opportunity to pull out this gem I found once from my quotes file: "What one wants is to be able to talk with a diverse club of smart people, arrange to do short one-off research projects and simulations, publish papers or capture intellectual property quickly and easily, and move on to another conversation. Quickly. Easily. For a living. Can’t do that in industry. Can’t do that in the Academy. Yet in my experience, scientists and engineers all want it. Maybe even a few mathematicians and social scientists do, too." -- Bill Tozier, Diverse themes observed at GECCO 2006
- elementalest 9y ago
  Due to the publication requirements/incentives, academia greatly favours those who take on short term low risk research that will likely result in a few quick easy papers. Furthermore, due to the limited positions available in academia, generally only those who are good at this will rise up in academia. Getting to a point where you control your own research and have financial stability for research that could span 3+ years with very little output (paper wise) is something comparatively few academics achieve. Even fewer of those who have, did so by conducting longer term research. Most academics I know are just trying to produce as many papers per year as they can and do whatever research in their field they can do, to do it.
petters 9y ago
Obviously I have no clue about your personal situation, but many people working in AI could afford to take a year-long sabbatical after a while. But sure, such a grant may be useful. Most current grants require you to work in academia.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
TuringNYC 9y ago
Single Payer Healthcare would accomplish this for a wide swath of the US population for sure. I have savings, our family is willing to use savings to pursue risky projects, but we are not willing to go for long periods of time w/o decent healthcare and we cannot self-fund any decent family plan for extended periods.
- EGreg 9y ago
  Are there any cryptocurrencies that have UBI built in? Like groupcurrency.org?
ccozan 9y ago
You are definitively not alone in this. I know my ideas are kind of crazy, they can work but to validate the research at least one year would be needed. Another one to build a prototype, maybe more to create a commercial product. Which means the whole effort could be about 1M of USD or euro, whatever. But nobody finances this. Maybe an investor reads this understands that AI is not the next social network or JS framework. It is the pinnacle of human invention and requires that amount of financing.

davedx 9y ago

Have you considered academia?

orthoganol 9y ago
Oh God no. The last thing in the world I want is to all of a sudden have to be publishing a ton of marginally useful crap or spend time reviewing others' marginally useful crap being sold as contributions because they have to publish. Or working with students. Why? I already have my big ideas, I have enough education and experience in the field to do stuff on my own, I just need a lot of time to hack on stuff and experiment. I know I'm not the only one.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Precisely this. And let me use this opportunity to pull out this gem I found once from my quotes file: "What one wants is to be able to talk with a diverse club of smart people, arrange to do short one-off research projects and simulations, publish papers or capture intellectual property quickly and easily, and move on to another conversation. Quickly. Easily. For a living. Can’t do that in industry. Can’t do that in the Academy. Yet in my experience, scientists and engineers all want it. Maybe even a few mathematicians and social scientists do, too." -- Bill Tozier, Diverse themes observed at GECCO 2006
elementalest 9y ago
Due to the publication requirements/incentives, academia greatly favours those who take on short term low risk research that will likely result in a few quick easy papers. Furthermore, due to the limited positions available in academia, generally only those who are good at this will rise up in academia. Getting to a point where you control your own research and have financial stability for research that could span 3+ years with very little output (paper wise) is something comparatively few academics achieve. Even fewer of those who have, did so by conducting longer term research. Most academics I know are just trying to produce as many papers per year as they can and do whatever research in their field they can do, to do it.

petters 9y ago

Obviously I have no clue about your personal situation, but many people working in AI could afford to take a year-long sabbatical after a while. But sure, such a grant may be useful. Most current grants require you to work in academia.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

TuringNYC 9y ago

Single Payer Healthcare would accomplish this for a wide swath of the US population for sure. I have savings, our family is willing to use savings to pursue risky projects, but we are not willing to go for long periods of time w/o decent healthcare and we cannot self-fund any decent family plan for extended periods.

EGreg 9y ago
Are there any cryptocurrencies that have UBI built in? Like groupcurrency.org?

ccozan 9y ago

You are definitively not alone in this. I know my ideas are kind of crazy, they can work but to validate the research at least one year would be needed. Another one to build a prototype, maybe more to create a commercial product. Which means the whole effort could be about 1M of USD or euro, whatever. But nobody finances this. Maybe an investor reads this understands that AI is not the next social network or JS framework. It is the pinnacle of human invention and requires that amount of financing.