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A.I. Researchers Are Making More Than $1M, Even at a Nonprofit
- malux85 8y agoNot unusual for people at the top of their game. I just turned down a 2M a year offer, and I have a friend who is making 2.9M USD. It's just a value proposition, he makes the company a lot more than 2.9 million a year, and when you negotiate you negotiate on value (and not on time) then you can justify these salaries.
- miketery 8y agoWhat qualifications or degrees do these people posses?
- malux85 8y agoIt's experience in the two examples I gave : I singlehandedly built my company : RAMM Science (https://ramm.science https://ramm.science) And he singlehandedly built one of Europes largest online betting system backends (and scaled it to 800 transactions a second using Deep Learning, Kafka and a Hadoop cluster)
- iampims 8y agoThat’s impressive. Time to hire a front end engineer and designer though.
- zitterbewegung 8y agoYou can do with a bad front end design if you are doing b2b since you don’t get leads from your websites but instead from meeting people .
- jedbrown 8y agoIs that a real company? Your website is all "lorem ipsum ...". https://ramm.science/x/signalbox/ https://ramm.science/x/signalbox/
- malux85 8y agohahahaha you made me slap my forehead, someone did tell me that the other day and I forgot to fix it. thanks for reminding me!
- the_watcher 8y agoI'm not seeing any lorem ipsum at this url.
- tzakrajs 8y agoIs 800 transactions per second good? It seems like a low number but what do I know. I am impressed that Europe's largest betting system only does 800 transactions per second.
- malux85 8y agoThat's 800 credit card transactions a second --- thats people making deposits into their accounts to bet with. (btw I think that's peak - I'm not 100% sure) The frontends (where the casino / betting games run) do a lot more than this, but they work against the balance in the account, it's the payment gateway that's doing 800/s
- alexbeloi 8y agoWhy does a payment gateway need deep learning? I can't imagine an online betting system doing fraud detection on deposits.
- malux85 8y agoIt was a bit simplistic of me to summarize it as a payment gateway, it was actually 50-60% of their backend systems that was enhanced, it was called their "Big Data Project" They do do fraud detection on the deposits, because of anti-money-laundering. The DL models also monitor various other types of abuse (bonus abuse and in-game abusers). They also are experimenting with Deep Reenforcement Learning to actually play some of the games
- sjg007 8y agoI thought bots weren't allowed? Also a DL bot by the house would probably have an unfair advantage.
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- GFischer 8y agoSo I can do 800 credit card transactions a second I should get a 100x raise? I knew I was underpaid, but not that much ! :P
- ashelmire 8y agoGet rid of the font-weight on your site, it makes the text unreadable. But good work making something and becoming successful!
- charlesdm 8y agoDegrees don't matter. (Business focused) results and a track record of delivering do. Still impressive remuneration though -- he must be adding tens of millions in profits to the bottom line.
- nvarsj 8y agoAnd/or good at convincing people he provides that much value.
- tensor 8y agoResults don't really matter either, you just need to convince people that you are valuable. Many people in business don't have any sort of "provable" results but have excellent people skills.
- kirykl 8y agoAgreed, Results generally only matter for the low level employee and the CEO. In between you can people your way to a career
- 7figures 8y agoDegrees matter deeply among the untalented in my experience. I have one of those fancy pee HUDs, but I only whip it out when I'm dealing with the above sort.
- JonRB 8y agoGenuinely curious - what do you do?
- malux85 8y agoIn my profile
- roymurdock 8y agoHe puts smart assets on a blockchain and controls them with AI https://hydrachain.io/ https://hydrachain.io/
- Radim 8y agoThese RAMM sites seem a hotch-potch of vaguely related buzzwords, blurred images and unrelated company logos. Did you see the laundry list of "Current Customer Use Cases" under https://ramm.science/x/signalbox/ https://ramm.science/x/signalbox/? I respect fake-it-till-you-make to some degree, but I find too much "spinning" actually hurts the ML industry (though no doubt profitable for the spin artists). Communication style straight from the ICO world.
- etaioinshrdlu 8y agoI thought this was a joke, but it turns out to be true. This is the world we live in.
- fergie 8y agoAfter reading the article I am genuinely unsure whether you are joking or not.
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- einstok 8y agoFake it till you make it dude
- aje403 8y agoHahaha
- opsiprogram 8y agoWhat is considered to be "top of game" in deep learning in your experience... does that apply to just researchers like Ian Goodfellow who come up with completely novel methods for ML algorithms, or does it extend as far as people who are just using the methods that others developed effectively or in new ways? I know thats a weird question, but I am planning on looking into deep learning jobs after finishing my (MS) curious what the market value is for people who have experience implementing the systems , vs the people inventing new architectures. Because I won't have a PHD... It seems like somewhere along the way its a pretty extreme jump to ask for 1,2M or even 500K instead of just 100K~200K... wondering if you have any advice for how someone new might prove themselves... I guess beyond the standard stuff (have a nice github, try to replicate papers etc...)
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- chillydawg 8y agoI think a smart, hard working person who re-uses modern results from others well and in potentially new ways can create a vast amount of value. Short term, more than the top guys, as a lot of their work may be speculative, and yours would be getting-it-done. Long term, they'll invent some method that leaves you in the dust, but that's fine, just learn that too!
- Daishiman 8y agoA very specific skillset which will have that value until the next wave of techniques comes up. I really don't see the point of these articles. If you're the expert corporate lawyer in mergers and acquisitions with an expertise in EU-US mergers in the agrochemical sector you'll make bank when you hit that one huge multinational client. And then that combo of skills goes back to being not particularly valuable.
- mv4 8y agoFrom the article: "both were recruited from Google". Previous employer seems to be a factor here.
- drharby 8y agoCorrelation not causation
- mmartinson 8y ago"Mr. Zaremba said big tech companies were offering him two or three times what he believed his real market value was" Seems this fellow knows a whole lot more about computers than he does markets hahaha
- jdavis703 8y agoSure, his statement contradicts the classical definition of market, but we all know markets can become divorced from reality during bubbles. I'm assuming that was his real point.
- derefr 8y agoHe might be trying to say that there are enough people like him in the market that it really shouldn't be a seller's market; but those others are mostly undervalued/ignored, while his value has been artificially inflated because of the (incorrectly!) perceived rarity of his skills. This is the pattern that goes on all the time inside companies: constant attempts to hire talent from the outside, coupled with complete ignorance of the skills (perhaps developed post-hire) of their existing employees. I know more people than I can count who know everything required to be doing "data science" for a company, but—since they were hired to be maintenance dev-ops people—they will never be considered for "promotion into" a data-science role when there's a vacancy.
- mehrdadn 8y agoDo they want to be doing data science though? Otherwise they might as well not know how to do it.
- jethro_tell 8y ago>Otherwise they might as well not know how to do it. This is some real crazy talk here. The idea that you should limit yourself to the particular set of knowledge you wish to make money off of is insane. There's almost no such thing as wasted learning, even if you're not interested in pursuing it for a career. Maybe it's a hobby, maybe you touch it in a tangential way for your normal work where a basic understanding brings value but is not necessary. This is the same attitude that undervalues previous experience and builds in favor of specific lingual or stack competence.
- gwern 8y agoForm 990 link: http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/810/810861541/810861541_201612_990.pdf http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/810/8108615... http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2016/810/861/2016-810861541-0eb61629-9.pdf http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2016/810/861/2016-8108...
- not_a_moth 8y agoTo be clear a few AI researchers are making more than $1M, and the "even at a nonprofit" is referring to arguably the most famous AI shop out there. Source: work in AI.
- xiaolingxiao 8y agowhat's your background and what is the general compensation of those around you?
- Kilonzus 8y agoYour artwork is great, the ink wash is amazing
- nightski 8y agoAlso a "non profit" which had an injection of $1 Billion in cash from investors. Not many non profits have that going for them.
- mmagin 8y agoIt isn't really notable that someone makes <X> salary "at a nonprofit". Nonprofit doesn't really mean charity.
- kazinator 8y agoCharity also doesn't mean zero salary, does it?
- zeroxfe 8y agoYes, they're not necessarily charities, but _in general_ they pay much lower than for-profit organizations.
- rhizome 8y agoTo the degree that this is true, my impression is that it's due to poor fundraising departments at those organizations, which appears common enough to be a stereotype. "Nonprofit" really only affects how an organization's taxes are reported, all in all.
- notahacker 8y agoThe top players in a field with a lot of commercial potential can claim high salaries, even for doing quasi-academic research mostly on things they want to research. That said, I'm reminded the champion of the effective altruism movement made his name arguing that charities ought to rigorously audit their efficiency in turning donations into results before recommending $30m of foundation cash went to this particular speculative nonprofit research project his roommate and future brother in law happened to work at...
- sjg007 8y agoOpenAI is funded by a few VCs and big name tech leaders. It got to be a research incubator and pay well otherwise everyone will go off to a big tech company. To some extent they can focus on research as directed by the board as well. Otherwise you wait for academics to publish something OR for people to leave the big techs.
- notahacker 8y agoOh I don't doubt OpenAI is more likely to produce useful research if can keep hold of staff. Mostly I was reminded of the people in the HN thread [1] at the time suggesting it didn't pay well, when actually it's picking up elite researchers on elite salaries and hoping something will come of it. [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14008569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14008569
- blackbagboys 8y agoSo a tiny handful of top performers - plausibly few enough that you could fit them all on a schoolbus - in an ultra-hot technical field are raking in huge sums, for the moment. Unless you are a top professor at an R1 research university or have a PhD from an R1 university studying under the other top minds in the field or are otherwise in the most elite fraction of the profession, it doesn't sound like this is particularly useful information for the average practicing or aspiring data-tician. What's the typical salary for someone with, say, a two-year professional masters?
- make3 8y agoThey say that OpenAI are forced to disclose the salaries. Does anyone have a link to the source, to the document with the disclosed salaries? I'd be curious to see the range.
- jseliger 8y agoAlso, the "nonprofit" part is less relevant than many assume. Nonprofits are more like businesses than most people realize: http://seliger.com/2012/09/02/why-nonprofits-are-more-like-businesses-than-you-realize http://seliger.com/2012/09/02/why-nonprofits-are-more-like-b...
- johnhenry 8y ago> Because nonprofits, like other businesses, ... Or, more accurately, non-profits are businesses.
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- tedsanders 8y agoGenuine questions for those participating in this market (on either side): -How is the performance of $1M AI researchers measured? Like, at their six month review, what do you look at to tell if your money is being well spent? -How do you tell if it makes more sense to hire 1 famous AI researcher vs 10 additional junior data scientists? What sort of products are suited to different hiring strategies? -How much of $1M AI researcher hiring is long-term/speculative (i.e., based on hopes of future products/revenue) vs short-term/measurable (immediately measurable as soon as a code commit hits the product)? Are there examples of products where profit went up by millions after a famous AI researcher was hired? It sounds like quite a few companies are grappling with these questions today. I'm really curious to know how their thinking is evolving on this topic.
- chatmasta 8y agoIt seems more akin to building a labor war chest, i.e. filling your company with the best AI talent so that your competition can not hire them. You might not have an exact plan for what to do now, but there's no reason not to build up a talented team of engineers in a hot field when you've got effectively unlimited money and resources.
- bob_theslob646 8y agoHuh, you seem to be describing Google fairly well...
- nl 8y agoThere is no shortage of big problems for AI researchers to work on. If I had the money I'd hire hundreds, and that's just on my subfield (A.I. for software development).
- CretinDesAlpes 8y agoI don't think it works like this. It's a strategic investment for the company to attract talents. People want to work with smarter people than themselves. Like they say in the article “When you hire a star, you are not just hiring a star, You are hiring everyone they attract. And you are paying for all the publicity they will attract.”
- microtherion 8y agoWho do these people think they are anyway? College football coaches?
- mythbuster2001 8y agoI'm not sure anything that came out from OpenAI so far, justifies that sort of compensation... Maybe they have some aces up their sleeves...
- kapauldo 8y agoNon profits are really bad at 2 things - hiring and build vs buy decisions (see the Amazon Pentagon contract for $2b). Overpaying people with other people's money is not new.
- daemonk 8y agoPeople who are really good at what they do often thinks what they do isn't worth much because it's easy for them. It's part of why they are good at it.
- adampk 8y agoWhen chefs get $1m it makes every great cook think they are chefs lexicon ripped from: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-sauce.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-s...
- partycoder 8y agoSome occupations such as football players or C-level executives make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. I am not surprised that an AI researcher can make that much. Consider the AI researchers behind the optical recognition systems for handwritten text used in ATMs. Now you can massively deploy ATMs that read checks 24/7 without supervision... Paying $1m 2018 dollars to those guys is not a proportional compensation with respect to the amount of wealth they brought in.
- everdev 8y agoIf someone is skilled and basically generating revolutionary IP on their own or in a small team, this sounds like a bargain. Good AI easily can carry a $1B valuation, so a few million for you talent makes sense.
- sytelus 8y agoWow... what a hyped up clickbait article! If you are a top performer in virtually any field in the world, you are likely making 10X than average norms. It doesn’t mean everyone is getting 10X. To get $1M in AI field you will need to have PhD from top institute, probably under well known adviser, might have even written a book, published award winning papers at top conferences and so on. It’s a big list and there are likely less than dozen people would qualify. And yes, they do deserve 10X income. It’s not that author doesn’t know this. He even tries to protect himself by making sure facts are included: At DeepMind, a London A.I. lab now owned by Google, costs for 400 employees totaled $138 million in 2016, according to the company’s annual financial filings in Britain. That translates to $345,000 per employee, including researchers and other staff.
- walshemj 8y agois this just salary costs- rule of thumb is an employee costs 3x their salary. However working at the bleeding edge can increase this multiplier a lot as you need a lot lot more support (large clusters, large equipment costs etc) I used to work at a world leading Rnd Organisation and they where trying to get the OH rate under 500%.
- nl 8y agoWell... I’m going to be the one to say it. Ian Goodfellow is underpaid at 800K.
- m_ke 8y ago*was, and that 800K wasn't for a full year.
- tedsanders 8y agoGenuinely curious: How do you come to that conclusion? What is the output he produced at OpenAI and how do you measure its value?
- visarga 8y agoHe opened up two subfields of AI, GANs and adversarial attacks, and coauthored one of the most recommended books. His fame attracts more researchers and for lower salary, just to work with him.
- nl 8y agoGANs (which he invented) are a game changer, and have enabled things to be built which I thought were 20 years away. For example, the life-like faces NVidia research created in Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation[1] are just an incredible achievement (it's worth looking at the pics in that paper if you haven't seen them). Approaches like that have real-life impact in things like games, architecture, design, film, etc (and that is just the obvious implications for images). GANs of course can be used outside images and they have just as much potential there. Anywhere an auto-encoder is used now can probably be done better with a GAN. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.10196 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.10196
- make3 8y agohe's at Google now, probably because they offered him way more
- quickthrower2 8y agoJanitors are making more than $1M... (I can prove it if I find 2 of them running their own business successfully)
- paulsutter 8y ago“AI Celebrities Are Making More Than $1M, Even at a Nonprofit” There, fixed it. These are celebrities within the field and there’s nothing surprising about their pay. YouTube celebrity pays more but I suppose you take what you can get. Key quote: ““When you hire a star, you are not just hiring a star,” Mr. Nicholson of the start-up Skymind said. “You are hiring everyone they attract. And you are paying for all the publicity they will attract.”
- nmca 8y agoThis is correct. There are many people who would pass up on many a hedge fund position (and the associated difference in compensation) to work with Geof, Yann, Schmidhuber, Goodfellow, Zoubin etc. People know this; the salaries honestly don't seem wholly disproportionate in light of it.
- inverse_pi 8y agoI don't understand the surprises here. New grads out of undergrad these days are making 120k in base + about 250k RSUs vested in 4 years + 20k cash bonus every year. That's about 200k / year for a new grad from UNDERgrad. Ian Goodfellow invented GAN and he's paid 1M a year and people are shocked?
- ikeboy 8y ago>Mr. Zaremba said big tech companies were offering him two or three times what he believed his real market value was. By definition, if he was offered some amount then his market value is at least that amount. That's literally what the term "market" is doing. Maybe he was offered above his value, but not above "market" value, by definition.
- gamesbrainiac 8y agoSo, a bunch of people with a lot of experience in a particular technology, and who are in top leadership positions are being paid a lot of money. How is this news?
- kisstheblade 8y agoAnd I have yet to see any "AI" worth anything. Some image recognition and rudimentary translation engines maybe, but "AI", way overhyped.
- yoz-y 8y agoAI is driving cars and planes, beating experts at disease diagnostic, ruining popular competitive board games... But as the definition goes, anything that can be done today is already old hat.
- potbelly83 8y agoNot really, planes are driven by control theory algos which existed long before all the deep learning hype.
- xss002 8y ago1
- jasonkester 8y agoIt's sad that the comments here mostly fall into a few categories: - "This is only a few people, so not something that could affect the rest of us" - "Those people had a specific skill, so the rest of us couldn't possibly make that much" - "This is only happening in the Bay Area, so anybody living anywhere else shouldn't expect to make that much" It's maddening. How about, instead, when we see another datapoint showing how ridiculously valuable we developers are to employers and our potential earning power, we talk about how to get one of those million dollar salaries. Because that is in fact doable, and this article highlights just one of the many ways a smart guy in his 20s could position himself so as to be making that million dollar salary within the next few years. That would be much more productive than trying to prove to everybody that the market does in fact only ever pay $70k/year because that's what you see on that Java job ad on Monster.com. This is a reality that developers need to take on board. And sadly, most people here are actively fighting against doing so. To their detriment.
- libdjml 8y agoI applaud the positive spin, but the responses are due to the headline which suggests these salaries are normal. If an article said “supermarket checkout clerks are earning over $1m” and the article explained that a couple of retired property investors decided to work at a supermarket, would you respond the same? The harsh reality is, very few people will have the tenacity, intelligence, and opportunities to become a top 20 AI researcher, especially in their 20s.
- kafquaesque 8y agoAgreed. At the same time—believing one can do something is something that can help people continue to be persistent when it doesn’t come right away? It gives a goal even if never achieved. I never made it to the Olympics but I did become a scholarship-college athlete by dreaming of being an Olympian(hopefully this doesn’t seem boastful). I like to know who the people are at the top of their game. It’s a good way to measure how much I may be able to improve. I can create a gap-analysis of how to get there.
- jasonkester 8y ago
- nbanks 8y agoI know someone starting a masters under Yoshua Bengio at UdeM. It's been a great school for statistical machine translation for quite a while. I wonder what he'll be making in ten years.