disclaimer: I know Parni personally, and she did not ask me to chime in here. Parni's intentions are honest, even if her program is a little bit ill defined at

disclaimer: I know Parni personally, and she did not ask me to chime in here. Parni's intentions are honest, even if her program is a little bit ill defined at this stage. I think she's started this fellowship because she'd observed several of her friends struggling to find an avenue to pursue their research direction. Realistically, it's financially difficult for many to pursue a ML PhD when they can be earning fat stacks in industry. I think that programs like this help balance out the incentives, for engineers who need normal income. Programs like OpenAI and Google Brain aren't the last word here, the more the merrier! Personally, I'd prefer to see a program which sets up some sort of equity in an investment fund for ML PhD students. Academia is still probably the best way to push the frontiers of public knowledge, but its almost insane to forgo salary & equity comp for 5 years in a high growth field. Making the opportunity cost of a PhD lower seems like a good outcome. RE: the question of if there is funding or not, my best guess is that if there is a good applicant pool it would be highly unlikely the program go unfunded.