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This kind of research should be done by universities or already profitable companies. Using someone else's VC money for this seems questionable at best.

by mLuby 8y ago

dimillian 8y ago
Yet again, research and breakthrough are not made by profitable companies. And research money most often come from government with little to no incentive on ROI.
- kamarg 8y ago
  >> Yet again, research and breakthrough are not made by profitable companies. I'm pretty confident that this is flat out wrong. Just within the tech sphere you have Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM, Samsung, and Baidu that have all historically put out large amounts of research. Outside of the tech sphere look at Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, GM, Toyota. Here's a slightly dated summary of research spending by large (profitable) companies https://www.recode.net/2017/9/1/16236506/tech-amazon-apple-gdp-spending-productivity https://www.recode.net/2017/9/1/16236506/tech-amazon-apple-g....
chriskanan 8y ago
It is extremely useful for recruiting talent. Top talent wants to do basic research, so this is a powerful lure for keeping them at the company rather than in academia. I'm at NeurIPS this week, and many companies are here and they heavily advertise how many papers they have in the conference as part of their recruitment efforts for both (applied) AI research and AI engineering positions.
- dagw 8y ago
  Exactly. This is one thing I always ask when interviewing for a new job, and any company that cannot give me a decent answer goes to the bottom of my list.
Voloskaya 8y ago
This is nonsense. What if this is research around problems they need to solve in order to improve their self-driving car? Because clearly that's the goal here. Should they tell investors to patiently wait while some academic comes up with a solution to their problem? If I were VC with stakes in uber, and they wouldn't be researching this area, I would be pretty mad.

This kind of research should be done by universities or already profitable companies. Using someone else's VC money for this seems questionable at best.

by mLuby 8y ago

This kind of research should be done by universities or already profitable companies. Using someone else's VC money for this seems questionable at best.

dimillian 8y ago

Yet again, research and breakthrough are not made by profitable companies. And research money most often come from government with little to no incentive on ROI.

kamarg 8y ago
>> Yet again, research and breakthrough are not made by profitable companies. I'm pretty confident that this is flat out wrong. Just within the tech sphere you have Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM, Samsung, and Baidu that have all historically put out large amounts of research. Outside of the tech sphere look at Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, GM, Toyota. Here's a slightly dated summary of research spending by large (profitable) companies https://www.recode.net/2017/9/1/16236506/tech-amazon-apple-gdp-spending-productivity https://www.recode.net/2017/9/1/16236506/tech-amazon-apple-g....

chriskanan 8y ago

It is extremely useful for recruiting talent. Top talent wants to do basic research, so this is a powerful lure for keeping them at the company rather than in academia. I'm at NeurIPS this week, and many companies are here and they heavily advertise how many papers they have in the conference as part of their recruitment efforts for both (applied) AI research and AI engineering positions.

dagw 8y ago
Exactly. This is one thing I always ask when interviewing for a new job, and any company that cannot give me a decent answer goes to the bottom of my list.

Voloskaya 8y ago

This is nonsense. What if this is research around problems they need to solve in order to improve their self-driving car? Because clearly that's the goal here. Should they tell investors to patiently wait while some academic comes up with a solution to their problem? If I were VC with stakes in uber, and they wouldn't be researching this area, I would be pretty mad.