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Keeping Top AI Talent in the United States [pdf]

125 points by jstrieb 7y ago

atlasunshrugged 7y ago
I agree that keeping top AI talent (along with several other key sectors) in the US is absolutely critical to maintain America's superpower status long term. It seems to me that the US became a power and remained one for so long in no small part because of the opportunities provided to foreigners here and being a 'nation of immigrants' which attracted the best and brightest from abroad to contribute to the economy, defense, and more. I was lucky enough to have been born in the US so I've got no need to go through the visa process but hearing from friends and colleagues, it sounds like an absolute nightmare. Still, the US could get away with it because we were the place everyone wanted to be - now with our difficulties in healthcare, declining infrastructure, violence issues (perceived or real, especially around guns), and low education standards paired with many EU nations being very attractive and welcoming, I think we need to dramatically step up our work trying to be competitive attracting talent.
windowlesley 7y ago
It is by no means clear that what is termed "AI" today is indeed the artificial intelligence that we all seek, love and fear and that will prove useful. Perhaps most current "AI" researchers are wasting their time. Perhaps not. Some useful metrics would help judge this, but in the absence of even a clear definition of intelligence I see little hope of that. In the absence of further information I hesitate to dedicate funding preferably to "AI" based on faith alone. I might as well spend the money on cheaper and more reliable power turbines for remote wooded areas in California or finding a clean way to mine and convert coal to energy. Maybe the money would be better spent upgrading the health-care system or replacing our Navy with something more likely to survive a flurry of cheap cruise missiles. There are an infinite number of ways to spend money and "keeping top AI talent" is far down my list.
nine_zeros 7y ago
Very true. Many countries are on their way to developing entire industries around tech. This was previously only exclusive to US, maybe Japan. Some of those countries are attracting previously unheard-of talent and subsequent funding from the US. It's hard to imagine how future US startups can ever compete.
- pinkfoot 7y ago
  By tech do you mean “consumer-facing software products”? For if you mean technology in its broader sense, I assure you many countries have and are built around it.
  - nine_zeros 7y ago
    I mean entire ecosystems that forms "industry". I also mean entire marketplaces, solutions and systems that the US tech industry is now having to copy from somewhere else.
jstrieb 7y ago
Here is a summary of key results by the primary author: https://twitter.com/r_zwetsloot/status/1206989954984894464 https://twitter.com/r_zwetsloot/status/1206989954984894464
- curiousgal 7y ago
  Mandatory comment complaining about Twitter threads, especially one with so many pictures. I'd rather read the entire report than suffer through that summary.
  - jstrieb 7y ago
    Perhaps this better-formatted version is preferable: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1206989954984894464.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1206989954984894464.html
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  Thanks for the link. This surprised me: “These high retention rates are important, because a large majority (about 2/3) of grad students getting trained in AI-related programs at US universities are not American citizens” The current situation of making it difficult for recent graduates to get green cards could put pressure on retention (having students staying in the US). At my last job I tried for about a year to replace a deep learning engineer after someone on my team left for a dream job. Currently many white collar jobs (like Wall Street analysts) are getting eliminated by deep learning and other models automation. I predict that it will be 5 to 7 years before most routine deep learning development will be largely automated, but until we achieve this, it is really important to have trained people to do the work. That said, top level AI research will not be automated in the near future.
  - lifeisstillgood 7y ago
    Wall St Analysts are being replaced by NL? Is this "reading lots of company reports and extracting ten key features" or is there something else ?
solarengineer 7y ago
I’ve worked in and traveled around the US for a few years ( Nashville, San Antonio, Palo Alto, SF, Portland, Houston, Atlanta). I left the US in 2014 and haven’t returned since then. I can share that the horror stories I read about the current US politics, climate change denial, police excesses, homelessness and the related squalor have reduced my interest in considering the US as a long term home :( I’d rather innovate in other countries that are friendly and safer ( I’m in Singapore now). I work with a PhD in mechanical engineering, who shares my views about the US not being a Long term place to stay at ( at least based on current status). The rest of the world used to see the US as a leader, as a peace keeper. Now, not at all. :(
- umvi 7y ago
  It's very difficult to stay a benevolent superpower forever. Very few countries have done it for long. Most superpowers end up being ruled by corrupt totalitarian regimes if you look at historical examples. Not sure what made USA change for the worse or if it has just been a slow decline.
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    I'm not sure if you're serious. It's Trump and his administration. It's not even a question, from the perspective of this submission. He has made it 1) much harder to get work visas, like anyone hiring top international talent knows 2) has created an environment of increased xenophobia that has led to quantitative increases in hate crimes 3) generally behaves like a strong man which undermines faith (justifiably) in the stability of the country and economy. Just for instance today, among other things "Would be sooo great if the Fed would further lower interest rates and quantitative ease. The Dollar is very strong against other currencies and there is almost no inflation. This is the time to do it. Exports would zoom!" (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1206955356280279040v https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12069553562802790...). People have short memories, but 3 years ago it would have been inconceivable that a president would post something that insane on multiple levels on social media. Our problems attracting international talent in all areas are increasing, self-inflicted, and justified. edit: I'm sorry we can't discuss this maturely. But it's the elephant in the room.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
What's wrong with developing AI talent within the US? It doesn't necessarily have to come from other countries. The US has over 300 million citizens and your telling me they're all too dumb to learn AI? Even, if just 10% could become AI specialists, I think that would be several orders of magnitude more then enough. Just teach it in high school, and develop some college majors that specialize in AI. I think we have general tendency to underestimate what hard working people are capable of. All we need to do is guide them in the right direction and make sure the majors required are available.
- osipov 7y ago
  100% agree. I am especially bothered by the implicit agism in the study. PhD students tend to be in their early to mid-20s. There is a much larger pool of older engineers in the United States who can be re-trained as AI specialists. Instead of a call to keep AI talents in the United States, we should be re-training existing talents in AI technologies.
  - arminiusreturns 7y ago
    The unsaid part is they don't want to pay them competitively...
  - woah 7y ago
    Why are these older engineers not training themselves already, and who should be training them? If people in one of the highest demand and best paid professions out there cannot take some time to keep their skills up to date, why does it fall to some nebulous "we" to apply re-training to them? If there's some geopolitical reason that it's a good idea for the government or someone to offer them free training programs, I'm all for it, but I'm not understanding the moral argument.
  - yellow_postit 7y ago
    PhD programs are just not competitive from a pay or work/life balance that by implicit design they tend to deter people older with industry experience from starting along the path.
rb808 7y ago
Its kinda weird that the main reason that US grad schools are so good is that its full of international students who have to be there to get green cards. Its a symbiotic relationship. Take away the opportunity or desire to immigrate and no one needs a MS/PhD any more.
- enitihas 7y ago
  Does a MS from US help in getting green card?
  - filoleg 7y ago
    Yes, because H1B applications for those with advanced degrees (which includes MS) are in a higher priority pool than those with just BS, so their application gets processed much faster. US essentially has an H1B visa quota of 85k per year, with 65k being the regular pool and 20k being the advanced degree pool. It is always advantageous to file for the advanced pool if you can, because if the quota for the advanced degrees got filled for the year, the spillover people (i.e., the ones with advanced degrees who didn't get their visa approved yet) get put in the regular pool for that specific year.
    - woodson 7y ago
      Wrong: There is no advanced degree pool. There is a "has a degree from some U.S. tertiary institution" pool. Doesn't matter how many Ph.D.s awarded by top universities in the rest of the world one has.
      - mikeyouse 7y ago
        Random website, but just an example since many refer to the "Advanced Degree Annual Cap" as a separate pool from the normal H1B: https://redbus2us.com/all-about-h1b-visa-cap-basics-regular-vs-masters-quotas-calculations-lottery/ https://redbus2us.com/all-about-h1b-visa-cap-basics-regular-...
        7y ago
m0zg 7y ago
Top AI talent is already in the United States. Nobody else is ready to pay a cool $1M a year for things that may or may not work.
- jewelry 7y ago
  Not true. Alibaba/Tencent/Bytedance all eager to hire with more than a package bigger than $1MM
  - pesfandiar 7y ago
    Purely from a money-for-labour perspective, shouldn't you divide that by 2 if the employer has 996 working hours?
    - whoevercares 7y ago
      While that’s true, there’s another aspect that’s more lucrative: Number of direct reports and actual power. Even for technical/research position, you’ll get hundreds of people reporting below you if the compensation is really $1M (500k even honestly). The career ceiling which is common in the west doesn’t really exist. Many talented people I know choose to leave for that reason, because their position is much much higher(e.g one former senior engineer in google becomes “director of Recommendation group” with hundreds direct report in one of BAT)
      - m0zg 7y ago
        Why would a researcher (i.e. someone whose talent is actually AI and not management) want any "reports"?
        whoevercares 7y ago
        Well there’s a director in most research institute right? In FAIR/MSR they also have science managers which are top researchers themselves. At some point it’s more lucrative to have fellow researchers and supporting engineers and access to more resources. While it might not be that appealing to some people, it indeed attracted many others. People always talk about how much they hate corporate ladders, but honestly most will happily accept a new position with a shinny title
geebee 7y ago
"Objective labor market indicators and expert assessments suggest demand for AI talent will far outstrip supply for the foresee- able future." Ok, at what salary? At minimum wage, lots of demand, not much supply. At $500-$750k a year, lots of supply, considerably less demand.
zitterbewegung 7y ago
What about people following non traditional ways into AI? For me I graduated with my Bachelors degree . I have refined GPT 2 without going for my PHD . I hear of data scientists getting jobs even having less official education. Top AI talent seems to be too narrow in this example.
geebee 7y ago
Another recommendation: "Automatically grant green cards to postgraduate degree holders." This idea may have some merit, but I want to be very blunt about this - PhD programs aren't doing a good job attracting and retaining good students, at least not the ones who aren't bound by US residency and work rights in their choice about what sort of degree to pursue. Elite Law and Medical schools typically have an attrition rate of below one half of one percent, <0.5%. For PhD programs, it's typically 35%-50%, and while there's less data for MS programs, we're still looking at 25%. Sorry no cite, I documented this a few times in comments, I may go back and get it later. On a personal level, I was a doctoral student in an engineering program at Berkeley, and I will say with full confidence they couldn't give less of a fuck if a student fails to get the degree. I don't swear on HN much, and if you look at my history, I hope you'll see I don't like to troll. But in this case, I'll repeat it, they could. not. give. a. fuck. Give these people power to bestow the right to reside in the US, and I assure you, the'll give even less of a fuck if anyone is happy in their program, or if their PhD or even MS programs are competitive with MBA, Law, Medicine, and other programs that require attracting and retaining people who already have the right to live and work in the US.
- majos 7y ago
  JDs and MDs are not the same as PhDs. The first two are important credentials. A career as a doctor or lawyer is going to be hard without them. But you can certainly have a research career without a PhD, or do something research-adjacent and make more money. Lawyers and doctors don’t seem to have the same incentives.
  - geebee 7y ago
    So then why are we supposed to be worried specifically about the pipeline of PHDs? Why would we make a special point to grant automatic green cards to degrees that aren’t really necessary?
    - majos 7y ago
      I’m not arguing that a PhD is a meaningless credential, rather that the drop-off in employability (for most things that aren’t faculty jobs) from “PhD holder” to “dropped out after quals, but did some research and can code” is much smaller than the drop off between “MD” and “dropped out of med school, but knows some medicine”. So the gap in attrition rates isn’t solely a function of a better or worse experience. I still think it’s good to try to keep people who get PhDs, especially in areas I think are important, like machine learning research. But I agree that making a PhD an even more useful credential is unlikely to increase the quality of the PhD experience itself.
killjoywashere 7y ago
Despite the hoopla from various organs of state, I'm at the point of thinking the US government is violently committed to the destruction of the US talent pool. Professional societies outside engineering (medicine, law, military) need to belly up to the bar and move the "professional" grade math requirements from calculus to linear algebra. Society has advanced technologically, sorry.
- jdsully 7y ago
  I always found linear algebra much easier than calculus. Odd to hear it talked about as something more advanced.
  - mark_l_watson 7y ago
    Jack Hidary, author of the fantastic new book “Quantum Computing: An Applied Approach”, makes the excellent point that linear algebra should be taught before calculus.
  - killjoywashere 7y ago
    The particular version of linear algebra I took was taken after differential equations, and generally considered the hardest course in the undergraduate curriculum, reserved for EE and physics majors only. In the case of us physics majors, it was a pre-req for thermal physics (statistical mechanics), and due to timing, there was only one semester you could take it.
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  I think you are very close to being 100% correct, but in my opinion it is not the US government that is motivated to reduce our talent pool, but rather, the corporate interests that our government services.
hansdieter1337 7y ago
With keeping they mean “immigration” and with “AI talent” they means asians?
throwthisaway2 7y ago
Maybe if there werent sanctuary cities that let anyone stay bo matter their skill level this type of immigration would be less of an issue.
scottlocklin 7y ago
Fixed the title: "Keeping wages low for US tech companies."
brooklyndude 7y ago
We had some great pitches. A beautiful deck. Voice, AI, Alexa. Met with a number of VC. Just to hard to deal with, I'm thinking we should have approached China. I left the company, they seemed to have imploded. They finally got a few $$$, heard the VC are taking 40%. China? They seem to get it. Here it's a bloodbath to raise a dime. For money is our new God. I'm not sure China is at that point yet. Learning Mandarin. :-)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zerr 7y ago
Did you fix your healthcare and education systems?
nurettin 7y ago
From what I've seen and heard from afar, US is a pretty expensive and stressful place to be in. In fact, I wouldn't want me going there because I'm a pretty conservative guy myself and I think everyone should stay in their own country instead of crowding places where opportunity presents itself. Grass is always greener on the other side, so I'd rather chill at my home country and do remote work.
giardini 7y ago
Why should money and effort be expended to, in particular, keep top AI talent in the USA? "AI" is just a name and in most usage today means "machine learning" and especially "deep learning". Neither GOFAI nor machine learning are even halfway steps toward useful true artificial intelligence. Do not mistake a name ("AI") for the real thing (artificial intelligence). Meanwhile there are many, many ways other than AI to spend our dollars for both research and education: healthcare, energy, climate change, a more modern military, etc. We tend to treat the term "AI" as if the technology were already true artificial intelligence but it is little more than a set of pretty good recognition and classification algorithms. Investing billions in a teechology prematurely is always a mistake since it will divert those billions from other uses. But I see no technology remotely approaching the intelligence of a 6-year-old child even on the horizon today. Now I'm not saying that we couldn't use a zillion 6-year-olds (after all, Victorian England did so with their workhouse system) to do useful work, I'm just saying that "AI" (the poor version, not artificial intelligence) is very likely to become a financial sinkhole and cause possibly decades of lost effort if we get carried away by mistaking a term for the real thing: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEETS NATURAL STUPIDITY Drew McDermoH MIT At Lab Cambridge, Mass 02139 https://homepage.univie.ac.at/nicole.rossmanith/concepts/papers/mcdermott1976artificial.pdf https://homepage.univie.ac.at/nicole.rossmanith/concepts/pap...

125 points by jstrieb 7y ago

I agree that keeping top AI talent (along with several other key sectors) in the US is absolutely critical to maintain America's superpower status long term. It seems to me that the US became a power and remained one for so long in no small part because of the opportunities provided to foreigners here and being a 'nation of immigrants' which attracted the best and brightest from abroad to contribute to the economy, defense, and more. I was lucky enough to have been born in the US so I've got no need to go through the visa process but hearing from friends and colleagues, it sounds like an absolute nightmare. Still, the US could get away with it because we were the place everyone wanted to be - now with our difficulties in healthcare, declining infrastructure, violence issues (perceived or real, especially around guns), and low education standards paired with many EU nations being very attractive and welcoming, I think we need to dramatically step up our work trying to be competitive attracting talent.

windowlesley 7y ago

It is by no means clear that what is termed "AI" today is indeed the artificial intelligence that we all seek, love and fear and that will prove useful. Perhaps most current "AI" researchers are wasting their time. Perhaps not. Some useful metrics would help judge this, but in the absence of even a clear definition of intelligence I see little hope of that. In the absence of further information I hesitate to dedicate funding preferably to "AI" based on faith alone. I might as well spend the money on cheaper and more reliable power turbines for remote wooded areas in California or finding a clean way to mine and convert coal to energy. Maybe the money would be better spent upgrading the health-care system or replacing our Navy with something more likely to survive a flurry of cheap cruise missiles. There are an infinite number of ways to spend money and "keeping top AI talent" is far down my list.

nine_zeros 7y ago

Very true. Many countries are on their way to developing entire industries around tech. This was previously only exclusive to US, maybe Japan. Some of those countries are attracting previously unheard-of talent and subsequent funding from the US. It's hard to imagine how future US startups can ever compete.

pinkfoot 7y ago
By tech do you mean “consumer-facing software products”? For if you mean technology in its broader sense, I assure you many countries have and are built around it.
- nine_zeros 7y ago
  I mean entire ecosystems that forms "industry". I also mean entire marketplaces, solutions and systems that the US tech industry is now having to copy from somewhere else.

jstrieb 7y ago

Here is a summary of key results by the primary author: https://twitter.com/r_zwetsloot/status/1206989954984894464 https://twitter.com/r_zwetsloot/status/1206989954984894464

curiousgal 7y ago
Mandatory comment complaining about Twitter threads, especially one with so many pictures. I'd rather read the entire report than suffer through that summary.
- jstrieb 7y ago
  Perhaps this better-formatted version is preferable: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1206989954984894464.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1206989954984894464.html
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Thanks for the link. This surprised me: “These high retention rates are important, because a large majority (about 2/3) of grad students getting trained in AI-related programs at US universities are not American citizens” The current situation of making it difficult for recent graduates to get green cards could put pressure on retention (having students staying in the US). At my last job I tried for about a year to replace a deep learning engineer after someone on my team left for a dream job. Currently many white collar jobs (like Wall Street analysts) are getting eliminated by deep learning and other models automation. I predict that it will be 5 to 7 years before most routine deep learning development will be largely automated, but until we achieve this, it is really important to have trained people to do the work. That said, top level AI research will not be automated in the near future.
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago
  Wall St Analysts are being replaced by NL? Is this "reading lots of company reports and extracting ten key features" or is there something else ?

solarengineer 7y ago

I’ve worked in and traveled around the US for a few years ( Nashville, San Antonio, Palo Alto, SF, Portland, Houston, Atlanta). I left the US in 2014 and haven’t returned since then. I can share that the horror stories I read about the current US politics, climate change denial, police excesses, homelessness and the related squalor have reduced my interest in considering the US as a long term home :( I’d rather innovate in other countries that are friendly and safer ( I’m in Singapore now). I work with a PhD in mechanical engineering, who shares my views about the US not being a Long term place to stay at ( at least based on current status). The rest of the world used to see the US as a leader, as a peace keeper. Now, not at all. :(

umvi 7y ago
It's very difficult to stay a benevolent superpower forever. Very few countries have done it for long. Most superpowers end up being ruled by corrupt totalitarian regimes if you look at historical examples. Not sure what made USA change for the worse or if it has just been a slow decline.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  I'm not sure if you're serious. It's Trump and his administration. It's not even a question, from the perspective of this submission. He has made it 1) much harder to get work visas, like anyone hiring top international talent knows 2) has created an environment of increased xenophobia that has led to quantitative increases in hate crimes 3) generally behaves like a strong man which undermines faith (justifiably) in the stability of the country and economy. Just for instance today, among other things "Would be sooo great if the Fed would further lower interest rates and quantitative ease. The Dollar is very strong against other currencies and there is almost no inflation. This is the time to do it. Exports would zoom!" (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1206955356280279040v https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12069553562802790...). People have short memories, but 3 years ago it would have been inconceivable that a president would post something that insane on multiple levels on social media. Our problems attracting international talent in all areas are increasing, self-inflicted, and justified. edit: I'm sorry we can't discuss this maturely. But it's the elephant in the room.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

What's wrong with developing AI talent within the US? It doesn't necessarily have to come from other countries. The US has over 300 million citizens and your telling me they're all too dumb to learn AI? Even, if just 10% could become AI specialists, I think that would be several orders of magnitude more then enough. Just teach it in high school, and develop some college majors that specialize in AI. I think we have general tendency to underestimate what hard working people are capable of. All we need to do is guide them in the right direction and make sure the majors required are available.

osipov 7y ago
100% agree. I am especially bothered by the implicit agism in the study. PhD students tend to be in their early to mid-20s. There is a much larger pool of older engineers in the United States who can be re-trained as AI specialists. Instead of a call to keep AI talents in the United States, we should be re-training existing talents in AI technologies.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  The unsaid part is they don't want to pay them competitively...
- woah 7y ago
  Why are these older engineers not training themselves already, and who should be training them? If people in one of the highest demand and best paid professions out there cannot take some time to keep their skills up to date, why does it fall to some nebulous "we" to apply re-training to them? If there's some geopolitical reason that it's a good idea for the government or someone to offer them free training programs, I'm all for it, but I'm not understanding the moral argument.
- yellow_postit 7y ago
  PhD programs are just not competitive from a pay or work/life balance that by implicit design they tend to deter people older with industry experience from starting along the path.

rb808 7y ago

Its kinda weird that the main reason that US grad schools are so good is that its full of international students who have to be there to get green cards. Its a symbiotic relationship. Take away the opportunity or desire to immigrate and no one needs a MS/PhD any more.

enitihas 7y ago
Does a MS from US help in getting green card?
- filoleg 7y ago
  Yes, because H1B applications for those with advanced degrees (which includes MS) are in a higher priority pool than those with just BS, so their application gets processed much faster. US essentially has an H1B visa quota of 85k per year, with 65k being the regular pool and 20k being the advanced degree pool. It is always advantageous to file for the advanced pool if you can, because if the quota for the advanced degrees got filled for the year, the spillover people (i.e., the ones with advanced degrees who didn't get their visa approved yet) get put in the regular pool for that specific year.
  - woodson 7y ago
    Wrong: There is no advanced degree pool. There is a "has a degree from some U.S. tertiary institution" pool. Doesn't matter how many Ph.D.s awarded by top universities in the rest of the world one has.
    - mikeyouse 7y ago
      Random website, but just an example since many refer to the "Advanced Degree Annual Cap" as a separate pool from the normal H1B: https://redbus2us.com/all-about-h1b-visa-cap-basics-regular-vs-masters-quotas-calculations-lottery/ https://redbus2us.com/all-about-h1b-visa-cap-basics-regular-...
      - 7y ago

m0zg 7y ago

Top AI talent is already in the United States. Nobody else is ready to pay a cool $1M a year for things that may or may not work.

jewelry 7y ago
Not true. Alibaba/Tencent/Bytedance all eager to hire with more than a package bigger than $1MM
- pesfandiar 7y ago
  Purely from a money-for-labour perspective, shouldn't you divide that by 2 if the employer has 996 working hours?
  - whoevercares 7y ago
    While that’s true, there’s another aspect that’s more lucrative: Number of direct reports and actual power. Even for technical/research position, you’ll get hundreds of people reporting below you if the compensation is really $1M (500k even honestly). The career ceiling which is common in the west doesn’t really exist. Many talented people I know choose to leave for that reason, because their position is much much higher(e.g one former senior engineer in google becomes “director of Recommendation group” with hundreds direct report in one of BAT)
    - m0zg 7y ago
      Why would a researcher (i.e. someone whose talent is actually AI and not management) want any "reports"?
      - whoevercares 7y ago
        Well there’s a director in most research institute right? In FAIR/MSR they also have science managers which are top researchers themselves. At some point it’s more lucrative to have fellow researchers and supporting engineers and access to more resources. While it might not be that appealing to some people, it indeed attracted many others. People always talk about how much they hate corporate ladders, but honestly most will happily accept a new position with a shinny title

geebee 7y ago

"Objective labor market indicators and expert assessments suggest demand for AI talent will far outstrip supply for the foresee- able future." Ok, at what salary? At minimum wage, lots of demand, not much supply. At $500-$750k a year, lots of supply, considerably less demand.

zitterbewegung 7y ago

What about people following non traditional ways into AI? For me I graduated with my Bachelors degree . I have refined GPT 2 without going for my PHD . I hear of data scientists getting jobs even having less official education. Top AI talent seems to be too narrow in this example.

geebee 7y ago

Another recommendation: "Automatically grant green cards to postgraduate degree holders." This idea may have some merit, but I want to be very blunt about this - PhD programs aren't doing a good job attracting and retaining good students, at least not the ones who aren't bound by US residency and work rights in their choice about what sort of degree to pursue. Elite Law and Medical schools typically have an attrition rate of below one half of one percent, <0.5%. For PhD programs, it's typically 35%-50%, and while there's less data for MS programs, we're still looking at 25%. Sorry no cite, I documented this a few times in comments, I may go back and get it later. On a personal level, I was a doctoral student in an engineering program at Berkeley, and I will say with full confidence they couldn't give less of a fuck if a student fails to get the degree. I don't swear on HN much, and if you look at my history, I hope you'll see I don't like to troll. But in this case, I'll repeat it, they could. not. give. a. fuck. Give these people power to bestow the right to reside in the US, and I assure you, the'll give even less of a fuck if anyone is happy in their program, or if their PhD or even MS programs are competitive with MBA, Law, Medicine, and other programs that require attracting and retaining people who already have the right to live and work in the US.

majos 7y ago
JDs and MDs are not the same as PhDs. The first two are important credentials. A career as a doctor or lawyer is going to be hard without them. But you can certainly have a research career without a PhD, or do something research-adjacent and make more money. Lawyers and doctors don’t seem to have the same incentives.
- geebee 7y ago
  So then why are we supposed to be worried specifically about the pipeline of PHDs? Why would we make a special point to grant automatic green cards to degrees that aren’t really necessary?
  - majos 7y ago
    I’m not arguing that a PhD is a meaningless credential, rather that the drop-off in employability (for most things that aren’t faculty jobs) from “PhD holder” to “dropped out after quals, but did some research and can code” is much smaller than the drop off between “MD” and “dropped out of med school, but knows some medicine”. So the gap in attrition rates isn’t solely a function of a better or worse experience. I still think it’s good to try to keep people who get PhDs, especially in areas I think are important, like machine learning research. But I agree that making a PhD an even more useful credential is unlikely to increase the quality of the PhD experience itself.

killjoywashere 7y ago

Despite the hoopla from various organs of state, I'm at the point of thinking the US government is violently committed to the destruction of the US talent pool. Professional societies outside engineering (medicine, law, military) need to belly up to the bar and move the "professional" grade math requirements from calculus to linear algebra. Society has advanced technologically, sorry.

jdsully 7y ago
I always found linear algebra much easier than calculus. Odd to hear it talked about as something more advanced.
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  Jack Hidary, author of the fantastic new book “Quantum Computing: An Applied Approach”, makes the excellent point that linear algebra should be taught before calculus.
- killjoywashere 7y ago
  The particular version of linear algebra I took was taken after differential equations, and generally considered the hardest course in the undergraduate curriculum, reserved for EE and physics majors only. In the case of us physics majors, it was a pre-req for thermal physics (statistical mechanics), and due to timing, there was only one semester you could take it.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I think you are very close to being 100% correct, but in my opinion it is not the US government that is motivated to reduce our talent pool, but rather, the corporate interests that our government services.

hansdieter1337 7y ago

With keeping they mean “immigration” and with “AI talent” they means asians?

throwthisaway2 7y ago

Maybe if there werent sanctuary cities that let anyone stay bo matter their skill level this type of immigration would be less of an issue.

scottlocklin 7y ago

Fixed the title: "Keeping wages low for US tech companies."

brooklyndude 7y ago

We had some great pitches. A beautiful deck. Voice, AI, Alexa. Met with a number of VC. Just to hard to deal with, I'm thinking we should have approached China. I left the company, they seemed to have imploded. They finally got a few $$$, heard the VC are taking 40%. China? They seem to get it. Here it's a bloodbath to raise a dime. For money is our new God. I'm not sure China is at that point yet. Learning Mandarin. :-)

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zerr 7y ago

Did you fix your healthcare and education systems?

nurettin 7y ago

From what I've seen and heard from afar, US is a pretty expensive and stressful place to be in. In fact, I wouldn't want me going there because I'm a pretty conservative guy myself and I think everyone should stay in their own country instead of crowding places where opportunity presents itself. Grass is always greener on the other side, so I'd rather chill at my home country and do remote work.

giardini 7y ago

Why should money and effort be expended to, in particular, keep top AI talent in the USA? "AI" is just a name and in most usage today means "machine learning" and especially "deep learning". Neither GOFAI nor machine learning are even halfway steps toward useful true artificial intelligence. Do not mistake a name ("AI") for the real thing (artificial intelligence). Meanwhile there are many, many ways other than AI to spend our dollars for both research and education: healthcare, energy, climate change, a more modern military, etc. We tend to treat the term "AI" as if the technology were already true artificial intelligence but it is little more than a set of pretty good recognition and classification algorithms. Investing billions in a teechology prematurely is always a mistake since it will divert those billions from other uses. But I see no technology remotely approaching the intelligence of a 6-year-old child even on the horizon today. Now I'm not saying that we couldn't use a zillion 6-year-olds (after all, Victorian England did so with their workhouse system) to do useful work, I'm just saying that "AI" (the poor version, not artificial intelligence) is very likely to become a financial sinkhole and cause possibly decades of lost effort if we get carried away by mistaking a term for the real thing: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEETS NATURAL STUPIDITY Drew McDermoH MIT At Lab Cambridge, Mass 02139 https://homepage.univie.ac.at/nicole.rossmanith/concepts/papers/mcdermott1976artificial.pdf https://homepage.univie.ac.at/nicole.rossmanith/concepts/pap...