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Academia exists to fund research that doesn’t have a high enough expected financial reward to be taken on by normal market actors. So WAI?
by pfannkuchen 3y ago
Academia exists to fund research that doesn’t have a high enough expected financial reward to be taken on by normal market actors.
So WAI?
- addcommitpush 3y agoI am not sure everybody would agree with that statement. Some might say academia exist to do research that extend humanity's knowledge, whether there's a financial reward or not.
- yummypaint 3y agoI would point out that research universities also patent things that researchers discover, and most have a pretty good profit split with the individual. If someone believes they might unlock the next stage of IA and want to profit from it personally, being at a university might be better than a comparably sized company.
- bachmeier 3y agoThat's one reason to have research universities. Another is to ensure that research results are publicly available. This is quite important in AI, where a handful of large companies could take control of a critical technology, and nobody outside the companies would have any understanding of it. A third is to ensure that all types of research are considered. One of the results from the economics literature is that using algorithms to set prices can lead to the same prices you'd have if the firms colluded. It's plausible that some companies would be hesitant to have their high-salary employees do that type of research and share it with the world (but also plausible that they'd be happy to do that type of research and keep it to themselves).
- dleink 3y agoA broader goal is to have the kind of society that engenders large vibrant research communities and the benefits that come with them.
- tzs 3y agoInsert “short term” before “financial”.