4 ms·

Google urges US to update immigration rules to attract more AI talent

42 points by skilled 2y ago

skilled 2y ago
Peter Roberts (Immigration Attorney for YC/Startups) does AMAs on Hacker News every couple of months, they attract a lot of questions, answers, and general comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts
- gadders 2y ago
  Got to maximise the supply of cheap labour flowing to YC start ups now interest rates are up.
barbariangrunge 2y ago
Don’t junior ai people notoriously have a really hard time getting hired? If big tech wants ai talent, they should stop starving new people who want to get into the field
- paxys 2y ago
  It's pretty clear that "the most highly sought-after people in the world" in AI aren't fresh college grads or junior engineers. If someone with a PhD and decades worth of research and practical experience in cutting-edge ML/AI/semiconductor tech wants to immigrate to the US, it's idiotic to put them in the same lottery as a $50K/yr "IT consultant" from Infosys. This is exactly why the US completely lost its edge in hi-tech manufacturing and is now losing ground in software/apps as well. You want your junior engineers to have jobs and gain skills? Maybe don't say no to the best talent from across the world who can mentor them.
  - blagie 2y ago
    It's strategic. China has amazing AI talent being developed. US is still generally a more desirable place to live. If that talent comes here, we'll maintain world leadership. If that talent stays in China, US competitiveness can completely implode. But yes, junior talent has relatively little value in a winner-takes-all field, while top talent, disproportionately large value.
    - bedobi 2y ago
      > China has amazing AI talent being developed What? I'm no expert but in basically every field and endeavor, it seems to me like all the PRC does is copy others, but have little to no legitimate homegrown innovation, and lots of "research" being basically fake and fluff. + even if PRC was the global hub for AI innovation, for obvious reasons, I'm not sure it would be wise for the US to import that talent.
      - mistrial9 2y ago
        no -- the formal research literature in competitive settings are filled with part or whole PRC teams.. written in science English and often very thorough.. are those papers all advances? no, many are tiny variations on known methods, use the boiler-plate bragging language about State of the Art performance, and often cite mostly other Chinese authors as sources.. but honestly, the effort and erudition are, on the whole, impressive and competitive.
        fidotron 2y ago
        I would add that when it comes time to productize the research the code quality of open source AI tools for this from China is conspicuously high. In the west this part gets ignored too much.
      - blagie 2y ago
        About half of the best AI researchers I know are Chinese. I've visited universities there, and the quality of education is very high. There are a few barriers: 1) Language. Much of the stuff (including e.g. variable names and comments in code) are Chinese. 2) Communication style. Even in English, things are just organized differently. 3) Culture and national differences. The issues you mentioned are real; academic publishing in China is even more problematic than in the US. (We have our own issues, which are at least as severe; just different. Every place has issues). 4) Looking in US-style sources in China, and vice-versa, isn't likely to lead to optimal outcomes. Those and others means things are often lost in translation, but at the core, once you learn to bridge those, the quality of the better work there is very, very good.
  - kobalsky 2y ago
    > it's idiotic to put them in the same lottery as a $50K/yr "IT consultant" from Infosys. well yes, but selective immigration is eugenics with extra steps.
shrubble 2y ago
[flagged]
- hackermeows 2y ago
  Take your race baiting elsewhere, this isn’t the forum for that
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
mococa 2y ago
Easy, hire remotely.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nosequel 2y ago
  Yes, this is the super obvious fix that doesn't involve the US Government changing any rules/laws. Google has offices all over the world, they really don't even need to be remote. If they need AI experts from Asia: https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/locations/?region=asia-pacific https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/locations/?region=asia-paci.... If they need AI experts from Europe: https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/locations/?region=europe https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/locations/?region=europe This isn't that hard. They just want cheap labor that they are holding hostage with their visas.
haebom 2y ago
Personally, I think it would be great to have more O1 visas, and then move to H-series visas, which would help attract early talent.
riskable 2y ago
Generative AI hasn't been around long enough and even now is still prohibitively expensive (for training/research). It is highly suspect that any shortage of AI workers could be filled by importing them. I find it much more likely that Google is merely whining. They're providing an excuse in the form of "not enough AI workers" for getting more cheap imported labor rather than simply hiring and training more expensive, local talent.
- paxys 2y ago
  The field didn't just show up out of the blue. People around the world have been researching it for decades. A lot of them now want to come work in the US because this is where the money and opportunity is. Take a look at the current AI landscape in the US. Almost everyone at the top of the field is a first generation immigrant, who managed to make it in while the process was still easy. It's wild that people see the clear benefits of their work to the economy and to US supremacy and then turn around and say that we need to stop importing talent because it takes away domestic jobs.
  - peteradio 2y ago
    Also "Replacement Theory" isn't real.
  - xhkkffbf 2y ago
    Where do you get the data to make the claim about the first generation immigrants. People like Sam Altman were born in Chicago. A great deal of AI research began in the US in the 1970s. What have the US colleges been doing since then?
    - paxys 2y ago
      Sam Altman does not have an AI background. OpenAI exists because of Ilya Sutskever. Anthropic's founders (Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei) are immigrants, as is Clément Delangue (HuggingFace), Aidan Gomez (Cohere) and upwards of 70% of new AI startups in the country. And Jensen Huang, Andrew Ng, Andrej Karpathy, Fei-Fei Li, Yann LeCun, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Shane Legg and pretty much the entire list of who's who in AI today. Demis Hassabis and a good chunk of his DeepMind team is British. Elon Musk himself would likely not have been able to clear the immigration process had he shown up to the country today. Despite what people here like to believe, the USA doesn't have a monopoly on talent. It has always relied on immigration to maintain supremacy. As for the "what have US colleges been doing" question – take a look at the nationalities of research departments at any major university in the country. The smartest people come here from all over the world to study, and are now promptly sent home with all the knowledge they gained because we don't let them put that knowledge to work here.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hgs3 2y ago
According to the Law of Supply and Demand if there is a low supply of AI talent and a high demand from Google, then Google is supposed to compete for that talent, e.g. raise wages, offer more benefits, more sick time, etc. As the article states: > Competition for AI talent has been intense, with companies often poaching engineers and researchers. > Wages for AI specialists soared, with OpenAI allegedly paying researchers up to $10 million. This is not a bug, this is the expected behavior. Artificially raising the supply of AI talent through immigration is market manipulation.
- paxys 2y ago
  That is quite literally what Google wants to do. Except that the USA doesn't have a monopoly on AI talent.
nextworddev 2y ago
The type of talent that Google wants here can easily qualify for O-1 or EB-1 visas
- polski-g 2y ago
  Or EB-5.
  - samspenc 2y ago
    EB-5 is investment only and not related to skills, isn't it? So the applicant themselves would need to have significant savings to plough back into the US economy to qualify for this visa? They aren't tied to a company but do need significant capital.
    - polski-g 2y ago
      Correct. They get US residency by paying $800k.
JohnFen 2y ago
So Google is losing the AI hiring war the big guys are in?
shadowtree 2y ago
Same Google that just laid off the entire Python Frameworks team. Deeply cynical play for low cost labor.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
You mean hiring immigrants that you will promptly fire whenever you wake up in the wrong mood? Please, keep paying high salaries.
screye 2y ago
Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant on a restrictive visa, so obvious conflict of interest. The harshness of the US immigration system has little to do with how easy/hard it is to let people in. The issues arise with how restrictive the visas are, once you get in. > He adds Google employees have often had to leave the US while waiting for the PERM process to finish and for their green cards to be approved. This is clearly meant to point toward Indians and Chinese. Waiting 50+ years for a green card betrays the intentions of the legislation and creates uncecessary misery for everyone involved. Bringing top AI talent to the US is easy. Do a masters, pay the $100k entry-fee to the university and get your 3 year permission to work in the US. But that's where the process becomes an anxiety inducing mess. First you have to win a 'lottery' with a 30% success rate. Then, you have to go through a 2-ish year long process through mountains of paper work to do your Green Card application. Then wait one more year to get an acknolwedgement (I-140), which puts you in a 50+ year long queue. Now, if you want to make a minor change in job role, location, company, start a startup....doesn't matter. Do this expensive process all over again. Oh yeah, did I mention that the embassy stamping officer, the airport agent, the application form evaluator and your employer can arbitrarily drop you any day ? Now, that's fine if I'm 25 and single. But, one day I'll be 40 with kids, still on this stupid H1b/Greencard-queue and my life can get uprooted overnight. It is the an all-too-literal instance of golden handcuffs. If you want immigrants, then let in immigrants. If you want fewer immigrants, then then let in fewer immigrants. If you want better immigrants, then raise the bar. If you want temporary workers, then make it impossible for H1b folks to apply to greencards. All are sensible approaches. But the US system lures you in with the promise of a better life, and uniquely screws you over if you just so happen to be Indian. _____________ All that being said, the tech market clearly has too many unemployed citizens as of 2024. I am suspicious of more immigration being the answer. I know people from top-10 CS universities graduating with no jobs. If Google is so desperate, then lower your bar to 2020-era levels, and train up these junior engineers to your required level of competence. If Google wants true experts, then the O1 already exists. I'm lucky enough to be considered 'senior' (whatever that means in tech) technical person now. And I thank my lucky stars for it. This is the most brutal 'junior' market that I have seen since the early-2010s.
- jmyeet 2y ago
  Restrictive immigration exists solely to suppress wages for citizens/residents, legal temporary workers and undocumented migrants. I really wish more people understood this. > All that being said, the tech market clearly has too many unemployed citizens as of 2024. Big Tech is now in a permanent layoffs mode. This too is solely to suppress wages and, as you mention, this is a huge issue for people who are on work visas. I personally think that anyone who has done layoffs in the last 12 months shouldn't be eligible to sponsor any work visas at all.
gadders 2y ago
Google urges US to update immigration rules to attract more cheap AI talent Fixed it for Google.
gaoshan 2y ago
I imagine this would result in a large number of people catering their job applications and interview preparedness to AI topics but otherwise not having any particularly special or more advanced AI related skills (unless this is about targeting a handful of demonstrated experts).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Isn’t this going to simply result in companies and immigrants claiming that their job or skill set is “AI” in order to game the immigration system? How can this be made legitimately focused on scarce talent and not just turned into a method to increase labor supply and reduce costs.
hulitu 2y ago
[flagged]

42 points by skilled 2y ago

Peter Roberts (Immigration Attorney for YC/Startups) does AMAs on Hacker News every couple of months, they attract a lot of questions, answers, and general comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts

gadders 2y ago
Got to maximise the supply of cheap labour flowing to YC start ups now interest rates are up.

barbariangrunge 2y ago

Don’t junior ai people notoriously have a really hard time getting hired? If big tech wants ai talent, they should stop starving new people who want to get into the field

paxys 2y ago
It's pretty clear that "the most highly sought-after people in the world" in AI aren't fresh college grads or junior engineers. If someone with a PhD and decades worth of research and practical experience in cutting-edge ML/AI/semiconductor tech wants to immigrate to the US, it's idiotic to put them in the same lottery as a $50K/yr "IT consultant" from Infosys. This is exactly why the US completely lost its edge in hi-tech manufacturing and is now losing ground in software/apps as well. You want your junior engineers to have jobs and gain skills? Maybe don't say no to the best talent from across the world who can mentor them.
- blagie 2y ago
  It's strategic. China has amazing AI talent being developed. US is still generally a more desirable place to live. If that talent comes here, we'll maintain world leadership. If that talent stays in China, US competitiveness can completely implode. But yes, junior talent has relatively little value in a winner-takes-all field, while top talent, disproportionately large value.
  - bedobi 2y ago
    > China has amazing AI talent being developed What? I'm no expert but in basically every field and endeavor, it seems to me like all the PRC does is copy others, but have little to no legitimate homegrown innovation, and lots of "research" being basically fake and fluff. + even if PRC was the global hub for AI innovation, for obvious reasons, I'm not sure it would be wise for the US to import that talent.
    - mistrial9 2y ago
      no -- the formal research literature in competitive settings are filled with part or whole PRC teams.. written in science English and often very thorough.. are those papers all advances? no, many are tiny variations on known methods, use the boiler-plate bragging language about State of the Art performance, and often cite mostly other Chinese authors as sources.. but honestly, the effort and erudition are, on the whole, impressive and competitive.
      - fidotron 2y ago
        I would add that when it comes time to productize the research the code quality of open source AI tools for this from China is conspicuously high. In the west this part gets ignored too much.
    - blagie 2y ago
      About half of the best AI researchers I know are Chinese. I've visited universities there, and the quality of education is very high. There are a few barriers: 1) Language. Much of the stuff (including e.g. variable names and comments in code) are Chinese. 2) Communication style. Even in English, things are just organized differently. 3) Culture and national differences. The issues you mentioned are real; academic publishing in China is even more problematic than in the US. (We have our own issues, which are at least as severe; just different. Every place has issues). 4) Looking in US-style sources in China, and vice-versa, isn't likely to lead to optimal outcomes. Those and others means things are often lost in translation, but at the core, once you learn to bridge those, the quality of the better work there is very, very good.
- kobalsky 2y ago
  > it's idiotic to put them in the same lottery as a $50K/yr "IT consultant" from Infosys. well yes, but selective immigration is eugenics with extra steps.

shrubble 2y ago

[flagged]

hackermeows 2y ago
Take your race baiting elsewhere, this isn’t the forum for that
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

mococa 2y ago

Easy, hire remotely.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nosequel 2y ago
Yes, this is the super obvious fix that doesn't involve the US Government changing any rules/laws. Google has offices all over the world, they really don't even need to be remote. If they need AI experts from Asia: https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/locations/?region=asia-pacific https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/locations/?region=asia-paci.... If they need AI experts from Europe: https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/locations/?region=europe https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/locations/?region=europe This isn't that hard. They just want cheap labor that they are holding hostage with their visas.

haebom 2y ago

Personally, I think it would be great to have more O1 visas, and then move to H-series visas, which would help attract early talent.

riskable 2y ago

Generative AI hasn't been around long enough and even now is still prohibitively expensive (for training/research). It is highly suspect that any shortage of AI workers could be filled by importing them. I find it much more likely that Google is merely whining. They're providing an excuse in the form of "not enough AI workers" for getting more cheap imported labor rather than simply hiring and training more expensive, local talent.

paxys 2y ago
The field didn't just show up out of the blue. People around the world have been researching it for decades. A lot of them now want to come work in the US because this is where the money and opportunity is. Take a look at the current AI landscape in the US. Almost everyone at the top of the field is a first generation immigrant, who managed to make it in while the process was still easy. It's wild that people see the clear benefits of their work to the economy and to US supremacy and then turn around and say that we need to stop importing talent because it takes away domestic jobs.
- peteradio 2y ago
  Also "Replacement Theory" isn't real.
- xhkkffbf 2y ago
  Where do you get the data to make the claim about the first generation immigrants. People like Sam Altman were born in Chicago. A great deal of AI research began in the US in the 1970s. What have the US colleges been doing since then?
  - paxys 2y ago
    Sam Altman does not have an AI background. OpenAI exists because of Ilya Sutskever. Anthropic's founders (Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei) are immigrants, as is Clément Delangue (HuggingFace), Aidan Gomez (Cohere) and upwards of 70% of new AI startups in the country. And Jensen Huang, Andrew Ng, Andrej Karpathy, Fei-Fei Li, Yann LeCun, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Shane Legg and pretty much the entire list of who's who in AI today. Demis Hassabis and a good chunk of his DeepMind team is British. Elon Musk himself would likely not have been able to clear the immigration process had he shown up to the country today. Despite what people here like to believe, the USA doesn't have a monopoly on talent. It has always relied on immigration to maintain supremacy. As for the "what have US colleges been doing" question – take a look at the nationalities of research departments at any major university in the country. The smartest people come here from all over the world to study, and are now promptly sent home with all the knowledge they gained because we don't let them put that knowledge to work here.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hgs3 2y ago

According to the Law of Supply and Demand if there is a low supply of AI talent and a high demand from Google, then Google is supposed to compete for that talent, e.g. raise wages, offer more benefits, more sick time, etc. As the article states: > Competition for AI talent has been intense, with companies often poaching engineers and researchers. > Wages for AI specialists soared, with OpenAI allegedly paying researchers up to $10 million. This is not a bug, this is the expected behavior. Artificially raising the supply of AI talent through immigration is market manipulation.

paxys 2y ago
That is quite literally what Google wants to do. Except that the USA doesn't have a monopoly on AI talent.

nextworddev 2y ago

The type of talent that Google wants here can easily qualify for O-1 or EB-1 visas

polski-g 2y ago
Or EB-5.
- samspenc 2y ago
  EB-5 is investment only and not related to skills, isn't it? So the applicant themselves would need to have significant savings to plough back into the US economy to qualify for this visa? They aren't tied to a company but do need significant capital.
  - polski-g 2y ago
    Correct. They get US residency by paying $800k.

JohnFen 2y ago

So Google is losing the AI hiring war the big guys are in?

shadowtree 2y ago

Same Google that just laid off the entire Python Frameworks team. Deeply cynical play for low cost labor.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago

You mean hiring immigrants that you will promptly fire whenever you wake up in the wrong mood? Please, keep paying high salaries.

screye 2y ago

Disclaimer: I'm an immigrant on a restrictive visa, so obvious conflict of interest. The harshness of the US immigration system has little to do with how easy/hard it is to let people in. The issues arise with how restrictive the visas are, once you get in. > He adds Google employees have often had to leave the US while waiting for the PERM process to finish and for their green cards to be approved. This is clearly meant to point toward Indians and Chinese. Waiting 50+ years for a green card betrays the intentions of the legislation and creates uncecessary misery for everyone involved. Bringing top AI talent to the US is easy. Do a masters, pay the $100k entry-fee to the university and get your 3 year permission to work in the US. But that's where the process becomes an anxiety inducing mess. First you have to win a 'lottery' with a 30% success rate. Then, you have to go through a 2-ish year long process through mountains of paper work to do your Green Card application. Then wait one more year to get an acknolwedgement (I-140), which puts you in a 50+ year long queue. Now, if you want to make a minor change in job role, location, company, start a startup....doesn't matter. Do this expensive process all over again. Oh yeah, did I mention that the embassy stamping officer, the airport agent, the application form evaluator and your employer can arbitrarily drop you any day ? Now, that's fine if I'm 25 and single. But, one day I'll be 40 with kids, still on this stupid H1b/Greencard-queue and my life can get uprooted overnight. It is the an all-too-literal instance of golden handcuffs. If you want immigrants, then let in immigrants. If you want fewer immigrants, then then let in fewer immigrants. If you want better immigrants, then raise the bar. If you want temporary workers, then make it impossible for H1b folks to apply to greencards. All are sensible approaches. But the US system lures you in with the promise of a better life, and uniquely screws you over if you just so happen to be Indian. _____________ All that being said, the tech market clearly has too many unemployed citizens as of 2024. I am suspicious of more immigration being the answer. I know people from top-10 CS universities graduating with no jobs. If Google is so desperate, then lower your bar to 2020-era levels, and train up these junior engineers to your required level of competence. If Google wants true experts, then the O1 already exists. I'm lucky enough to be considered 'senior' (whatever that means in tech) technical person now. And I thank my lucky stars for it. This is the most brutal 'junior' market that I have seen since the early-2010s.

jmyeet 2y ago
Restrictive immigration exists solely to suppress wages for citizens/residents, legal temporary workers and undocumented migrants. I really wish more people understood this. > All that being said, the tech market clearly has too many unemployed citizens as of 2024. Big Tech is now in a permanent layoffs mode. This too is solely to suppress wages and, as you mention, this is a huge issue for people who are on work visas. I personally think that anyone who has done layoffs in the last 12 months shouldn't be eligible to sponsor any work visas at all.

gadders 2y ago

Google urges US to update immigration rules to attract more cheap AI talent Fixed it for Google.

gaoshan 2y ago

I imagine this would result in a large number of people catering their job applications and interview preparedness to AI topics but otherwise not having any particularly special or more advanced AI related skills (unless this is about targeting a handful of demonstrated experts).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Isn’t this going to simply result in companies and immigrants claiming that their job or skill set is “AI” in order to game the immigration system? How can this be made legitimately focused on scarce talent and not just turned into a method to increase labor supply and reduce costs.

hulitu 2y ago

[flagged]