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The Academic Pipeline Stall: Why Industry Must Stand for Academia

146 points by MaysonL 1y ago

linguae 1y ago
Whenever I think about the decline of industrial research labs, not just the most famed like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, but also the labs at companies like Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Intel, and many others, I'm reminded of a quote from Alan Kay about how those who have financially benefited from applying the results of research have often not "given back" to research: "It strikes me that many of the tech billionaires have already gotten their "upside" many times over from people like Engelbart and other researchers who were supported by ARPA, Parc, ONR, etc. Why would they insist on more upside, and that their money should be an "investment"? That isn't how the great inventions and fundamental technologies were created that eventually gave rise to the wealth that they tapped into after the fact. "It would be really worth the while of people who do want to make money -- they think in terms of millions and billions -- to understand how the trillions -- those 3 and 4 extra zeros came about that they have tapped into. And to support that process." (from https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/ https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/). Even before Trump's and DOGE's reckless attacks on research and academia, the software industry (I'm going to limit this to the software industry; I don't know the situation in other STEM industries such as health care, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, aerospace, etc.) has changed its strategy regarding funding research. Before the 2010s, many major companies had research labs where its employees worked on medium-term and long-term projects that may not have directly tied into current products but may form the basis of future products. If you had a computer science PhD and worked in an applied field such as systems or compilers, aside from academia and government labs, there were jobs at industrial labs where researchers could work on research systems. Sun, for example, had a lot of interesting research projects such as Self (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language) ; much of the work on Self influenced the design and implementation of the Java virtual machine). AltaVista, an early Web search engine that predates Google, was originally a research project at Digital Equipment Corporation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista) that was later spun off as its own company. However, in the 2000s and especially in the 2010s, these jobs became increasingly rare. Having worked in industrial research labs and advanced development teams during the mid-2010s and early 2020s, what I've noticed is a trend away from dedicated research labs where researchers study phenomena and perhaps build prototypes that get passed onto a production team, and more toward a model where researchers are expected to write production code. Google's 2012 paper "Google's Hybrid Approach to Research" (https://research.google/pubs/googles-hybrid-approach-to-research/ https://research.google/pubs/googles-hybrid-approach-to-rese...) is an excellent summary. This makes a lot of sense under the context of early Google; Google in the 2000s needed to build large-scale distributed systems to power Google's search engine and other operations, but there was little experience within and outside the company on working on such Web-scale systems. Thus, Google hired CS PhDs with research experience in distributed systems and related topics, and then put them to work implementing systems such as MapReduce, BigTable, Spanner, and many others. I see a similar mindset when it comes to AI companies such as OpenAI, where researchers directly work on production systems. Researchers working directly on products that take advantage of research is an effective approach in many situations and it's brought us many innovations, especially in Web-scale systems, big data processing, and machine learning. However, not all research has obvious, direct productization opportunities. For one, not all computer science research is systems-based. There is theoretical computer science research, where researchers are exploring questions that may not immediately lead to new products, but may answer important questions regarding computing. Next, even in systems research, there are areas of research that could be productized a few decades down the road, but in order for those products to be created, the research needs to be done first. Deep neural networks took off once hardware became cheap enough to make DNN architectures feasible, for example. However, without the work done on neural networks in the decades prior to affordable GPUs, research on DNNs would be further behind compared to today. The biggest problem that I see with attitudes regarding research funding, not just in industry, but also in academia and government, is that funders don't appreciate the fact that research is inherently risky; not all research projects are going to lead to positive results, and the lack of positive results is not a matter of a researcher's work ethic or competence. Funders seem to want sure bets; they seem to only be interested in funding research that has a very high ROI likelihood. Yes, funders should have the freedom to fund the projects and researchers that they want. There are obvious reasons why funders are more interested in hot topics such as large language models and blockchain applications versus topics where there is less of an obvious likelihood for short-term ROI. However, I feel that it is important to fund less obviously lucrative research efforts. I feel industry is not interested these days in making more speculative bets, kind of like the research projects that Xerox PARC did back in the 1970s. Academia seems like a natural home for more speculative research. Unfortunately academia has two major pressures that undermine this: (1) the "publish-or-perish" culture found at many major research universities, and (2) fundraising pressures. These two factors, in my opinion, encourage academics, especially pre-tenure and non-tenured ones, to optimize their research pursuits for "sure bets" instead of riskier but potentially higher impact work. The fundraising pressures have gotten much worse now with the abrupt cuts to research funding in the United States. A long-term solution to this problem requires cultivating a culture that is more understanding of the research process, that research is inherently risky, and that different types of research require different funding mechanisms. I'm all in favor of Google- and OpenAI-style research projects where researchers are directly involved with product-building efforts, but I'm also in favor of other styles of research that are not directly tied to product-building. I also want to see a culture where large corporations and wealthy individuals donate meaningful amounts of money to fund research efforts. It would be a major setback for society for us to return to the pre-1940s days of "gentlemen scientists" where science and other academic pursuits were only reserved for the independently wealthy and for those who relied on patronage. Modern technological innovations are made possible through research, and it's important that research efforts are funded in a regular manner.
- kianN 1y ago
  This really hits the nail on the head. I think the extension to this is the all eggs in one (the first) basket approach being exacerbated: it’s always been challenging to conduct foundational research in a field where there already exists a dominant paradigm in industry, but it’s also becoming more and more challenging in academia as well.
- lwo32k 1y ago
  What culture you cultivate is just one variable. Go to Japan or Iran or Italy and they will fall over each other, telling you how great their culture was and what it cultivated. When things are relatively stable, it's not hard to lean on the Explore side of the Explore-Exploit tradeoff. When things are ever changing, and at faster and unpredictable rates the tradeoff naturally gets much more complex. You have to ride the waves. No one really controls them.
- robocat 1y ago
  If one altruistically decides to give to society then I'm unsure what outcomes one should expect from society? What's the game-theory here? If one wants something back then who is responsible to get something back? My canonical example is Linus: if the world was fair he should be worth some pretty big numbers. It is harder to pick what is fair in return for someone's scientific innovation. I would guess Linus has generated as much worth as Microsoft, so in an ideal world he should be worth a Bill Gates. Linus has mostly chosen other non-financial goals to chase (unlike Bill). Linus $50 million, Bill Gates $156 billion. “While I may not get any money from Linux, I get a huge personal satisfaction from having written something that people really enjoy using.” “The cyberspace earnings I get from Linux come in the format of having a network of people that know me and trust me, and that I can depend on in return.” Some people that complain about the wealthy making money are selfishly obsessed about money themselves. Perhaps even hypocritically denegrating others as too-money-focused when others choose to win the money making game. Unfortunately our world tends to be very focused on financial gains; and often completely ignoring non-financial benefits. What are the non-financial benefits of an iPhone compared to the money paid for it? How much is job-enjoyment or job-status worth; compared against either the money earned or the time spent?
hiddencost 1y ago
[flagged]
gotoeleven 1y ago
I didn't look at every one on the list of these 1000 NSF grants that were cancelled: https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO?jntvk%3Asort=eyJwZWw4ZlRSME8ycmFObWNUYyI6eyJjb2x1bW5JZCI6ImZsZHlMSEpuZkR6OXE1dEw0IiwiYXNjZW5kaW5nIjpmYWxzZX19 https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO?jnt... but I think if you skim the titles you can sense a theme. Here's the very first one: "Cambio: A Professional Development Approach for Building Latinx-focused Cultural Competence in Informal Science Education Institutions" for a whopping 2.8 million dollars. This is not basic research, this is not important research, this is left wing politics parasitically attached to scientific institutions.
- userbinator 1y ago
  Besides the usual DEI stuff, some of those titles sound like the output of a stochastic generator trained on buzzwords: "HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Using Peer-Enhanced Blockchain-Based Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement and Retention" "Blockchain-Based Learning Environments". That's my WTF of the day.
  - hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
    You do realize VCs were putting billions into this shit a few years ago right? Maybe DOGE should have shut down YCombinator.
    - nickff 1y ago
      VCs also put lots of money into Theranos, it doesn’t make it a good idea.
      - marcus_holmes 1y ago
        Theranos was a great idea. The problem was that they couldn't make it work and they lied about that to everyone involved. That's different from it not being a good idea in the first place.
OhMeadhbh 1y ago
"Support for education and research should be as fundamental as clean air or safe roads." I think the current powers that be hold clean air and safe roads in the same esteem as they hold education and research. Maybe "Support for education and research should be as fundamental as golf tournaments or Diet Coke" would be a better anology.
- philjohn 1y ago
  Didn't Florida suggest using mining waste for road construction ... the kicker being that it's mildly radioactive?
  - amarcheschi 1y ago
    Radioactive asphalt particles keep your lungs trained because otherwise they would get so lazy and stop working properly /s
  - matkoniecz 1y ago
    How mildly? Background radiation is a thing. Granite and bananas are a tiny bit more radioactive than typical things, without making them dangerous.
    - roenxi 1y ago
      I have absolutely no idea, but it is in interesting question and until someone more cluey can chime in a quick search suggests: - Florida is using photogypsum - https://www.ijpr.org/npr-news/2023-06-30/florida-moves-forward-on-radioactive-road-paving-plan-as-gov-desantis-signs-new-law https://www.ijpr.org/npr-news/2023-06-30/florida-moves-forwa... - Photogypsum in the US is banned if it radiates at >0.4 Bq/g of 226 Ra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphogypsum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphogypsum - Granite radiates at maybe 450 Bq/kg -> 0.45 Bq/g of 226 Ra. https://www.nature.com/articles/jes200944 https://www.nature.com/articles/jes200944 So it looks like we're dealing with pretty standard rock. If this stuff was going to be banned without special permitting it is probably a little more risky than a granite kitchen-top counter if someone goes and sits on the road all day. Although this all raises the question of whether granite should be legal as a building material given that people get twitchy about this stuff - I doubt anyone can prove that granite is safe in this context.
geeal 1y ago
Progress in computing sciences was never accomplished by investment strategies and nondisclosure agreements. It was accomplished by dedicated proffisionals and academics with a high level of integrity and transparency. So your post seems very appropriate in the current state where all parties are jumping to the AI bandwogen.
geeal 1y ago
Advances in computing sciences were not accomplished by investment strategies and nondisclosure agreements. It was accomplished by dedicated professional and academics with the highest levels of integrity and transparency. So your post comes at a critical time where parties are jumping to the bandwagon of AI.
- watwut 1y ago
  Where do you have integrity and transparency from? They were of all kinds.
  - ktallett 1y ago
    Transparency is the case, up to a point in research. Many engineering papers I find, have the told you the building blocks of what is required, but they try to avoid stating the secret sauce that binds them together.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      Yeah because otherwise you'll have some cloner in China reproducing it the very next day. Transparency is only working if everyone plays by the same rules, particularly when it comes to patents, and there are a few players who have been getting away with openly sharting on the rules for decades now.
      - ktallett 1y ago
        I'm not talking about consumer products, I'm talking about academic research. Most research has no patent attached nor any contents that is patent worthy. Most methods in most papers are based on the very basic building blocks coming from ones fine motor skills. The fact these methods are omitted has numerous problems. One key issue this provides is reproducibility. All science has to be reproducible and a building block for future science. Omitting key details makes this unfit for purpose. Secondly, it also means research can not be checked for accuracy and truth, which I do sometimes wonder if thats on purpose. Perhaps they are only presenting the most successful attempt, but not the average situation. Lastly, this fully goes against the spirit of academic research. I want anyone out there to develop either a brand new usage for my work or adapt and improve my work, either building on it, or finding a new way of doing it that's easier, or more repeatable/reliable. It saves me having to do it, and as I am still working in that field, I will benefit from it.
aaron695 1y ago
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deleted 1y ago
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charcircuit 1y ago
The author is an associate professor at Harvard, so he is going to be biased towards academia. >knows that our field’s landmark innovations emerged not purely from product roadmaps but from university labs with federal funding Maybe if you cherry pick those innovations from things coming from university labs. Or count these labs because they openly announced something or popularized something else that already existed. >The Talent Pipeline Under Threat Talent can be taught by both AI and industry. University as a place for learning is an outdated concept.
Hilift 1y ago
> Universities are left to defend The Promise of American Higher Education alone. "Only the federal government can provide the funding needed".? NSF fields 40,000 proposals per year, 110 per day. The US is unlike other countries. By design, each state has their own capabilities, and owns everything except that which is specifically provided to the federal government. The combined capabilities of California and Massachusetts equal the remainder of the country. There's nothing to prevent any state from funding the universities in their states. Was it more convenient before? Sure, but there is now an inflection point where more than 50% of the country "don't like you and wish you weren't here". You don't have to get beat up at the bus stop if you walk or take an uber. This is hardly unique to research or higher education. All 50 states have negligently constructed budgets to rely on copius federal funding for health care (Medicaid) and education. That makes it easy for a petulant politician to kick sand in your face and "disrupt" that.
- throwaway287391 1y ago
  "There's nothing to prevent any state from funding the universities in their states." I would've thought one major issue is that a much larger chunk of tax revenue is collected by the IRS than by any state. From googling, CA has the highest state income tax rate but still collects <5% of US federal tax revenue, while having >10% of the population. ~2.5x'ing state taxes to attain similar per-capita revenue would probably lead to a fair number of people leaving the state, or at least get the party who passed that tax hike (presumably Democrats) voted out in the next state election. OTOH the NSF annual budget is $10B/year, in theory "easily" fundable by CA alone with its $220B/year in tax revenue, in the worst case with a 5% tax increase. The NSF isn't the only federal agency that funds research (seems to provide around 25% of federal research funding) but it is probably enough for one state, even the most productive one. So maybe it really is doable.
- jfengel 1y ago
  States have much less flexible budgets. Many have balanced budget rules. They can't handle downturns. They already rely on the federal government to pick up economic slack. And if you had the idea that they would be able to raise state taxes with the fat refund checks we'll all be getting with the proceeds of cutting the NSF... there aren't any.
CaptWillard 1y ago
Academia and higher education have been central to some unsavory initiatives by federal agencies. The tendency to remain (or appear) willfully ignorant of those while clutching pearls over funding cuts is frankly repugnant.
- forgetfreeman 1y ago
  Wait, are you trying to propose a causal relationship between research projects like MK Ultra that happened decades ago and the current administration's targeting universities?
ngangaga 1y ago
Why do people expect industry to do anything but look after itself? It would be very uncharacteristic of capital to make a stand.
glitchc 1y ago
The academic funding model was long overdue for a change. As others have pointed out, there was no room in the current model for the curiously ambitious scientists, the ones responsible for ground-breaking discoveries. Rather, the bulk of the funding was being secured by careerists and ideologically driven researchers. It's good if those two groups lose interest, science overall will benefit as a result. Research is inherently risky. If we don't take risks and tackle the big problems, we cannot make progress as a species.
- ModernMech 1y ago
  > As others have pointed out, there was no room in the current model for the curiously ambitious scientists, the ones responsible for ground-breaking discoveries. Who explained this to you? In this thread (I haven't read it all yet)? There's a lot of money in academia for curiously ambitious people just starting their careers so it's an odd thing to say. And you say "careerist" as if people looking to start a career in research are somehow bad? I think maybe you have to expand this comment because it's throwing out a lot of negativity without much substance to back it up.
  - coolsuds420 1y ago
    Every genius I met in tech had a story about how they couldn’t get any funding or time to research their own ideas, but had to follow the instructions of some cabal of geezers who control funding in their field. If you want to look up the age discrimination or age distribution of scientific grants in America. You’ll clearly see that the funding apparatus doesn’t serve early career scientists as well as it did. Accordingly, the government is less valuable and people are correctly perceiving that resources could be better allocated.
    - ModernMech 1y ago
      It's true that most grant money goes to go to the largest projects, and the largest projects are run by the most well-connected people with the most established research agendas. But that doesn't mean there isn't money for new researchers who are challenging the establishment. New faculty are afforded a startup package which these days can be in the millions if the research agenda is solid and ambitious. For those "tech geniuses" who can't get funding, their proposals usually (IME) go like this: Do you have any experience leading a large research project of the scale you're proposing -- I was a research assistant once, does that count? Have you ever managed a budget this large? -- I've never seen that much money in my life, no. What kind of team are you putting together to accomplish this? -- Doing it all myself What are the risks of failure and how will you mitigate them? -- No risks, I've already accounted for them all with my perfect plan. Why is your method better than the ones in the literature? -- Those idea are old. My ideas are new and clearly better. How will your research benefit society? -- Just read the title again, it's self evident. How will your research benefit your community? -- Why do I even have to articulate this?? What's your long-term funding strategy? -- I figured you'd give me all the money I need, forever. Funding decision: denied But when you ask them, they'll tell you: "I wasn't funded because they're a bunch of old geezers who didn't appreciate my genius!"
lenerdenator 1y ago
Industry determines everything by the impact it will have on its financial state in ninety days. That's it. That's what matters. We redefined competence as the ability to have that financial state be better with regard to nothing else. Academic research rarely produces anything in 90 days. Therefore, there will be little in the way of standing for academic research.
- hall0ween 1y ago
  That’s a tough take but I think fair. There’s also a common thought in industry that nothing gets done in academia (e.g., credentials are often weighed less from a university than from employment). Or at least anecdotally for me.
- bilbo0s 1y ago
  Yep. Better bet for mankind at this point is for Europe or China to take up that research mantle. (Actually, maybe best bet is for both to take up the mantle?)
- dandanua 1y ago
  This is why the human race has approximately zero chances against AI machines of the future. Their plans are not limited by the human life-long timescale.
- coolsuds420 1y ago
  There are so many obvious counter examples you should be ashamed of yourself. Consider Pratt & Whitney working on geared turbofans for decades, they made that investment privately. Or consider Tesla, they brought the roadster to market purely off private investment. That’s a lot of r&d for things like battery management systems, motors, and power electronics which took years.
  - lenerdenator 1y ago
    > There are so many obvious counter examples you should be ashamed of yourself. Consider Pratt & Whitney working on geared turbofans for decades, they made that investment privately. Or consider Tesla, they brought the roadster to market purely off private investment. That’s a lot of r&d for things like battery management systems, motors, and power electronics which took years. Both happened before the redefinition of competence to making the most money in 90 days. This is a relatively recent shift; and while its roots start in the 1950s, its completion has only happened recently, within the last decade or so.
ModernMech 1y ago
I was assured on another thread that industry can pick up all the slack, and in fact now that Academica is finally being pushed aside, industry research will take off because they will no longer be worried about the public funding research and therefore will take on the mantle themselves to do basic research. I hope they are right but my feeling is that this will just leave a big hole that no one wants to fill because it's too not profitable. I guess we will see.
- Ar-Curunir 1y ago
  Industry already abandoned that approach 15 years ago. The only basic-research focused lab is Microsoft Research, and even that has seen massive downsizing over the last 2 decades.
guywithahat 1y ago
While I agree in principle, I feel we output more degrees than industry wants (especially in soft-touch areas), and it could take a while for the market to readjust itself. So much of the research "pipeline" is absolute nonsense it just gets in the way
BrenBarn 1y ago
I'm getting so sick of people prefacing stuff like this with "this isn't ideological". Yes, it is ideological, because the ideology causing this is the ideology that says government is limited to a small number of specific goals which just so happen to include protecting the interests of the wealthy. These problems won't be solved in a "non-ideological" way. It has to be solved by directly opposing and eradicating the ideology that is pushing this kind of nonsense.

146 points by MaysonL 1y ago

Whenever I think about the decline of industrial research labs, not just the most famed like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, but also the labs at companies like Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Intel, and many others, I'm reminded of a quote from Alan Kay about how those who have financially benefited from applying the results of research have often not "given back" to research: "It strikes me that many of the tech billionaires have already gotten their "upside" many times over from people like Engelbart and other researchers who were supported by ARPA, Parc, ONR, etc. Why would they insist on more upside, and that their money should be an "investment"? That isn't how the great inventions and fundamental technologies were created that eventually gave rise to the wealth that they tapped into after the fact. "It would be really worth the while of people who do want to make money -- they think in terms of millions and billions -- to understand how the trillions -- those 3 and 4 extra zeros came about that they have tapped into. And to support that process." (from https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/ https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/). Even before Trump's and DOGE's reckless attacks on research and academia, the software industry (I'm going to limit this to the software industry; I don't know the situation in other STEM industries such as health care, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, aerospace, etc.) has changed its strategy regarding funding research. Before the 2010s, many major companies had research labs where its employees worked on medium-term and long-term projects that may not have directly tied into current products but may form the basis of future products. If you had a computer science PhD and worked in an applied field such as systems or compilers, aside from academia and government labs, there were jobs at industrial labs where researchers could work on research systems. Sun, for example, had a lot of interesting research projects such as Self (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language) ; much of the work on Self influenced the design and implementation of the Java virtual machine). AltaVista, an early Web search engine that predates Google, was originally a research project at Digital Equipment Corporation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista) that was later spun off as its own company. However, in the 2000s and especially in the 2010s, these jobs became increasingly rare. Having worked in industrial research labs and advanced development teams during the mid-2010s and early 2020s, what I've noticed is a trend away from dedicated research labs where researchers study phenomena and perhaps build prototypes that get passed onto a production team, and more toward a model where researchers are expected to write production code. Google's 2012 paper "Google's Hybrid Approach to Research" (https://research.google/pubs/googles-hybrid-approach-to-research/ https://research.google/pubs/googles-hybrid-approach-to-rese...) is an excellent summary. This makes a lot of sense under the context of early Google; Google in the 2000s needed to build large-scale distributed systems to power Google's search engine and other operations, but there was little experience within and outside the company on working on such Web-scale systems. Thus, Google hired CS PhDs with research experience in distributed systems and related topics, and then put them to work implementing systems such as MapReduce, BigTable, Spanner, and many others. I see a similar mindset when it comes to AI companies such as OpenAI, where researchers directly work on production systems. Researchers working directly on products that take advantage of research is an effective approach in many situations and it's brought us many innovations, especially in Web-scale systems, big data processing, and machine learning. However, not all research has obvious, direct productization opportunities. For one, not all computer science research is systems-based. There is theoretical computer science research, where researchers are exploring questions that may not immediately lead to new products, but may answer important questions regarding computing. Next, even in systems research, there are areas of research that could be productized a few decades down the road, but in order for those products to be created, the research needs to be done first. Deep neural networks took off once hardware became cheap enough to make DNN architectures feasible, for example. However, without the work done on neural networks in the decades prior to affordable GPUs, research on DNNs would be further behind compared to today. The biggest problem that I see with attitudes regarding research funding, not just in industry, but also in academia and government, is that funders don't appreciate the fact that research is inherently risky; not all research projects are going to lead to positive results, and the lack of positive results is not a matter of a researcher's work ethic or competence. Funders seem to want sure bets; they seem to only be interested in funding research that has a very high ROI likelihood. Yes, funders should have the freedom to fund the projects and researchers that they want. There are obvious reasons why funders are more interested in hot topics such as large language models and blockchain applications versus topics where there is less of an obvious likelihood for short-term ROI. However, I feel that it is important to fund less obviously lucrative research efforts. I feel industry is not interested these days in making more speculative bets, kind of like the research projects that Xerox PARC did back in the 1970s. Academia seems like a natural home for more speculative research. Unfortunately academia has two major pressures that undermine this: (1) the "publish-or-perish" culture found at many major research universities, and (2) fundraising pressures. These two factors, in my opinion, encourage academics, especially pre-tenure and non-tenured ones, to optimize their research pursuits for "sure bets" instead of riskier but potentially higher impact work. The fundraising pressures have gotten much worse now with the abrupt cuts to research funding in the United States. A long-term solution to this problem requires cultivating a culture that is more understanding of the research process, that research is inherently risky, and that different types of research require different funding mechanisms. I'm all in favor of Google- and OpenAI-style research projects where researchers are directly involved with product-building efforts, but I'm also in favor of other styles of research that are not directly tied to product-building. I also want to see a culture where large corporations and wealthy individuals donate meaningful amounts of money to fund research efforts. It would be a major setback for society for us to return to the pre-1940s days of "gentlemen scientists" where science and other academic pursuits were only reserved for the independently wealthy and for those who relied on patronage. Modern technological innovations are made possible through research, and it's important that research efforts are funded in a regular manner.

kianN 1y ago
This really hits the nail on the head. I think the extension to this is the all eggs in one (the first) basket approach being exacerbated: it’s always been challenging to conduct foundational research in a field where there already exists a dominant paradigm in industry, but it’s also becoming more and more challenging in academia as well.
lwo32k 1y ago
What culture you cultivate is just one variable. Go to Japan or Iran or Italy and they will fall over each other, telling you how great their culture was and what it cultivated. When things are relatively stable, it's not hard to lean on the Explore side of the Explore-Exploit tradeoff. When things are ever changing, and at faster and unpredictable rates the tradeoff naturally gets much more complex. You have to ride the waves. No one really controls them.
robocat 1y ago
If one altruistically decides to give to society then I'm unsure what outcomes one should expect from society? What's the game-theory here? If one wants something back then who is responsible to get something back? My canonical example is Linus: if the world was fair he should be worth some pretty big numbers. It is harder to pick what is fair in return for someone's scientific innovation. I would guess Linus has generated as much worth as Microsoft, so in an ideal world he should be worth a Bill Gates. Linus has mostly chosen other non-financial goals to chase (unlike Bill). Linus $50 million, Bill Gates $156 billion. “While I may not get any money from Linux, I get a huge personal satisfaction from having written something that people really enjoy using.” “The cyberspace earnings I get from Linux come in the format of having a network of people that know me and trust me, and that I can depend on in return.” Some people that complain about the wealthy making money are selfishly obsessed about money themselves. Perhaps even hypocritically denegrating others as too-money-focused when others choose to win the money making game. Unfortunately our world tends to be very focused on financial gains; and often completely ignoring non-financial benefits. What are the non-financial benefits of an iPhone compared to the money paid for it? How much is job-enjoyment or job-status worth; compared against either the money earned or the time spent?

hiddencost 1y ago

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gotoeleven 1y ago

I didn't look at every one on the list of these 1000 NSF grants that were cancelled: https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO?jntvk%3Asort=eyJwZWw4ZlRSME8ycmFObWNUYyI6eyJjb2x1bW5JZCI6ImZsZHlMSEpuZkR6OXE1dEw0IiwiYXNjZW5kaW5nIjpmYWxzZX19 https://airtable.com/appGKlSVeXniQZkFC/shrFxbl1YTqb3AyOO?jnt... but I think if you skim the titles you can sense a theme. Here's the very first one: "Cambio: A Professional Development Approach for Building Latinx-focused Cultural Competence in Informal Science Education Institutions" for a whopping 2.8 million dollars. This is not basic research, this is not important research, this is left wing politics parasitically attached to scientific institutions.

userbinator 1y ago
Besides the usual DEI stuff, some of those titles sound like the output of a stochastic generator trained on buzzwords: "HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Using Peer-Enhanced Blockchain-Based Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement and Retention" "Blockchain-Based Learning Environments". That's my WTF of the day.
- hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
  You do realize VCs were putting billions into this shit a few years ago right? Maybe DOGE should have shut down YCombinator.
  - nickff 1y ago
    VCs also put lots of money into Theranos, it doesn’t make it a good idea.
    - marcus_holmes 1y ago
      Theranos was a great idea. The problem was that they couldn't make it work and they lied about that to everyone involved. That's different from it not being a good idea in the first place.

OhMeadhbh 1y ago

"Support for education and research should be as fundamental as clean air or safe roads." I think the current powers that be hold clean air and safe roads in the same esteem as they hold education and research. Maybe "Support for education and research should be as fundamental as golf tournaments or Diet Coke" would be a better anology.

philjohn 1y ago
Didn't Florida suggest using mining waste for road construction ... the kicker being that it's mildly radioactive?
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  Radioactive asphalt particles keep your lungs trained because otherwise they would get so lazy and stop working properly /s
- matkoniecz 1y ago
  How mildly? Background radiation is a thing. Granite and bananas are a tiny bit more radioactive than typical things, without making them dangerous.
  - roenxi 1y ago
    I have absolutely no idea, but it is in interesting question and until someone more cluey can chime in a quick search suggests: - Florida is using photogypsum - https://www.ijpr.org/npr-news/2023-06-30/florida-moves-forward-on-radioactive-road-paving-plan-as-gov-desantis-signs-new-law https://www.ijpr.org/npr-news/2023-06-30/florida-moves-forwa... - Photogypsum in the US is banned if it radiates at >0.4 Bq/g of 226 Ra. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphogypsum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphogypsum - Granite radiates at maybe 450 Bq/kg -> 0.45 Bq/g of 226 Ra. https://www.nature.com/articles/jes200944 https://www.nature.com/articles/jes200944 So it looks like we're dealing with pretty standard rock. If this stuff was going to be banned without special permitting it is probably a little more risky than a granite kitchen-top counter if someone goes and sits on the road all day. Although this all raises the question of whether granite should be legal as a building material given that people get twitchy about this stuff - I doubt anyone can prove that granite is safe in this context.

geeal 1y ago

Progress in computing sciences was never accomplished by investment strategies and nondisclosure agreements. It was accomplished by dedicated proffisionals and academics with a high level of integrity and transparency. So your post seems very appropriate in the current state where all parties are jumping to the AI bandwogen.

geeal 1y ago

Advances in computing sciences were not accomplished by investment strategies and nondisclosure agreements. It was accomplished by dedicated professional and academics with the highest levels of integrity and transparency. So your post comes at a critical time where parties are jumping to the bandwagon of AI.

watwut 1y ago
Where do you have integrity and transparency from? They were of all kinds.
- ktallett 1y ago
  Transparency is the case, up to a point in research. Many engineering papers I find, have the told you the building blocks of what is required, but they try to avoid stating the secret sauce that binds them together.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    Yeah because otherwise you'll have some cloner in China reproducing it the very next day. Transparency is only working if everyone plays by the same rules, particularly when it comes to patents, and there are a few players who have been getting away with openly sharting on the rules for decades now.
    - ktallett 1y ago
      I'm not talking about consumer products, I'm talking about academic research. Most research has no patent attached nor any contents that is patent worthy. Most methods in most papers are based on the very basic building blocks coming from ones fine motor skills. The fact these methods are omitted has numerous problems. One key issue this provides is reproducibility. All science has to be reproducible and a building block for future science. Omitting key details makes this unfit for purpose. Secondly, it also means research can not be checked for accuracy and truth, which I do sometimes wonder if thats on purpose. Perhaps they are only presenting the most successful attempt, but not the average situation. Lastly, this fully goes against the spirit of academic research. I want anyone out there to develop either a brand new usage for my work or adapt and improve my work, either building on it, or finding a new way of doing it that's easier, or more repeatable/reliable. It saves me having to do it, and as I am still working in that field, I will benefit from it.

aaron695 1y ago

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deleted 1y ago

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charcircuit 1y ago

The author is an associate professor at Harvard, so he is going to be biased towards academia. >knows that our field’s landmark innovations emerged not purely from product roadmaps but from university labs with federal funding Maybe if you cherry pick those innovations from things coming from university labs. Or count these labs because they openly announced something or popularized something else that already existed. >The Talent Pipeline Under Threat Talent can be taught by both AI and industry. University as a place for learning is an outdated concept.

Hilift 1y ago

> Universities are left to defend The Promise of American Higher Education alone. "Only the federal government can provide the funding needed".? NSF fields 40,000 proposals per year, 110 per day. The US is unlike other countries. By design, each state has their own capabilities, and owns everything except that which is specifically provided to the federal government. The combined capabilities of California and Massachusetts equal the remainder of the country. There's nothing to prevent any state from funding the universities in their states. Was it more convenient before? Sure, but there is now an inflection point where more than 50% of the country "don't like you and wish you weren't here". You don't have to get beat up at the bus stop if you walk or take an uber. This is hardly unique to research or higher education. All 50 states have negligently constructed budgets to rely on copius federal funding for health care (Medicaid) and education. That makes it easy for a petulant politician to kick sand in your face and "disrupt" that.

throwaway287391 1y ago
"There's nothing to prevent any state from funding the universities in their states." I would've thought one major issue is that a much larger chunk of tax revenue is collected by the IRS than by any state. From googling, CA has the highest state income tax rate but still collects <5% of US federal tax revenue, while having >10% of the population. ~2.5x'ing state taxes to attain similar per-capita revenue would probably lead to a fair number of people leaving the state, or at least get the party who passed that tax hike (presumably Democrats) voted out in the next state election. OTOH the NSF annual budget is $10B/year, in theory "easily" fundable by CA alone with its $220B/year in tax revenue, in the worst case with a 5% tax increase. The NSF isn't the only federal agency that funds research (seems to provide around 25% of federal research funding) but it is probably enough for one state, even the most productive one. So maybe it really is doable.
jfengel 1y ago
States have much less flexible budgets. Many have balanced budget rules. They can't handle downturns. They already rely on the federal government to pick up economic slack. And if you had the idea that they would be able to raise state taxes with the fat refund checks we'll all be getting with the proceeds of cutting the NSF... there aren't any.

CaptWillard 1y ago

Academia and higher education have been central to some unsavory initiatives by federal agencies. The tendency to remain (or appear) willfully ignorant of those while clutching pearls over funding cuts is frankly repugnant.

forgetfreeman 1y ago
Wait, are you trying to propose a causal relationship between research projects like MK Ultra that happened decades ago and the current administration's targeting universities?

ngangaga 1y ago

Why do people expect industry to do anything but look after itself? It would be very uncharacteristic of capital to make a stand.

glitchc 1y ago

The academic funding model was long overdue for a change. As others have pointed out, there was no room in the current model for the curiously ambitious scientists, the ones responsible for ground-breaking discoveries. Rather, the bulk of the funding was being secured by careerists and ideologically driven researchers. It's good if those two groups lose interest, science overall will benefit as a result. Research is inherently risky. If we don't take risks and tackle the big problems, we cannot make progress as a species.

ModernMech 1y ago
> As others have pointed out, there was no room in the current model for the curiously ambitious scientists, the ones responsible for ground-breaking discoveries. Who explained this to you? In this thread (I haven't read it all yet)? There's a lot of money in academia for curiously ambitious people just starting their careers so it's an odd thing to say. And you say "careerist" as if people looking to start a career in research are somehow bad? I think maybe you have to expand this comment because it's throwing out a lot of negativity without much substance to back it up.
- coolsuds420 1y ago
  Every genius I met in tech had a story about how they couldn’t get any funding or time to research their own ideas, but had to follow the instructions of some cabal of geezers who control funding in their field. If you want to look up the age discrimination or age distribution of scientific grants in America. You’ll clearly see that the funding apparatus doesn’t serve early career scientists as well as it did. Accordingly, the government is less valuable and people are correctly perceiving that resources could be better allocated.
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    It's true that most grant money goes to go to the largest projects, and the largest projects are run by the most well-connected people with the most established research agendas. But that doesn't mean there isn't money for new researchers who are challenging the establishment. New faculty are afforded a startup package which these days can be in the millions if the research agenda is solid and ambitious. For those "tech geniuses" who can't get funding, their proposals usually (IME) go like this: Do you have any experience leading a large research project of the scale you're proposing -- I was a research assistant once, does that count? Have you ever managed a budget this large? -- I've never seen that much money in my life, no. What kind of team are you putting together to accomplish this? -- Doing it all myself What are the risks of failure and how will you mitigate them? -- No risks, I've already accounted for them all with my perfect plan. Why is your method better than the ones in the literature? -- Those idea are old. My ideas are new and clearly better. How will your research benefit society? -- Just read the title again, it's self evident. How will your research benefit your community? -- Why do I even have to articulate this?? What's your long-term funding strategy? -- I figured you'd give me all the money I need, forever. Funding decision: denied But when you ask them, they'll tell you: "I wasn't funded because they're a bunch of old geezers who didn't appreciate my genius!"

lenerdenator 1y ago

Industry determines everything by the impact it will have on its financial state in ninety days. That's it. That's what matters. We redefined competence as the ability to have that financial state be better with regard to nothing else. Academic research rarely produces anything in 90 days. Therefore, there will be little in the way of standing for academic research.

hall0ween 1y ago
That’s a tough take but I think fair. There’s also a common thought in industry that nothing gets done in academia (e.g., credentials are often weighed less from a university than from employment). Or at least anecdotally for me.
bilbo0s 1y ago
Yep. Better bet for mankind at this point is for Europe or China to take up that research mantle. (Actually, maybe best bet is for both to take up the mantle?)
dandanua 1y ago
This is why the human race has approximately zero chances against AI machines of the future. Their plans are not limited by the human life-long timescale.
coolsuds420 1y ago
There are so many obvious counter examples you should be ashamed of yourself. Consider Pratt & Whitney working on geared turbofans for decades, they made that investment privately. Or consider Tesla, they brought the roadster to market purely off private investment. That’s a lot of r&d for things like battery management systems, motors, and power electronics which took years.
- lenerdenator 1y ago
  > There are so many obvious counter examples you should be ashamed of yourself. Consider Pratt & Whitney working on geared turbofans for decades, they made that investment privately. Or consider Tesla, they brought the roadster to market purely off private investment. That’s a lot of r&d for things like battery management systems, motors, and power electronics which took years. Both happened before the redefinition of competence to making the most money in 90 days. This is a relatively recent shift; and while its roots start in the 1950s, its completion has only happened recently, within the last decade or so.

ModernMech 1y ago

I was assured on another thread that industry can pick up all the slack, and in fact now that Academica is finally being pushed aside, industry research will take off because they will no longer be worried about the public funding research and therefore will take on the mantle themselves to do basic research. I hope they are right but my feeling is that this will just leave a big hole that no one wants to fill because it's too not profitable. I guess we will see.

Ar-Curunir 1y ago
Industry already abandoned that approach 15 years ago. The only basic-research focused lab is Microsoft Research, and even that has seen massive downsizing over the last 2 decades.

guywithahat 1y ago

While I agree in principle, I feel we output more degrees than industry wants (especially in soft-touch areas), and it could take a while for the market to readjust itself. So much of the research "pipeline" is absolute nonsense it just gets in the way

BrenBarn 1y ago

I'm getting so sick of people prefacing stuff like this with "this isn't ideological". Yes, it is ideological, because the ideology causing this is the ideology that says government is limited to a small number of specific goals which just so happen to include protecting the interests of the wealthy. These problems won't be solved in a "non-ideological" way. It has to be solved by directly opposing and eradicating the ideology that is pushing this kind of nonsense.