
Facebook AI Research Expands with New Academic Collaborations - TamoC
https://code.fb.com/ai-research/facebook-ai-research-expands-with-new-academic-collaborations/
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chriskanan
To summarize why I think professors are going with this arrangement (in
order):

1) Much less, if any, grant writing. A standard NSF $500K 3 year grant
provides a lab about $100K per year (due to university overhead). This will
support 1-2 PhD students on a pittance of a stipend.

2) Less teaching (1 course once a year)

3) Computing resources that are far greater than you could get a grant for.
One NVIDIA DGX-1 is about $100K. Very hard to get a grant for something like
that. Companies have far greater resources than just one DGX-1

4) Access to software engineering personnel to help with research

5) Access to data, and the ability to create new datasets. Many datasets cost
over $100K to make (e.g., those for semantic segmentation). Very hard to get a
grant to make a dataset (I've tried)

6) Much better media relations to popularize your research

7) Bigger salary

A big part of this, in my opinion, is just that FB funds their labs. Getting
government funding for a lab is difficult and frustrating and must be done
continually, especially for these professors that run huge labs. NSF has a
7-15% success rate, and it can take a lot of effort to write a decent
proposal. Including teaching regularly, this takes a lot of time from actual
research. What these professors, I think, are negotiating is only teaching one
semester a year and having a spigot of cash to fund their labs. They also gain
access to massive amounts of data and computing resources.

Other companies don't seem to be as open to this arrangement as FB, but it has
a lot of appeal to me (although I'm not a lover of FB).

~~~
Fomite
A couple notes:

1\. Industry funding comes with its own set of hassles. And overhead is still
a thing for industry funding - sometimes the overhead rate is less, but
there's been a lot more pushback against this from universities (which I
actually think is quite fair).

2\. Being able to buy out teaching loads is a function of funding, not
necessarily _this_ funding

3\. In many institutions, salaries are fixed - what this does is cover a
percentage of your salary you don't have to cover from other mechanisms, or
let you buy out teaching, as you note. It would be interesting to know if the
dual FAIR appointments work like that or not.

While private funding is awesome, and these labs are in a very good position,
it should be noted that in most cases in my experience between NSF/NIH-style
funding and an industry grant, the government grants last longer, are more
flexible, and less of a hassle administratively.

~~~
chriskanan
While all of what you say is correct for grants given to universities by
industry, this isn't in the same class of activity. These professors are
becoming FB employees, while still retaining their professorships. Some aren't
even located at the same location as their university for 7 months of the
year. Its almost like a yearly sabbatical with funding for your lab and far
more resources.

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naturalgradient
I understand the call of money but I cannot help but feel very negatively
towards academics doing this with facebook of all organisations. After recent
events, they cannot pretend not to know the impact and damage their work may
have here. Excusing yourself with "I am just a researcher, I don't have
anything to do with how my work is used" is just not good enough any more.

I would categorically reject any collaborations with FB as an academic in ML.

~~~
yaseer
Completely agree with this.

I see Facebook as the least ethical, and least useful from a civilization
standpoint of all the big tech firms.

Google is driven by the same ad-clicking incentives, but the one-tricky pony
has been developing other extremely societally useful tech, like self-driving
cars and other moonshot projects.

Apple and Microsoft sell products, they do not make users the product (on the
whole). Together they pioneered computing revolutions, and I'm confident
history will judge them for making a positive contribution (on the whole).

Amazon is a leviathan whose societal value I find more difficult to classify,
but I genuinely derive lots of value from their service personally. It's good
for my lifestyle.

Facebook on the other hand, is a waste of my time, mental energy and a drain
on society. As an academic, how can you turn your mind to furthering its
goals?

~~~
schrep
Our products aren't perfect, and we understand that we have a lot of work to
do.

However, the fundamental purpose of our products is to allow people to
efficiently communicate with each other. Hard for me to square that with
"drain on society." I have many friends who, via Facebook, found a connection
that was life changing: from finding a job, a spouse, to a community to deal
with the loss of a loved one or support after being diagnosed with a terminal
illness.

One of the things that draws AI researchers to come work at Facebook is the
opportunity to see their work make a positive impact on billions of people
around the world.

The research done by FAIR is helping us do things like deliver billions of
translations a day, provide automatic photo captions for people who are
visually impaired, and help bring blood donors and people in need together. It
also helps us spot when someone is expressing thoughts about self-harm so we
can alert first responders.

But we also believe there's even more we can do to help bring the world closer
together, to give people a voice, and to open up new opportunities for
everyone. AI is a key part of that and we believe pretty deeply in the power
of open research to help not just us but the whole industry.

~~~
shmageggy
> _The research done by FAIR is helping us do things like deliver billions of
> translations a day, etc..._

All for the purpose of increasing buy-in to an increasingly Orwellian digital
surveillance regime.

> _But we also believe there 's even more we can do to help bring the world
> closer together..._

What brings people closer together is real human interaction and connection.
Face to face communication with visible emotion. Vulnerability. FB's video
chat is the only thing serving that interest, but that's better served
elsewhere with less tracking. Posts that broadcast one-way to an invisible
audience are inhuman. Filter bubbles are toxic. Widespread use of FB is
cancerous on the social fabric of society.

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mlthrowaway1953
How is IP handled in this situation? Especially given the recent discussion
[1] on HN about how the recently announced DeepMind Patent Portfolio could be
a problem, how is it that state employees (Washington, California) are "co-
employed" by an organization to do _exactly_ the research that their home
universities work on ? Who owns the IP in this case? Are these sorts of
agreements FOIA-able?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17266951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17266951)

~~~
chrisseaton
> how is it that state employees (Washington, California) are "co-employed" by
> an organization to do _exactly_ the research that their home universities
> work on

They will work part-time for the university, and part-time for Facebook. I
don't see why that's so shocking? Presumably the university only funds them
part-time for part-time work, so it's not like they're not getting what
they're paying for if that's what you're asking. This is a very conventional
set up for academics.

~~~
mlthrowaway1953
Most employer agreements have fairly draconian claims around IP. And I believe
that many universities require their faculty to run consulting, etc. gigs
through their legal teams, and the university gets a "right of first refusal"
of sorts on the generated IP. Many academics get around this by claiming that
they are doing research X at company (more applied, etc.) and research Y at
the university (more theory, technically different projects under different
grants). But with ML it seems like it would be harder. Regardless, I'd love to
figure out if we can get these agreements through freedom of information act
requests, to shed light on what state-employees are doing.

~~~
Fomite
Yeah, at my university partnerships between academia and industry have very
complex IP terms that depend on the scope of work, how much of it involves
novel research, etc.

And there, there's the clarity of "I'm an employee of the university". With
dual appointments...the agreement has to be complex. Either that, or really
draconian based on Facebook throwing it's weight around and saying "Accept
this, or we'll find another university that will."

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nemild
A related quote from this fascinating interview with Jonathan Tow (media
researcher)[1] on FB research:

> Often, these companies [like FB] are open to research partnerships and
> things, but it’s always on their terms. If you do research with them, you’re
> dealing with IP issues, you’re signing over the rights to the research. It
> has to be reviewed completely and vetted by their legal process. They often
> handpick researchers that help them and help their purpose and help their
> cause — they maybe throw in some sprinkles of criticism. I understand why
> they would be hesitant to want to work with people like me.

[1] [http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/news-in-a-disintegrating-
re...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/news-in-a-disintegrating-reality-tows-
jonathan-albright-on-what-to-do-as-things-crash-around-us/)

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throwawayjava
I think Facebook hate is clouding out reasonability in this thread. E.g.,
there's even a comment asserting that people who collaborate with facebook
(a.k.a., Jessica Hodgins, Andrea Vedaldi, and Jitendra Malik) are "not worth
their salt" (?!?!?!).

IDK. Maybe -- just possibly -- there do exist researchers who have their
choice of funding spigots and are choosing to work with Facebook. Either that
or HN has some damn high standards for what it means to be "worth their salt".

There's nothing _intrinsically_ wrong with industry collaboration, even when
it involves companies whose impact on the world you might not like. The big
oil companies are, unlike FB, an _actual_ existential threat to humanity. But
I wouldn't fault renewable energy researchers for taking research dollars from
those companies.

The question is: will the funded research agendas push science forward _in the
direction it was headed anyways_ , or will this money distort the type of
research being done?

In any case, in a week we'll be back to our regular programming bemoaning the
fall of the industry research lab and the paltry salaries offered to phd
students...

~~~
naturalgradient
You are referring to my comment about 'worth their salt' in a gross
misreading. I said anyone worth their salt has other choices, so going to FB
is a deliberate choice on these professors.

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peter303
An important aspect in any research arrangement is PROTECT THE STUDENTS.
Academic research is likely to have many student assistants. The students
should be able to publish their results in a timely manner. Students will
benefit from exposure to researchers and resources in industry. And
potentially lucrative internships. My alma mater Stanford had a bumpy ride in
the 1980s: over clingy patent policy, faculty startups not allowing
publications. Lawsuits ensued. Ut by the time dot.com began the next decade it
was much smoother, e.g. the Yahoos and Googles. And this not just comp-sci,
but biotech, oil&gas, aero engineering too.

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username_123
What level are these professors being hired at within Facebook? What sort of
base salaries, stock options do they command? Any idea on total compensation
numbers here?

With them being part-time professors what are their university salaries like?

In total compensation between industry and university I'd imagine this would
be a good deal.

Lastly, how does recruiting work here? I assume they don’t make these people
go through 5-6 algorithmic interview rounds.

~~~
edhu2017
Total compensation: Definitely a wide range, but a few hundred K would be the
median. Recruiting: one of my labmates flat out refused to do algorithmic
interviews for a research position and the company still gave him an offer.
Your projects, papers, and ability to demonstrate your understanding of
research topics are far more important then your ability to solve a small,
defined problem in 45 minutes.

~~~
username_123
I assume there is a distinction between software engineering and research
applicants in terms of their interviews at the Big 4s? I know two people with
PhDs that were given algorithmic questions and had to go through the same
process as regular software developers (this was at the same Big 4 company).
The only exception is one had expertise in ML and during one of his interviews
they brought in a ML expert and interviewed them on their dissertation, in
addition to their 4-5 algorithmic interviews. Both of these people were
interviewing for software developer positions despite having expertise in
research. Wasn't sure if the research interviews would be different. Good on
your lab mate.

~~~
electricslpnsld
I interviewed for a research position at Facebook reality labs, and it was the
same process as an interview for an academic job. Give an hour talk about your
research, meet with 6 researchers in hour chunks for the rest of the day. The
process was similar for my previous industry research job as well. I can't
speak to Facebook's other research arms or Google.

~~~
username_123
Good to know. So you you weren't asked any algorithmic leetcode-style
questions or questions testing that you have basic knowledge of your field
(e.g. tell me what a random forest is)? Doesn't sound like it. It was more
focused on your research?

~~~
electricslpnsld
There weren't any whiteboard algorithm questions, no.

> questions testing that you have basic knowledge of your field

Not directly, but in discussing my research the interviewers drilled down into
the contents of my papers, etc.

~~~
username_123
Okay, thanks.

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braindongle
I see similarities here with pharma and medical research. Conflicts of
interest are endemic there, and they will be here, too, but this sort of
sponsorship is inevitable. What can be done? In the case of pharma, I'm OK
with them sponsoring peer reviewed, academic research, as long as policies are
in place to make it immediately obvious where the money is coming from when I
read the literature.

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colmvp
While I dislike FB, I don't blame researchers/profs for joining FB when the
numerous advantages for joining them dwarf what you could get at a lot of
other institutions.

Reminds me of how on the one hand it sucks that certain talented
engineers/designers work for ad-driven companies, but at the end of the day
the compensation is simply on another level compared to working for more
benevolent causes.

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bradgnar
cool, even better ads.

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Kyragem
As usual FB and other companies only collaborates with the "elite/Ivy League"
schools. IMHO there are plenty of great researchers at non-elite schools and
it would have been great if FB would start collaborating with those to reduce
this vast concentration of academic research that has been happening for the
past decade.

~~~
electricslpnsld
Half the schools on the list are publics, and none of them are Ivies.

~~~
whymauri
How does being a public school mean a college cannot be elite? Pretty sure his
point is these schools are elite within this field, and people from lesser
known schools (not just public) are rarely given these chances.

