
A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit - alphagrep12345
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-salaries-openai.html
======
currymj
Misleading article and headline; a few celebrity researchers in high-up
positions make this much. You can probably find some chemists who make $1M too
if they have made it to executive positions.

Most AI researchers in industry make a lot of money, $200k+, but that is not
so outrageous in the context of big tech companies.

And in fact the vast majority of AI researchers are making $20k-$30k a year,
because they are graduate students.

~~~
Railsify
And if they live in California 200k does not seem like a lot.

~~~
jstummbillig
If the context simply is "median California household income", then it should
seem like a lot, because it really still is a lot.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_locations_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_locations_by_income)

~~~
ModernMech
$200k in the bay area is like $90k where I'm from. It's a decent living, but
if you've got a family it's not exactly upper class.

~~~
ryanSrich
If you have a family it’s not possible. Home prices average close to $1m.
You’d have to save an entire years salary PRE tax to afford the down payment.
That will take years and years to save.

If you’re raising a family you’ll likely need two $200k incomes to afford a
house, and even then, it’ll take at least 2 years to save for the down
payment.

The Bay Area is for college kids and millionaires. That’s it.

~~~
nostrademons
It's certainly possible. You just don't own a home, you rent. It's much like
NYC in that regard - you don't own a detached home in NYC regardless of how
rich you are, you rent a swanky loft or penthouse. At most you might buy a
condo, but you can still find plenty of hedge fund managers or Google
engineers that rent their permanent residence (and sometimes have over $1M in
liquid assets).

In my wife's mom's group (which had a number of dual-tech-income couples
working for places like Apple, Google, Palantir, Facebook, etc.), not a single
parent owned their own home. I live in a small 13-unit townhome complex, and
about 8 of the units have families with young kids.

~~~
aledalgrande
Very interesting how affluent people still rent. I noticed the same in LA in a
high end building. What is the reason? Having more money to invest in
different asset classes instead of the biggest chunk being in real estate?

~~~
usaar333
Freedom to move, don't want to deal with burdens of ownership, better ROI to
rent, etc.

~~~
aledalgrande
Can you describe better ROI to rent more in detail?

~~~
usaar333
Investment opportunity cost. I've written articles about this:

[https://medium.com/@usaar33/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-home-
in-t...](https://medium.com/@usaar33/why-you-shouldnt-buy-a-home-in-the-bay-
area-right-now-9eff37da8d6)

[https://medium.com/@usaar33/an-up-to-date-buy-or-rent-
calcul...](https://medium.com/@usaar33/an-up-to-date-buy-or-rent-
calculator-22d0bf9bbbb5)

------
rm999
> A third big name in the field, the roboticist Pieter Abbeel, made $425,000,
> though he did not join until June 2016, after taking a leave from his job as
> a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Those figures all
> include signing bonuses.

425k after signing bonus is probably closer to 300-350k base + annual bonus,
which feels low for someone in such a distinguished position (close to a
typical specialized physician or big tech software engineer with 5-10 years of
experience). After finishing my masters degree in machine learning in the
mid-2000s, I immediately got job offers higher than my much more talented
professors. To me, the real story is that academia has set the compensation
bar low for people adding so much value.

Edit: to be clear I know these salaries are high and people in my field are
lucky to be making so much. But I also don’t think it’s accurate that people
in the field are overpaid, which titles like OP may make it seem.

~~~
codingslave
Yeah its really not that high. I was reading the Ian Goodfellow, creator of
GANs, was only making 800k at google. Which is honestly, really low for
someone who has done ground breaking research in neural networks.

~~~
mruts
Yeah that’s pretty insulting, honestly. Black or Sholes were making >10m as
thought leaders in banks. It’s surprising to me that finance is so passe as a
career despite the fact, as Matt Levine said, “they are run as employee run
co-ops.” In otherwords, big big money. Entry level analysts at my old firm
were making over 250k total comp.

~~~
codingslave
People in tech generally have no clue of how much money gets made in finance

~~~
sdenton4
Just put your hand in the giant rushing river of money and see what sticks...

~~~
mruts
The oyster farmer eats more oysters than everyone else. The money farmer eats
more money than anyone else.

------
scottlegrand2
7-figure salaries have been a thing for quite a while at Facebook, Google and
definitely at hedge funds. Right now, you can make a half million a year or
more if you're willing to optimize the low-level code in any of the major AI
frameworks.

If you publish a major conference paper, 7 figures is pretty easy to attain.
You don't have to be in the 0.001% just the top 5%. That's hard work but it's
doable.

The only thing that's remotely fungible in AI is python-based data scientists
who can do little more than port new data to existing models open sourced on
GitHub. And even then they do pretty well because of the huge demand.

I don't see that changing anytime soon. I believe expecting automated systems
to replace data scientists is the same level of naivete as believing we'd
reach L5 autonomy in a few years in 2014.

Anthony Lewandowski was making 120 million dollars a year when he left Waymo.
If you're an AI expert in the valley and you're not making at least $500k, you
are one job hop away from doing so if you play your cards remotely right.

~~~
HenryKissinger
> If you publish a major conference paper, 7 figures is pretty easy to attain.

How does it work in practice? Let's say I just published a major conference
paper. Where do I apply for my million dollar job? Who do I reach out to?

~~~
nharada
You don't know? Usually at NeurIPS and CVPR the applications are next to the
tea and coffee they put out in the mornings. Not sure about ICML.

~~~
HenryKissinger
I did not know about these conferences. I googled the first one and found a
headline about how tickets sold out in minutes. Is this why? Because everyone
attending hopes to get a 6 figures job?

~~~
nharada
I'm being facetious, this is not at all true. At my company, we typically look
for multiple major publications and you certainly don't get a million dollar
job out of it.

~~~
scottlegrand2
Then the people who come to your company could probably do better elsewhere if
money is all they care about. You work at Cruise am I right? I know someone
personally who worked at Cruise who was making 7 figures. That sort of
compensation is just not that unusual anymore.

But I've learned that money isn't everything the hard way. However, if you're
whining about being underpaid, there's something you can do about it. There
are plenty of solid reasons not to however especially if you enjoy your
current gig and they're paying you sufficiently that you have a promising
future. Money truly isn't everything.

~~~
nharada
I don’t doubt that either people could do better elsewhere or that someone
makes a million dollars, but it’s disingenuous to claim that “If you publish a
major conference paper, 7 figures is pretty easy to attain” when this is not
true by most measures. It might happen to some people but “pretty easy”
implies most fresh PhDs could do this.

~~~
scottlegrand2
I think you are embodying the notion "You miss all the shots you don't take."
You're right that most fresh PhDs cannot do this (I did say top 5%). But I
think we disagree as to why. You seem to think these positions do not exist
and I know otherwise because I've been on both sides of the very same hiring
process for which they do exist. The reason most new PhDs won't get them is
because they lack the career experience to navigate the interview process to
such a position. I'd love to see a world where someone teaches them those
skills while they're still in academia. I sure could have used that.

I also know because the day I left academia myself long ago was a major payday
for me. Finally, I know because people like Andrei Karpathy pulled it off
because of his excellent communication skills, intelligence and the right
background. And people like Mu Li pulled it off by associating themselves with
an academic who who helped found AWS AI and in his case he landed a principal
engineering position straight out of school. That's the sort of position one
usually only gets after one to two decades of job experience.

Can we just agree to disagree here?

~~~
alphagrep12345
Interesting that you mention about Andrej Karpathy. I've long wondered about
his meteoric rise. No doubt he's intelligent, but there's definitely more to
the story. What do you think it is? Is it majorly because of the right timing
and being under the right profs? His blog? His class? I'm currently a grad
student. So if I want to replicate even an iota of it, how do I do it?

~~~
scottlegrand2
I think the turning point for him was his excellent presentation in the first
youtube broadcast of cs231. If I remember correctly he was getting seven-
figure offers before he even graduated from Stanford. I do not know him
personally and I doubt I will ever meet him but we did compete for the same
position at Tesla and I lost to a very worthy opponent. my only regret is that
the final interview would have been with Elon Musk himself and I would have
loved to meet him.

~~~
alphagrep12345
Oh wow, very interesting. Are you a PhD who works in this area too?

------
aledalgrande
I think this article just reeks of jealousy. What is wrong with paying people
doing top research a top salary? Their skills are extremely rare. And I bet
executives get way more anyway.

~~~
scottlegrand2
What's amazing to me is the same people who write articles like this don't
blink at the salaries in Hollywood. A top-tier performer can get over a
hundred million dollars per movie. A bottom-tier character actor or below the
line talent barely gets by.

The difference in compensation here is nowhere near as bad as what happens in
Hollywood.

~~~
harry8
Without commenting on quality of the journalism here nor making any judgements
about the normative economics [1] of the situation described:

Hollywood actors salaries (or those of sports stars, or CEOs, or authors of
best sellers or pop stars) are a known thing so you don't write a 'news' story
about the magnitude they have obtained. AI researchers making large sums is
not widely known so is 'news' and of interest to readers.

[1]
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/normativeeconomics.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/normativeeconomics.asp)

------
alphagrep12345
How replicable is this thing? Looking from a monetary perspective, is it worth
getting a Ph.D. in AI? Assuming you like both academic research and working in
the industry, if you were to make a choice whether to do a Ph.D. or not, how
would you make it?

~~~
high_derivative
No, it's not. Im an AI researcher at a big tech company. It would have been
far wiser financially to start as a software engineer after my Bachelor's.

Also, having a few NEURIPS or ICML papers is not a hiring guarantee any more.
It's decidedly not 2015-17 any longer. In particular, I feel bad for the
people who started their PhDs with $$$ in their eyes around that time.

Don't get me wrong, they will all be employable, but the field moves so fast,
I have my doubts there will be cushy FAANG jobs for everyone capable of
playing around with network architectures in a few years. It's a terrible idea
to start one based on the hype few years ago.

~~~
rantwasp
Isn't this always the case though? A PhD is a long term investment and the
field that you go into is probably not the one that will be hot when you
finish your PhD. So driving your decisions on $$$ seems foolish at best.

~~~
mellosouls
Yep. If you're empty enough to follow a PhD solely for the money, there are
far safer financial bets. Go into medicine or something. Not that I'd want to
experience that bedside manner...

~~~
nefitty
It is not fair to call someone "empty" because their motivation stems from
something you don't share. It does not make their work and contribution any
less difficult or necessary.

~~~
xpe
Though harsh and (of course) generalized, I think the word "empty" is a useful
description here. Think of these meanings of empty:

    
    
      - "containing nothing; not filled or occupied"
      - "lacking meaning or sincerity"
      - "having no value or purpose"
    

In the context of academia, there is an expectation of a certain fundamental
motivation; namely, to pursue knowledge in a particular field and share it
back via writing and/or teaching.

If one lacks that primary motivation, they certainly "lack" it and are "not
filled" with the academic ethos. So "empty" is a fair term.

Now, I understand the realities as well -- seeking publications, recognition,
tenure, and funding are also political activities. But this does not
contradict the underlying community norm that I mention above. In fact, it
supports it -- it explains why so many people endure a tough, grueling,
political process despite it not being their wheelhouse.

~~~
rat9988
>If one lacks that primary motivation, they certainly "lack" it and are "not
filled" with the academic ethos. So "empty" is a fair term.

No idea why you think this. A phd has a contrat with a salary, starting and
end dates.

~~~
xpe
Re: "No idea why you think this."

My comment above makes an argument. You don't have to agree with it, but it
should give you some idea about how I came to my conclusion.

~~~
rat9988
Indeed, I should have expanded a bit, it was a bit disingenuous from me. But I
don't think that academia's ethos is the primary motivation. It wasn't for me.
The primary motivation for my phd was to get the doctor title and money
afterward. It was a transaction between academia and me where they get a
qualified engineer for a low price, and I get educated about research. No one
ever talked to me about academia ethos. The closest thing about educating and
sharing others my supervisor told me was "We might have a job opening for
teaching and research after your phd if you are interested to further expand
in Academia, but don't count on it. Such openings are rare".

So basically your conclusion doesn't go well with my experience. I only saw a
contract with low salary and a lot of work on my end. It was worth it for me
(I think?), so I accepted.

~~~
xpe
Thanks for telling us your story -- you make good points.

To what degree did you enjoy the process of learning, collaborating, teaching,
writing, experimenting, and so on? I'd wager you did enjoy some or many of
these... otherwise, it might have been a long slog. :/

Maybe the following story can convey part of my message. You might have seen
movies about a wily protagonist villain (or a flawed, tenuous partnership
between several) who meticulously plan to steal some priceless artifact from
some nearly-impregnable facility. What drives such people? I don't think it is
purely money -- there would be alternatives that would, rationally speaking,
generate more income, on a risk-adjusted basis. In the case of the ninja-suit
wearing infiltrator(s), I'd argue they fundamentally enjoy the process (the
preparation, the planning, the deferred gratification, the _meaning_ ).
Perhaps the same is true for people that pursue and complete a Ph.D. -- some
get a decent financial payout, but on average, I don't think the degree made
them better off financially compared to other alternatives (e.g. holding
together some rotting infrastructure with bailing wire). They value the title,
the activities, the identity, the community, the kind of work they do.

Seeking a job only for money doesn't really endow much meaning -- (Please,
don't take this as an endorsement to go off and work for some harebrained
startup when you have better options. :P) -- though I think there is plenty of
meaning even in the mundane (e.g. rearranging JSON) to be found if you open
yourself to experience (e.g. books with dragons about parsers).

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make3
Please add (2018) to the title. Also, these are _celebrities_ , with some of
the most important contributions in the field. They are like the top 0.001% of
the field or something equally ridiculous.

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capnprotonmail
I don't think OpenAI is a nonprofit as they are planning to commercially
license their technologies. Ok, they limit investor returns at one-hundred
times their initial investment, but I'd hardly call that a non-profit in the
sense of the word.

~~~
hollerith
Wikipedia says that "OpenAI is the for-profit corporation OpenAI LP, whose
parent organization is the non-profit organization OpenAI Inc."

~~~
_delirium
It's kind of a weird structure, but I think more like a company than like a
nonprofit in the short/medium term. The parent is a nonprofit organization,
but it's not the same arrangement as Mozilla Foundation vs. Mozilla
Corporation, where all earnings from the subsidiary go to the parent
nonprofit. With OpenAI, the parent nonprofit only gets earnings _in excess of
100x return_. The for-profit company raises investment and returns any
earnings to the investors until/unless they hit the 100x return mark. They
call this a "capped profit" structure.

When it was founded in 2015, OpenAI _was_ originally a nonprofit, but
restructured into this new arrangement earlier this year in order to be able
to raise VC money: [https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from-
nonprof...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/openai-shifts-from-nonprofit-to-
capped-profit-to-attract-capital/)

------
rdiddly
[2018]

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hyperbovine
This is a year and a half old. I wonder to what extent it has still true now
that the AI hype tsunami has receded ever so slightly.

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anon91831837
If you wanted to command, let's say $5-8 megabucks per year conservatively, I
would sell the idea of self-programming systems. Automating software
development to not need as many humans and implement prototype systems more
rapidly is a business holy grail because it could significantly reduce the
need for as many developers and their relatively large salaries. It will
happen eventually, it's just a matter of time and who's going to profit that's
the question. Furthermore, as automation intensifies over time, there will be
overall fewer jobs but their salaries will continue to increase if they are
related to automation and further reduction of jobs. If I were an AI
researcher, I would be in self-programming systems, insist on patent
assignment and consider forming a startup to deliver it as a hybrid cloud/on-
prem SaaS... this would be the most obvious path to get rich from it.

------
jorblumesea
Serious question, is this value justified? I don't have any contact with AI
development or AI researchers. Do they really bring that much value to the
business? It makes sense that for Google, these positions would have almost
unlimited clean data. But many companies are not Google.

~~~
m0zg
How do you define "justified"? The field is so new, someone who really knows
what they're doing could mean a difference between a large team spending years
and getting nowhere remarkable, and improving state of the art every 6 months.
With the same exact team. So would you rather get nothing for your money, or
something valuable every 6-9 months? That's the question. These people are
typically hired after trying pretty hard to get results out of generalists,
and failing.

~~~
scarejunba
I think he's asking if these people produce positive marginal value to the
company. The answer is usually yes.

------
ilaksh
$2 million per year is very low for people at that level if you think about
the potential profits that advanced AI can bring and compare the real world
utility to that of, for example, a celebrity or professional sports player.

They are at least talking about AGI. If those people get anywhere close to
AGI, they should start charging ten or hundred times more, because having that
kind of technology could be worth hundreds of billions or more. So even though
there is no indication they are close to it, if there is even a remote
possibility of getting there, the salaries are questionable in the context of
those potential astronomical profits.

------
beamatronic
This ($1m total comp) is becoming more and more common. I know of a guy making
$650k base and $400k in RSUs first year. Just a Java individual contributor,
but with a reputation and buddies high up.

~~~
mercutio2
A $400k RSU grant is not $400k towards total compensation in the first year.

RSUs generally vest over 3-4 years, so at the end of the first 12-13 months,
it’s another $100k towards total comp.

You may or may not receive additional grants in future years. If you get $400k
grants every year, you might get up to $1M/year, but not immediately.

~~~
beamatronic
This was monthly RSU grants vesting from day 1.

------
seibelj
Computer science researchers should form partnerships like lawyers and
doctors. They could extract far, far more value out of mega corps than they
get paid as salary employees. We are at a moment when AI tech is so black box
that they could create a company that is itself a black box.

~~~
buboard
This should work for all VC-funded companies and for the internet giants who
can afford it. It's a form of wealth redistribution.

------
gumby
(2018) and discussed at the time

------
rsp1984
(2018)

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paulpauper
What sport of math is needed to learn this stuff? Is it linear algebra and
some deferential calculus mostly?

------
drumttocs8
Is it worth putting the time into learning AI/ML at this point? Sure, crazy
high salaries- but it seems inevitable that these are the very jobs that will
be automated away first.

~~~
dwrodri
The crazy high salaries are "ideally" going to the ones who have both the soft
skills and the technical prowess to automate away other people's jobs, not
their own. This is one of the reasons STEM PhDs have become so attractive to
industry--getting a PhD (especially from a good school) is a certification
that the individual is capable of producing previously undocumented methods
for replacing other people's jobs.

