
A.I. Researchers Are Making More Than $1M, Even at a Nonprofit - wei_jok
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/technology/artificial-intelligence-salaries-openai.html
======
blackbagboys
So a tiny handful of top performers - plausibly few enough that you could fit
them all on a schoolbus - in an ultra-hot technical field are raking in huge
sums, for the moment.

Unless you are a top professor at an R1 research university or have a PhD from
an R1 university studying under the other top minds in the field or are
otherwise in the most elite fraction of the profession, it doesn't sound like
this is particularly useful information for the average practicing or aspiring
data-tician. What's the typical salary for someone with, say, a two-year
professional masters?

~~~
salarydata
$300k. I work at Google, have a few good papers, and a couple years of
professional experience, and dropped out of grad school. TBH not really clear
that I'm doing much better than peers without ML expertise.

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p1esk
Why did you drop out of grad school?

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bonniemuffin
More importantly, why did I bother to finish grad school?

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TeMPOraL
To not have situations like I did.

I've almost done my masters - I finished all the courses, but did not submit
my graduate thesis in time - so I have what we call "absolutorium", i.e.
finished the program without pursuing a degree. The other day, a friend from
my alma mater wanted me to come and do a semester of programming classes as an
"industry consultant". It was all arranged properly and I was getting ready
with my lectures when, few weeks before I was supposed to give the first one,
I became a political point in inter-faculty negotiations. People from one of
the other faculties argued it's disrespectful to allow someone with mere BSc
to teach students. Ultimately, my faculty had to let me go.

So yeah, that's the kind of bullshit that having an academic title may help
you navigate. Whether or not it is worth the effort to get one is arguable,
though.

~~~
endymi0n
To be honest, the academic field is about the _only_ field in which it
perfectly makes sense to finish a degree, I mean, what else can you boast with
if you have none?

The other three reasons are visa (proof of "ability"), wanting to work in
government (if you really, really want that) or early-stage startups that need
Ivy-League credentials for their investors, because they don't have anything
else to offer.

Other than that, as a software engineer in the private industry, nobody will
care about any of your degrees.

~~~
mygo
> I mean, what else can you boast with if you have none?

Your actual contributions to the field.

of which, comp sci is one of the few fields where you don’t need an academic
degree to have significant contributions to the field

But I read the other day about a biologist who just recently made a major
contribution to graph theory, as an amateur mathematician?

He can come speak at all of my cookouts.

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paulsutter
“AI Celebrities Are Making More Than $1M, Even at a Nonprofit”

There, fixed it. These are celebrities within the field and there’s nothing
surprising about their pay. YouTube celebrity pays more but I suppose you take
what you can get.

Key quote:

““When you hire a star, you are not just hiring a star,” Mr. Nicholson of the
start-up Skymind said. “You are hiring everyone they attract. And you are
paying for all the publicity they will attract.”

~~~
nmca
This is correct. There are many people who would pass up on many a hedge fund
position (and the associated difference in compensation) to work with Geof,
Yann, Schmidhuber, Goodfellow, Zoubin etc. People know this; the salaries
honestly don't seem wholly disproportionate in light of it.

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sytelus
Wow... what a hyped up clickbait article! If you are a top performer in
virtually any field in the world, you are likely making 10X than average
norms. It doesn’t mean _everyone_ is getting 10X. To get $1M in AI field you
will need to have PhD from top institute, probably under well known adviser,
might have even written a book, published award winning papers at top
conferences and so on. It’s a big list and there are likely less than dozen
people would qualify. And yes, they do deserve 10X income.

It’s not that author doesn’t know this. He even tries to protect himself by
making sure facts are included:

 _At DeepMind, a London A.I. lab now owned by Google, costs for 400 employees
totaled $138 million in 2016, according to the company’s annual financial
filings in Britain. That translates to $345,000 per employee, including
researchers and other staff._

~~~
walshemj
is this just salary costs- rule of thumb is an employee costs 3x their salary.
However working at the bleeding edge can increase this multiplier a lot as you
need a lot lot more support (large clusters, large equipment costs etc)

I used to work at a world leading Rnd Organisation and they where trying to
get the OH rate under 500%.

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gwern
Form 990 link:

[http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/810/8108615...](http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/810/810861541/810861541_201612_990.pdf)

[http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2016/810/861/2016-8108...](http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2016/810/861/2016-810861541-0eb61629-9.pdf)

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jasonkester
It's sad that the comments here mostly fall into a few categories:

\- "This is only a few people, so not something that could affect the rest of
us"

\- "Those people had a specific skill, so the rest of us couldn't possibly
make that much"

\- "This is only happening in the Bay Area, so anybody living anywhere else
shouldn't expect to make that much"

It's maddening. How about, instead, when we see another datapoint showing how
ridiculously valuable we developers are to employers and our potential earning
power, we talk about _how to get one of those million dollar salaries_.
Because that is in fact doable, and this article highlights just one of the
many ways a smart guy in his 20s could position himself so as to be _making_
that million dollar salary within the next few years.

That would be much more productive than trying to prove to everybody that the
market does in fact only ever pay $70k/year because that's what you see on
that Java job ad on Monster.com.

This is a reality that developers need to take on board. And sadly, most
people here are actively fighting against doing so. To their detriment.

~~~
libdjml
I applaud the positive spin, but the responses are due to the headline which
suggests these salaries are normal.

If an article said “supermarket checkout clerks are earning over $1m” and the
article explained that a couple of retired property investors decided to work
at a supermarket, would you respond the same?

The harsh reality is, very few people will have the tenacity, intelligence,
and opportunities to become a top 20 AI researcher, especially in their 20s.

~~~
jasonkester
You're doing it again. If you truly believe you can't bring in that kind of
money unless you're "top 20" then you're never going to try.

And it's to your detriment, because there are a lot more than 20 people making
that kind of money in software today.

Note further that AI is in fact a subset of software. There is nothing magic
about it that somebody like yourself or anybody else here can't pick up.

You seem to grudgingly accept that doing so can make you a lot more money. But
still you go out of your way to insist that _you_ , personally can't do that.

Why?

~~~
libdjml
I don’t believe your statement that AI is just a subset of software. It’s
almost entirely math. Furthermore, “somebody like yourself or anybody else
can’t pick it up” is wildly untrue. You realize that the people in the
articles are researchers, not practitioners, right? They’re the Albert
Einstein’s of the industry dreaming up new deviations and architectures. I
think you’re severely downplaying what they’ve achieved.

You might as well say that Michael Schumacher just drives a car pretty well,
so most of us could spend a bit of time in training and win F1

The reason I go out of my way to insist I can’t do that is that I’m not in my
20s, and it would be delusional of me to think AI is “nothing magic” and I can
watch some YouTube videos to become the worlds best.

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not_a_moth
To be clear _a few_ AI researchers are making more than $1M, and the "even at
a nonprofit" is referring to arguably the most famous AI shop out there.

Source: work in AI.

~~~
xiaolingxiao
what's your background and what is the general compensation of those around
you?

~~~
Kilonzus
Your artwork is great, the ink wash is amazing

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malux85
Not unusual for people at the top of their game. I just turned down a 2M a
year offer, and I have a friend who is making 2.9M USD. It's just a value
proposition, he makes the company a _lot_ more than 2.9 million a year, and
when you negotiate you negotiate on value (and not on time) then you can
justify these salaries.

~~~
opsiprogram
What is considered to be "top of game" in deep learning in your experience...
does that apply to just researchers like Ian Goodfellow who come up with
completely novel methods for ML algorithms, or does it extend as far as people
who are just using the methods that others developed effectively or in new
ways? I know thats a weird question, but I am planning on looking into deep
learning jobs after finishing my (MS) curious what the market value is for
people who have experience implementing the systems , vs the people inventing
new architectures. Because I won't have a PHD... It seems like somewhere along
the way its a pretty extreme jump to ask for 1,2M or even 500K instead of just
100K~200K... wondering if you have any advice for how someone new might prove
themselves... I guess beyond the standard stuff (have a nice github, try to
replicate papers etc...)

~~~
chillydawg
I think a smart, hard working person who re-uses modern results from others
well and in potentially new ways can create a vast amount of value. Short
term, more than the top guys, as a lot of their work may be speculative, and
yours would be getting-it-done. Long term, they'll invent some method that
leaves you in the dust, but that's fine, just learn that too!

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Daishiman
A _very_ specific skillset which will have that value until the next wave of
techniques comes up.

I really don't see the point of these articles. If you're _the_ expert
corporate lawyer in mergers and acquisitions with an expertise in EU-US
mergers in the agrochemical sector you'll make bank when you hit that one huge
multinational client. And then that combo of skills goes back to being not
particularly valuable.

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inverse_pi
I don't understand the surprises here. New grads out of undergrad these days
are making 120k in base + about 250k RSUs vested in 4 years + 20k cash bonus
every year. That's about 200k / year for a new grad from UNDERgrad. Ian
Goodfellow invented GAN and he's paid 1M a year and people are shocked?

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tedsanders
Genuine questions for those participating in this market (on either side):

-How is the performance of $1M AI researchers measured? Like, at their six month review, what do you look at to tell if your money is being well spent?

-How do you tell if it makes more sense to hire 1 famous AI researcher vs 10 additional junior data scientists? What sort of products are suited to different hiring strategies?

-How much of $1M AI researcher hiring is long-term/speculative (i.e., based on hopes of future products/revenue) vs short-term/measurable (immediately measurable as soon as a code commit hits the product)? Are there examples of products where profit went up by millions after a famous AI researcher was hired?

It sounds like quite a few companies are grappling with these questions today.
I'm really curious to know how their thinking is evolving on this topic.

~~~
chatmasta
It seems more akin to building a labor war chest, i.e. filling your company
with the best AI talent so that your competition can not hire them. You might
not have an exact plan for what to do now, but there's no reason not to build
up a talented team of engineers in a hot field when you've got effectively
unlimited money and resources.

~~~
nl
There is no shortage of big problems for AI researchers to work on.

If I had the money I'd hire hundreds, and that's just on my subfield (A.I. for
software development).

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microtherion
Who do these people think they are anyway? College football coaches?

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notahacker
The top players in a field with a lot of commercial potential can claim high
salaries, even for doing quasi-academic research mostly on things they want to
research.

That said, I'm reminded the champion of the effective altruism movement made
his name arguing that charities ought to rigorously audit their efficiency in
turning donations into results before recommending $30m of foundation cash
went to this particular speculative nonprofit research project his roommate
and future brother in law happened to work at...

~~~
sjg007
OpenAI is funded by a few VCs and big name tech leaders. It got to be a
research incubator and pay well otherwise everyone will go off to a big tech
company. To some extent they can focus on research as directed by the board as
well. Otherwise you wait for academics to publish something OR for people to
leave the big techs.

~~~
notahacker
Oh I don't doubt OpenAI is more likely to produce useful research if can keep
hold of staff. Mostly I was reminded of the people in the HN thread [1] at the
time suggesting it didn't pay well, when actually it's picking up elite
researchers on elite salaries and hoping something will come of it.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14008569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14008569)

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partycoder
Some occupations such as football players or C-level executives make tens or
hundreds of millions of dollars.

I am not surprised that an AI researcher can make that much.

Consider the AI researchers behind the optical recognition systems for
handwritten text used in ATMs. Now you can massively deploy ATMs that read
checks 24/7 without supervision... Paying $1m 2018 dollars to those guys is
not a proportional compensation with respect to the amount of wealth they
brought in.

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nl
Well...

I’m going to be the one to say it. Ian Goodfellow is underpaid at 800K.

~~~
tedsanders
Genuinely curious: How do you come to that conclusion? What is the output he
produced at OpenAI and how do you measure its value?

~~~
visarga
He opened up two subfields of AI, GANs and adversarial attacks, and coauthored
one of the most recommended books. His fame attracts more researchers and for
lower salary, just to work with him.

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everdev
If someone is skilled and basically generating revolutionary IP on their own
or in a small team, this sounds like a bargain.

Good AI easily can carry a $1B valuation, so a few million for you talent
makes sense.

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mythbuster2001
I'm not sure anything that came out from OpenAI so far, justifies that sort of
compensation... Maybe they have some aces up their sleeves...

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mmagin
It isn't really notable that someone makes <X> salary "at a nonprofit".
Nonprofit doesn't really mean charity.

~~~
zeroxfe
Yes, they're not necessarily charities, but _in general_ they pay much lower
than for-profit organizations.

~~~
rhizome
To the degree that this is true, my impression is that it's due to poor
fundraising departments at those organizations, which appears common enough to
be a stereotype. "Nonprofit" really only affects how an organization's taxes
are reported, all in all.

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daemonk
People who are really good at what they do often thinks what they do isn't
worth much because it's easy for them. It's part of why they are good at it.

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mv4
From the article: "both were recruited from Google".

Previous employer seems to be a factor here.

~~~
drharby
Correlation not causation

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ikeboy
>Mr. Zaremba said big tech companies were offering him two or three times what
he believed his real market value was.

By definition, if he was offered some amount then his market value is at least
that amount. That's literally what the term "market" is doing. Maybe he was
offered above his value, but not above "market" value, by definition.

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adampk
When chefs get $1m it makes every great cook think they are chefs

lexicon ripped from: [https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-
musks-s...](https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/11/the-cook-and-the-chef-musks-secret-
sauce.html)

------
kisstheblade
And I have yet to see any "AI" worth anything. Some image recognition and
rudimentary translation engines maybe, but "AI", way overhyped.

~~~
yoz-y
AI is driving cars and planes, beating experts at disease diagnostic, ruining
popular competitive board games... But as the definition goes, anything that
can be done today is already old hat.

~~~
potbelly83
Not really, planes are driven by control theory algos which existed long
before all the deep learning hype.

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nbanks
I know someone starting a masters under Yoshua Bengio at UdeM. It's been a
great school for statistical machine translation for quite a while. I wonder
what he'll be making in ten years.

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gamesbrainiac
So, a bunch of people with a lot of experience in a particular technology, and
who are in top leadership positions are being paid a lot of money.

How is this news?

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mmartinson
"Mr. Zaremba said big tech companies were offering him two or three times what
he believed his real market value was"

Seems this fellow knows a whole lot more about computers than he does markets
hahaha

~~~
ggg9990
If Bill Gates takes a fancy to a $100,000 mountain cabin and the owner doesn’t
want to sell, he could offer $10 million for it, but that doesn’t increase the
market value of the cabin.

~~~
dna_polymerase
So by what value is market-value determined then?

If X is willing to pay Y the value is Y.

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eeZah7Ux
Not at all. One buyer does not drive a market.

~~~
solotronics
cryptocurrency would like a word with you

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quickthrower2
Janitors are making more than $1M...

(I can prove it if I find 2 of them running their own business successfully)

