
Facebook Adds A.I. Labs in Seattle and Pittsburgh, Pressuring Local Universities - GW150914
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/technology/facebook-artificial-intelligence-researchers.html
======
RestlessMind
> “It is worrisome that they are eating the seed corn...If we lose all our
> faculty, it will be hard to keep preparing the next generation of
> researchers.”

It is interesting to note that in our free-market(ish) society, preparing the
next generation of researchers is not as valued as working at a BigCo or a
Unicorn. If AI professors are in high demand relative to the supple, basic
economics dictate that their prices should spike up. Then why aren't these
professors getting paid a lot more to continue teaching?

~~~
sterlind
Alternatively, universities could act as startup incubators, a la SRI
(Stanford Research Institute, who created the prototype for Siri.)

Professors are being paid below market value for their skills. If tenure came
with a replenishing bucket of venture capital, under stipulation of open
source/patent sharing, it'd give them real money, autonomy and great
internships for their students!

Schools would _make bank,_ too.

~~~
davesque
Or, alternatively, schools could actually act like _academic institutions_ and
quit wasting exorbitant amounts of money on bullshit like sports and
unnecessary construction projects which drive low-quality student enrollment.

~~~
arijun
You're making common mistakes that people make when talking about school
finances. Schools pay for sports because they drive _alumni_ interaction and
therefore donation rates, and they therefore have a higher than 1-1 rate of
return. They have the unnecessary construction projects because the funds are
earmarked for said construction. If I give you, a school, $X million, on the
condition that you build a new student hall with my name on it, will you turn
that down?

~~~
lotsofpulp
If it is a taxpayer funded institution, then it should be turned down.
Donations should be anonymous, otherwise I assume the donor is wanting and
getting something in return (nepotism, brand name, hubris), and that doesn't
belong in taxpayer funded arenas, even street names and parks and whatnot.

~~~
JackFr
I don’t think anyone wants to receive hubris in return. Not that a university
is in a position to offer it.

~~~
lotsofpulp
There's a reason that people want their name on a donation. If it was truly
selfless, it would be anonymous. Here's an example:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/style/stephen-
schwarzman-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/style/stephen-schwarzman-
catholic-church-met-gala.html)

~~~
kthejoker2
I guess I don't get your point? So what? Really not trying to be rude, just
curious why this matters.

Oh I see your post earlier - yeah, I think removing incentives from voluntary
contributions to (partially) taxpayer funded events would lead to a major
increase in inefficiency of those projects seeing the light of day.

------
chriskanan
It really does seem kind of insane to stay in academia right now in AI. Far
higher salaries are available at the moment in industry, although I expect
that to go down over the next 10 years due to the flood of students and to
tools becoming easier to use. You get paid maybe 25% of your worth in
industry, spend a lot of time dealing with disgruntled/cheating/unhappy
students, have to deal with academic meetings, and then spend most of your
remaining time writing grants that have a 10% chance to succeed. As a
professor, I work about 60-80 hours per week, with about 30 hours being for
meetings, teaching, etc. The remaining time is spend editing, reading, and
writing (grants/papers).

On the plus side, you get to run your own lab to work on the things you want
(as long as you get money), be your own boss (mostly), and get the privilege
of training the next generation of researchers and practitioners. I really
feel like I have a lot of positive impact on people and my community as a
professor, and I doubt I would have nearly as much individual impact if I
worked in industry.

------
aaronbrethorst
Meanwhile, Professors in the humanities departments at the University of
Washington worry about how they'll afford to pay rent with Seattle's
skyrocketing housing costs and the University's lack of raises for folks in
their fields.

(source: I know several.)

~~~
Radim
But what is the solution? Raise taxes for all of us to pay the increased
salaries of humanities professors?

There is certainly great value in humanities, but that value shouldn't be
determined by "an unrelated field is hot, so let's make hot money too".

Especially when it's other people footing the bill, and especially with what's
going on in humanity departments these days.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I don't think that being able to afford a place to live _and_ being able to
pay your student loans is "hot money."

~~~
ajiang
Depending on your student loans and rent prices, wouldn't it be?

Rent in a major city is $2000/mo. Student loan payments can be in the tens of
thousands per year. Assuming a normal tax rate, professors would need to make
6+ figures to live comfortably.

------
enothereska
Hmm, hire more faculty? Plenty of PhD students are waiting to get an academic
job.

------
kenning
Every story about facebook now portrays them as satan.

I don't even like facebook but this is definitely a trend.

~~~
blablabla123
True, I mean at least since a year or so. I think last year articles about
studies showing Facebook having an adverse effect on happyness arrived in the
mainstream, i.e. Google News.

But anyways, the more I think about Facebook, the more question it raises.
What I was wondering recently: how do they acutally pay the low-income
personell, like guards or janitors? If you imagine that even people earning a
6 digit salary have a tough time finding an apartment and commuting to work -
both subject to protests by locals - how do these people live?

I was thinking about that as I read a post on HN about exactly that problem at
Yelp. The article was deleted though. Here's the reference:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844410)
This makes me think there is something deeply wrong in the whole Startup
bubble.

~~~
mic47
> how do they acutally pay the low-income personell, like guards or janitors?

They are most likely contractors. And they probably live far enough where they
can afford living. But that means longer commute.

------
eastWestMath
Screw it, I’ll go against the grain. This is why it’s foolish for CS
departments to invest so heavily into trendy areas - either the trend dies,
and the faculty member is useless, or the trend is so hot that the faculty
members will be hired away. So many schools are desperately hiring ML people
to start their own data science stream, and they’re competing with major
companies for the top talent.

~~~
icebraining
But why do you say they invested particularly heavily into this area?

------
pesenti
Response from Yann LeCun
([https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10155263530987143](https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10155263530987143))

Facebook AI Research is opening two new labs in Seattle and Pittsburgh, which
will join the existing sites in Menlo Park, New York, Paris, Montréal, and Tel
Aviv.

We are delighted to welcome Luke Zettlemoyer to the Seattle lab and Abhinav
Gupta and Jessica Hodgins to the Pittsburgh lab. Luke will retain his faculty
position at the University of Washington, and Abhinav and Jessica their
positions at Carnegie Mellon University on a part-time basis.

Many FAIR researchers share their time between FAIR and a university: Lior
Wolf (Tel Aviv University), Jitendra Malik (UC Berkeley), Joelle Pineau
(McGill), Pascal Vincent (U Montréal), Devi Parikh and Dhruv Batra (Georgia
Tech), Iasonas Kokkinos (UCL), Rob Fergus, Kyunghyun Cho and myself (NYU). All
of us teach classes, advise graduate students and postdoctoral researchers,
and participate in the life of our academic departments. Our time is split
80/20, 50/50 or 20/80\. Additionally, Full-time FAIR researchers have
affiliations with universities that allow them to advise PhD students.
Examples include Leon Bottou and Jason Weston who are both affiliated with
NYU. Our Paris lab hosts over 15 resident PhD students who are co-advised by a
FAIR researcher and an academic advisor. Those of us who come from academia
continue to educate the next generation of researchers and engineers.

This is made possible by the fact that we practice open research at FAIR,
which makes it easy to collaborate with academic groups. This new modus
operandi is redefining the relationship between academic research and industry
research. Professors gain a different type of experience in industry that can
have a positive impact on their students and on their research. Additionally,
their connection with industry helps produce new scientific advances that may
be difficult to achieve in an academic environment, and helps turn those
advances into practical technology. Universities are familiar with the concept
of faculty with part-time appointments in industry. It is common in medicine,
law and business.

This NYT piece by Cade Metz erroneously qualifies this evolution as a "brain
drain" from academia. But Facebook is careful not to deplete universities from
their best faculty, by making it easy to maintain sizeable research and
teaching activities in their academic labs. In fact, making these part-time
splits possible is precisely the reason why we have been establishing labs in
New York, Paris, Montréal, Tel Aviv, and now Seattle and Pittsburgh. It is the
proximity to leading universities with talented faculty, and the existence of
a local talent pool that attract us. Unlike others, we work with universities
to find suitable arrangements and do not hire away large numbers of faculty
into full-time positions bottled up behind a wall of non-disclosure
agreements. We contribute to local ecosystem.

Faculty who join FAIR part-time practice open research, teach courses, advise
PhD students, and participate in the life of their department.

