This! This! This!

So many people in my replies arguing that AI researchers just shouldn't work at tech companies. But when there's barely any funding outside Big Tech, this isn't a real choice. https://twitter.com/BostonJoan/status/1335354336797405187

Researchers have told me, when they're doing their PhD work, even if they're in the 1% top tier of labs, they have to share a tiny amount of computational resources with several colleagues. This limits what research they can do and the speed at which they can do it.

This becomes hilariously sad when they decide to try out a big tech internship or fellowship for the first time and realize that each individual researcher gets 10x, 100x the resources they previously had to share.

And then there are the big fat salaries. And also so many tech giants now allow dual appointments, where researchers can have one foot in academia and one foot in mega-resource-rich Wonderland.