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A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

nytimes.com

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Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#111

Post by 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.

Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#112

Post by ilaksh »

chubot wrote: post #8
alphagrep12345 wrote: post #2

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?

Remember that Hinton and other deep learning pioneers labored in obscurity for over a decade, probably closer to two. Techniques like deep learning were out of fashion for a long time. Google was making tons of money on non-AI techniques; I remember Sergey Brin saying he was surprised by the deep learning breakthroughs in 2012 because the conventional wisdom was that "AI doesn't work". And people who did Ph.D's under…

Personally I think deep learning is the new faith and only a true heretic will be able to make breakthroughs towards AGI.

Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#113

Post by ec109685 »

ychen306 wrote: post #9
rm999 wrote: post #6

> 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 specializ…

> , though he did not join until June 2016

So his effective salary is double that.

Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#114

Post by nharada »

scottlegrand2 wrote: post #95
nharada wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.…

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.

Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#115

Post by aledalgrande »

nostrademons wrote: post #58
ryanSrich wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 (wh…

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?

Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#116

Post by harry8 »

Tossrock wrote: post #77
puranjay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star *anything" is a path to millions. Star athletes and musicians are obvious examples, but even star jugglers or puppeteers probably make a killing. Very misleading article

Star jugglers do not make a killing, unfortunately. A man with a not unreasonable claim to "best juggler in the world" gave it up and became a concrete contractor. Salaries at Cirque start at $50k.

Penn Jilette is the biggest star in juggling that I know of. He seems to make pretty good money in so far as one can infer these things.

Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#117

Post by aledalgrande »

nostrademons wrote: post #88
opportune wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you truly don't have the money for the down payment, the math of mortgage+insurance+property taxes+pmi+deductions might still work out to be in your favor over renting

It's pretty unlikely in the Bay Area. There are fairly large distortions in the local market (because of Prop 13, zoning, wealth inequality, and small home supply in general) that usually make renting significantly more affordable than buying in general. See eg. this $1.9M home (estimated payment $9000/month, not including PMI) vs. this $4900/month equivalent: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/910-San-Marcos-Cir-Mou…

Wow the Bay area is crazier and crazier, 2M for that dump... yeah 4 bedroom in Mountain View, but it's a 1964 and looks like it's going to fall down at the first gust of wind. Everything inside the house is to be remade too and in 2012 the property was worth 700K. That area is literally unliveable now.

Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#118

Post by chillacy »

jorblumesea wrote: post #19

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.

If you can improve ad targeting effectiveness at google's scale I imagine you'd justify your salary pretty quickly.

Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#119

Post by harry8 »

scottlegrand2 wrote: post #105
aledalgrande wrote: post #25

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.

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.

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

Re: A.I. researchers are making more than $1M, even at a nonprofit

#120

Post by wintorez »

currymj wrote: post #21

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 g…

Thank you!
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