Facebook AI Research Expands with New Academic Collaborations

Post by chriskanan » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

Fomite wrote: post #69

chriskanan wrote: post #21

To summarize why I think professors are going with this arrangement (in order): 1) Much less, if any, grant writing. A standard NSF $500K 3 year grant provides a lab about $100K per year (due to university overhead). This will support 1-2 PhD students on a pittance of a stipend. 2) Less teaching (1 course once a year) 3) Computing resources that are far greater than you could get a grant for. One NVIDIA DGX-1 is abou…

A couple notes: 1. Industry funding comes with its own set of hassles. And overhead is still a thing for industry funding - sometimes the overhead rate is less, but there's been a lot more pushback against this from universities (which I actually think is quite fair). 2. Being able to buy out teaching loads is a function of funding, not necessarily this funding 3. In many institutions, salaries are fixed - what this…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:08 PM UTC

chriskanan wrote: post #71

Fomite wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple notes: 1. Industry funding comes with its own set of hassles. And overhead is still a thing for industry funding - sometimes the overhead rate is less, but there's been a lot more pushback against this from universities (which I actually think is quite fair). 2. Being able to buy out teaching loads is a function of funding, not necessarily this funding 3. In many institutions, salaries are fixed - what this…

While all of what you say is correct for grants given to universities by industry, this isn't in the same class of activity. These professors are becoming FB employees, while still retaining their professorships. Some aren't even located at the same location as their university for 7 months of the year. Its almost like a yearly sabbatical with funding for your lab and far more resources.

Post by throwaway37585 » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 8:37 PM UTC

windows_tips wrote: post #34

ahartmetz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck, you could even go as far as saying that Facebook is ethically "challenged".

I think you can go even farther, to, "intentionally malicious". Mark hasn't taken back his comments about his users being "dumb fucks" for "trust[ing]" him, as far as I know , although he has apparently said that he regrets saying it[0]. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-fa... Source: research and I've asked FB myself

Post by projectramo » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

chriskanan wrote: post #21

To summarize why I think professors are going with this arrangement (in order): 1) Much less, if any, grant writing. A standard NSF $500K 3 year grant provides a lab about $100K per year (due to university overhead). This will support 1-2 PhD students on a pittance of a stipend. 2) Less teaching (1 course once a year) 3) Computing resources that are far greater than you could get a grant for. One NVIDIA DGX-1 is abou…

Post by whymauri » Fri, Jul 20, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

projectramo wrote: post #77

chriskanan wrote: post #21

To summarize why I think professors are going with this arrangement (in order): 1) Much less, if any, grant writing. A standard NSF $500K 3 year grant provides a lab about $100K per year (due to university overhead). This will support 1-2 PhD students on a pittance of a stipend. 2) Less teaching (1 course once a year) 3) Computing resources that are far greater than you could get a grant for. One NVIDIA DGX-1 is abou…

Your list seems pretty complete, but I wonder which items are the most important. It might be counterintuitive. For instance, I assume that grant writing is such a hassle, the average person would accept just to get out of writing grants. But the guys and gals that they picked up are at the top of their field. Would they also have the same constraints? Seems like they would have higher hit rates, less teaching and so…