Can High-Tech Academia Survive Silicon Valley's Talent Binge?

An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year, Carnegie Mellon had one of the most capable robotics research centers in the world. Then, Uber hired away dozens of workers in a frantic push to jump start development of autonomous driving technology, which left CMU reeling. Now the NY Times asks whether such high-tech labs can continue to exist; Silicon Valley seems ready to flood such organizations with money whenever a vital new technology is almost ripe. "Carnegie Mellon's experience is a familiar one in the world of high-tech research. As a field matures, universities can wake up one day to find money flooding the premises; suddenly they're in a talent war with deep-pocketed firms from Silicon Valley. The impacts are also intellectual. When researchers leave for industry, their expertise winks off the map; they usually can't publish what they discover — or even talk about it over drinks with former colleagues. ... [Also], the intellectual register of their work changes. No more exploring hard, ''basic'' problems out of deep curiosity; they need to solve problems that will make their employers money."

Comments

They'll start working on the next thing.

[0100010001010011]

All of this talent was started and cultivated out of the 2004 DARPA project. That was a decade ago. The technology is finally ready for prime time. It's no longer "10 years in the future".

What academia needs to do is figure out what needs to be done in 2025, not 2015.

A lot of R&D follows a pretty repeatable pattern.

• Academia & purely theoretical, no reason other than 'because'. Companies used to have labs like this but since they weren't immediately profitable they killed them.
• Industry/Military. Someone figured out how to profit or kill people with it. No one knew what to do with the laser at first.
• Ubiquitousness. Then it's everywhere. I'm sure Marconi didn't plan on sending data to pocket computers. Someone else figured that out.

• Self driving cars are now in phase 2. Google, Uber, and Apple are going to push hard to get the first cars out the door ASAP. In 2 decades what was once PhD level math and controls classes will be an introductory class for freshmen.

Re:What's the big deal about universities?

[Anonymous Coward]

A university probably is involved in literally everything you mentioned. Especially curing your disease.

Re:astroturfage

[phantomfive]

Exactly. Universities are already churning out more PhDs than there are teaching positions, so it's not like they are lacking a pool of scientists to choose from.

Re:If they want to make money

[alvinrod]

Professors in CS, engineering, and similar fields actually make reasonably good pay, such that it's not necessarily a matter of money. I suspect that any pay bump was only a small part of the reason why they went to work for Uber. I'm willing to bet Uber was offering boatloads of funding for whatever they wanted to work on without the hassle of having to deal with the usual university politics or bureaucracy to do the kind of research that they want.

And there's really no downside for them either as if they get tired of Uber they'll likely have no problem getting a new university position as they'll be bringing a lot of experience to the table, never mind potential connections to industry that can be beneficial to a university.

Re:astroturfage

[geoskd]

If you were planning an economy, that's kind of what you'd want, right? The ones with most potential getting the most capability to use their potential?

It's not the concept that people have trouble with, its the particular gradient we have now that is the problem... Far too top heavy, with the bottom half actually seeing a significantly decreasing standard of living. On average, no part of society should have to live a decreasing standard of living so long as the aggregate wealth keeps on growing.