How Uber Turned Carnegie Mellon Into a Minor Nursery For Its Research Division (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A year after Uber announced a collaboration with the Robotics Department of Carnegie Mellon University, not a single project has been developed. The ride-sharing company set up its Advanced Technologies Center on CMU's doorstep in 2015 and promptly 'compensated' the poaching of 40 of the University's best talent with a $5.5 million grant, leaving CMU with a staff crisis. The university is taking the appropriation philosophically, and considering the relationship as symbiotic. In the meantime Uber is rapidly co-opting Carnegie Mellon into a feeding ground for its own labs, moving a great deal of robotics research out of academic transparency into the realm of jealously-guarded corporate secrets.