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AI Researchers Are Making More Than $1 Million, Even at a Nonprofit (nytimes.com)
One of the poorest-kept secrets in Silicon Valley has been the huge salaries and bonuses that experts in artificial intelligence can command. Now, a little-noticed tax filing by a research lab called OpenAI has made some of those eye-popping figures public [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: OpenAI paid its top researcher, Ilya Sutskever, more than $1.9 million in 2016. It paid another leading researcher, Ian Goodfellow, more than $800,000 -- even though he was not hired until March of that year. Both were recruited from Google. 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.
[...] Salaries for top A.I. researchers have skyrocketed because there are not many people who understand the technology and thousands of companies want to work with it. Element AI, an independent lab in Canada, estimates that 22,000 people worldwide have the skills needed to do serious A.I. research -- about double from a year ago.
[...] Salaries for top A.I. researchers have skyrocketed because there are not many people who understand the technology and thousands of companies want to work with it. Element AI, an independent lab in Canada, estimates that 22,000 people worldwide have the skills needed to do serious A.I. research -- about double from a year ago.
Since we all here are experts in this field, we can cash in. Right?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Salaries for top A.I. researchers have skyrocketed because there are not many people who understand the technology
...because there are not many hiring managers who understand the technology, so they throw money at it instead.
There will be 4 times as many AI "experts" next year and more than half of them will not be able to find their ass with both hands and AI. But the MBAs will hire them for key roles because AI is the new blockchain & everyone just must be doing it - whatever it is.
Back in my younger days we occasionally solved problems using trial and error to identify the best solution. Today that's called "AI using machine learning" and costs more, because...I don't know why.
Expect India to have a flood of AI researchers soon.
Non-profit organizations just don't have shareholders/owners who get paid. Employees can and do get whopping salaries. For example there's a good chance your local hospital is organized as a non-profit but the president/CEO takes home around 7 figures.
I earn $50,000 a year in IT in Silicon Valley. Sometimes I get a Christmas bonus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
Right now it's all deep-learning neural networks, so linear algebra combined with calculus and statistics (of course, statistics with calculus), and C++ kinds of parallel processing. If you can do all that then the theoretical parts are things you can get caught up on in six months.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Peter Norvig is probably worth mentioning, since he is one of the biggest names in AI, one of the biggest names in programming, and almost certainly is making millions at Google. He's the kind of guy who could create Bitcoin in his spare time if he wanted to.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
AI has incredible promise. From being able to run a simulation to find out what the competition is likely to do, to being able to see when, how, and where the enemy will attack, it brings with it the promise to win wars, find criminals before they do their mis-deeds, weed out revolutionaries, and grant the owners of the AI immense money and power.
AI is a genie, and there are many organizations and countries trying to rub it and pop the cork, as it has the promise to solve everything and anything.
It is no wonder why it is such a hot commodity right now, especially in China where it can solve their dissident problem and win wars for their hegemony without a shot being fired.
What, no "AI coding bootcamps" to drive salaries down?
Non-profits frequently pay good salaries, for the very reason that any profits they make, they need to actually spend back on their organization.
Of course, OpenAI is Musk and Altman's little hobby and probably considered "educational" rather than "charitable". Nevertheless, they need to pay competitive salaries if they want to hire good people, and these are two of the best names in AI right now.
$70000 in the Bay Area gives you a street tent.
An AI researcher in the Bay Area making $1.9 million / year doesn't cause anybody to starve anywhere. You know who starved hundreds of millions of people? Anti-capitalist countries.
The world would be a paradise for all if people with your level of greed, envy, and economic illiteracy didn't regularly start anti-capitalist revolutions.
50 years ago, there was already a pretty good foundation of solution space search techniques. No need to 'trial and error' stuff. Put these together with things like Bayes classifiers and you've got a pretty good start at AI. Just not in real time, with the slow processors of the day.
Have gnu, will travel.
“When you hire a star, you are not just hiring a star,” Mr. Nicholson of the start-up Skymind said. “You are hiring everyone they attract. And you are paying for all the publicity they will attract.”
The irony here is that geeks have become the very thing they complained about years ago. We are a modern day jock. A geeky athlete commanding sports-level pay and compensation. Geeky "stadiums" built for us called R&D/Think-tanks, and Clouds galore.
Quite revealing to me was listening to a Freakonomics Radio episode where they detail how businesses just dont do A/B testing in spite of how powerful it is. Even when they come in as consultants and actually do some A/B testing for the business, once they leave the business is back to making decisions arbitrarily.
"His name was James Damore."
I don't normally respond to AC's but when I do... hehe
Something about your statement is making me have to say something.
"after $70.000 the amount of happiness stops increasing"
Sweeping statement alert! Perhaps I have 4 kids of my own and then that's not such a high number. Im going to guess your young and single.
"how many people (children) are starving so a few people can live a life of affluence and waste"
Well if you made more then that $70k you could donate it and make a difference there if you wished. Hey look everything above that does not have to be for pure greed.
"the world would be a paradise for all if it wasn't for all the corrupt evil people at the top of the economic pile"
And I would be lighter gravity wasn't such a drag. I think this is part of the way almost all people are when given the choice to live the easy life. Like when a friend says "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars" my next statement is usually "You say that because the money is not here staring you in the face". Its easy to say something like that but facts are most people would take the cash if given the chance.
I don't understand what I'm supposed to be outraged about. There are people who presumably have valuable skills. They are recruited with money. Am I supposed to dislike them for getting paid well? Is this part of the "let's hate the successful people" campaign that's so popular recently?
While I agree with the sentiment, in practice it's not so straightforward.
The way we quantify wealth as dollars is not perfect and the value of a dollar is subjective. For example a brand new ferrari costs about as much as 20 Ford fiestas. However, if you took the resources and manhours that made that one ferrari, they could not produce 20 ford fiestas. Moving up the price scale magical things happen and the dollars mean less in real terms. You can't take the resources that make high priced items and magically transform them into food.
Beyond the dollar, we also have things where wealth is measured in capital and stock and such. For example, Zuckerberg has $24 billion of Facebook stock. Say he decides all of a sudden, he wants to cash out. Facebook stock would tank as he would try to sell it, because there isn't *really* $24 billion worth of purchasers, and further *Zuckerberg* selling would cause the stock to crash due to perception.
There's certainly things unfair and wrong, but the property of the affluent will never be able to magically become food for everyone.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You can't use someone else's engine if you want to invent new AI. Some tools like twnsorfoow can help, but if you want to make a million in annual salary you have to be able to do more than train a NN.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
At those kinds of wages for employees, pretty much ANY company is going to be non-profit!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The AC is correct. Many studies have shown that around 80k/year is where happiness levels peak. Sure there are places like silicon valley where you likely need more to be comfortable. That 80k is also interesting as that's also approximately the same point where your kids are more likely to make less that you do. Below that point your kids generally make more that you do and above that point your kids tend to make less that you do. Basically, that's the point where you can live comfortable without struggling and after that point extra money isn't a major factor in happiness. Quality of life, work life balance, etc... start to play a more important role. I make 90k per year with 3 kids and have more than enough money to live comfortably. My focus for several years has been to try to reduce my hours worked while keeping my salary the same.
I've met 3 programmers I know are worth a million a year. Some positions have a multiplier effect being 10% better than the next guy might be worth 10 million to a company. They are producing code that will run on hundreds of computers and potentially control billions in assets. It seems surprising that some good programmers are not making that same money as sports or movie stars. (OK - some in finance are making that money but I don't count that)
Being a nonprofit is a tax structure, and it by no means indicates "poor". Effectively all it means is "we spend every last penny", frequently on salaries and bonuses.
Skills are skills, and you can make top dollar at a nonprofit if your skills are in high demand.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Work faster! I want to retire while self-duplicating robots serve me.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
yeah, nonprofit, all it means is that all money is just spend on extra high salaries as the company is not allowed to make profit. We give a lot of money to non-profit organisations, but a lot of it is spend on increased salaries, and not on actual what it's meant for.
AI is the latest buzzword. Every little company out there is touting the latest AI advances, and will sell at whatever price they can get. Most of the technology called "AI" isn't even smart, it's just "proof of concept" code that doesn't come close to what anyone would call AI. Most shops don't even understand relational databases yet, let alone "business intelligence" or now..."AI." I call BS. And of course, those who like to use BS to sell their services, aren't shy about charging exorbitant rates for that BS.