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Britain Faces an AI Brain Drain as Tech Giants Raid Top Universities (telegraph.co.uk)
British outlet The Telegraph reports: Britain faces an artificial intelligence "brain drain" as Silicon Valley raids its top universities for talent, data compiled by The Telegraph shows. Around a third of leading machine learning and AI specialists who have left the UK's top institutions are currently working at Silicon Valley tech firms. More than a tenth have moved to North American universities and nearly a tenth are currently working for other smaller US companies. Meanwhile just one in seven have joined British start-ups.
More than a tenth have moved to North American universities and nearly a tenth are currently working for other smaller US companies. Meanwhile just one in seven have joined British start-ups.
So, 10% have sought employment with American firms. and a little over 14% are working for British firms? First, that means that more are working for British firms than have left for America, and second, the numbers for those that have left are only 24%, so about a quarter. Does that mean that three quarters or 75% of graduates are still at university?
Last time I checked, disciplines where the vast majority of graduates ended up working in the universities were liberal-arts. Don't we want graduates to go into industry? Isn't that sort of the point of going through school, to be able to get a good job and to do well for one's self and one's family?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Oh no! Britain won't be able to have their own car that slams into concrete barriers.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Britain is falling behind on Go-playing technology. Pretty soon they won't be able to compete in Go-playing tournaments. Definitely more government money needs to spent on funding British AI startups.
Why don't the British build computers?
Because they haven't figured out how to make them leak oil yet!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I thought big tech didn't like college.
Those Who Can't, Stay In Britain
God Bless the Queen!
America is still kicking the Red Coats' asses 200+ years later
Lets be real, how many AI specialists do British startups really need? Tech giants that are developing sophisticated AI libraries and very rich audio, video and other data analysis software have a huge need for AI specialists, but most startups seem to just be applying those tools. Of course, some exist, but 1 in 7 sounds about right.
No one wants to pay for services online because they've become attached to "free" and yet all of these services and content still require resources to produce, so the ad model is one of the few approaches that work. Others (such as using your CPU to mine cryptocurrencies or a patronage model) have their own issues or don't scale well to large organizations.
So the natural demand is to figure out how to deliver ads to get a better return on them because the companies that advertise would like to spend less money on them and the companies that place the ads would like to get more people to click on them. Whether or not you think this looks stupid from the outside is irrelevant. Unless you're willing to pay AI researchers more money in order to do something else, they're going to go after the best paying jobs that they can get.
I am wondering if this has to do with Brexit. Sure going to America isn't much better, but Americans get an other vote in 2 more years, to change direction. Brexit on the other hand is nearly as bad, but much more difficult to stop.
Tech firms in general are used to global collaboration, Brexit is making it more difficult for UK tech firms to do so.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Indeed, it's more to do with young people having their futures ripped away by Brexit and seeing that the UK is on a downward spiral, with all the wealth and property owned by the boomers and little opportunity for them to reach the same level.
Couple that with the government trying to reduce immigration by reducing foreign student numbers and there is a serious lack of talent right now. Companies just can't get the skills they need, or retain them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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Blame brexit all you want, the fact is that our lords and masters in silicone valley are draining every nation in Europe and Asia, not just the UK.
Obviously Britain needs to build some artificial brains in order to make up for the deficit in human brainpower. Then their AI expertise will be unmatched!
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
First of all the article is subscriber only (why does Slashdot do this?) so I can't read it to answer my own question which is:
Is there an under supply of AI specialists in Britain? If so then there is a problem but if not then it is understandable that you would look for work elsewhere...
I am wondering if this has to do with Brexit.
Almost certainly. The UK gets a huge slice of the EU research grant budget - far larger than its population would suggest - and the UK government has offered no replacement program yet that will provide the same amount of grants. If Brexit turns out to be a hard one I expect the numbers leaving will increase enormously.
The UK already has some of the lowest academic salaries out there (that was why I ended up leaving since I had a family to support) and they lack tenure - it was replaced by 5-year renewable contracts. Research funding was one of the big draws but if that goes away as well I expect there will be a flood of people leaving.
"Oh bugger, it doesn't live up to the hype our marketing department laid out to the investors and customers, what do we do now? We thought it was just another design cycle and we'd have a working, saleable product by now, what do we do? The investors and stockholders will have our heads!"
"Tut tut Nigel, we'll just invoke a version of the million monkeys theory at the problem, by recruiting every single programmer that has the term 'AI' in their resume and hope they can get us that last 0.1% we need to make something that isn't dumber than an amoeba and more unfathomable than Mona Lisa's smile." Never mind that it's like the Bridge in Zork, you only ever get infinitessimally closer to the other side, but never, ever actually make it across.
TFA may be junk, but Slashdot reaction is just sad (I mean several most visible responses here with jokes about imperfect cars, Go game, general lack of brains, million monkeys, etc). Okay, AI is over-hyped, but advances with real-world value are also happening, and they become increasingly relevant for states economy and military power. And major breakthroughs like AGI are low probability but huge impact events, which states also cannot ignore.
Also, brain drain is always something to consider; definitely not a sign of a booming economy.
I think you meant to write Scottish startups.
That said, a colleague of mine is now running his own lab on the East Coast (US) and running seminars and workgroups on AI. The water's fine, come on in.
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The 1/7 joined start up, it says nothing about those who joined big firms or university or are just plain unemployed, or are working out of their study subject ,e.g. they are now in accounting or whatever.
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Seriously, I don't know if they are all trolls or what, but you ever read the comment sections on any of the British websites that have anything remotely to do with Brexit or the EU, I would say it is clear that the brains left the UK a long time ago and the island is inhabited purely by Trump loving psychopaths.
Some of the arguments those people make are literally retarded. I would say they have absolutely zero reasoning skills.
You do know that this has been going on for decades, pretty much since the death of the British home computer market in the early 90s.
Was the British home computer market a symptom or a cause?
The article is pay-walled so we're left with what's stated in the summary. Rewritten for clarity:
An unknown number of leading machine learning and AI specialists have left the UK's top institutions. Of that unknown number:
Furthermore:
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If you wanna know why the modern H1-B visa was born, this is why. Research in the 1980s turned up the exact same thing happening at U.S. colleges and universities. A large portion of the American students were graduating, then leaving the U.S. to work in other countries. The H1-B was created to help stem this brain drain. Changes to student visas encouraged foreign students to stay in the U.S. and get a job after graduating. While the H1-B encouraged graduates from foreign universities to come work in the U.S. It later ended up being abused to hell by companies set up specifically to shepherd foreign workers into the U.S., but it had legitimate beginnings.
as the law is concerned you are a permanent employee and due all the rights of any other permanent employee
Being a permanent employee is nothing like tenure. Tenure grants certain immunities that permanent employees do not have. In particular, I am largely free to share my opinions and knowledge without the concern that I could get fired if this upsets someone. A permanent employee could easily get fired if they vocally disagree with company management or policy - just look at what happened to that Google engineer you refer to in your sig: right or wrong he got fired for speaking his mind which, if he were a tenured academic, would not happen unless his speech was in violation of the law.