{"id":54538,"date":"2016-04-04T11:17:02","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T15:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=54538"},"modified":"2016-04-04T11:18:41","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T15:18:41","slug":"as-silicon-valley-fights-for-talent-universities-struggle-to-hold-on-to-their-ai-robotics-stars-economist-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2016\/04\/04\/as-silicon-valley-fights-for-talent-universities-struggle-to-hold-on-to-their-ai-robotics-stars-economist-com\/","title":{"rendered":"As Silicon Valley fights for talent, universities struggle to hold on to their [AI &#038; robotics] stars [economist.com]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/business\/21695908-silicon-valley-fights-talent-universities-struggle-hold-their\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Million-dollar babies<\/strong><\/a> &#8212; from economist.com by<br \/>\n<em>As Silicon Valley fights for talent, universities struggle to hold on to their stars<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.static-economist.com\/sites\/default\/files\/imagecache\/full-width\/images\/print-edition\/20160402_WBD001_0.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Excerpt:<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">THAT a\u00a0computer\u00a0program can\u00a0repeatedly beat\u00a0the world champion at Go, a complex board game,\u00a0is a coup\u00a0for\u00a0the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence (AI). Another high-stakes game, however, is taking place behind the scenes, as firms compete\u00a0to hire the smartest\u00a0AI\u00a0experts. Technology giants, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Baidu,\u00a0are racing to expand their AI activities. Last year they spent some $8.5 billion on deals, says Quid, a data firm. That was four times more than in 2010.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">In the past universities employed the world\u2019s best AI experts.\u00a0Now tech firms are plundering departments of\u00a0robotics and machine learning (where computers learn from data themselves) for\u00a0the highest-flying faculty and students, luring them with big salaries similar to those fetched by professional athletes.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Experts in machine learning are most in demand. Big tech firms use it in many activities, from basic tasks such as spam-filtering and better targeting of online advertisements, to futuristic endeavours such as self-driving cars or scanning images to identify disease.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><em>Also from The Economist, see:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/blogs\/economist-explains\/2016\/04\/economist-explains?fsrc=scn%2Ftw%2Fte%2Fbl%2Fed%2Fwhyfirmsarepilingintoartificialintelligence\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Why firms are piling into artificial intelligence<\/strong> <\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Excerpt:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>AI is already starting to generate big financial gains for companies, which helps explain firms\u2019 growing investment in developing AI capabilities. Machine-learning, in which computers become smarter by processing large data-sets, currently has many profitable consumer-facing applications, including image recognition in photographs, spam filtering and those that help to better target advertisements to web surfers. Many of tech firms\u2019 most ambitious projects, including building self-driving cars and designing virtual personal assistants that can understand and execute complex tasks, also rely on artificial intelligence, especially machine-learning and robotics. This has prompted tech firms to try to hire up as much of the top talent as they can from universities, where the best AI experts research and teach. Some worry about the potential of a brain drain from academia into the private sector.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The biggest concern, however, is that one firm corners the majority of the talent in artificial intelligence, creating an intellectual monopoly of sorts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Million-dollar babies &#8212; from economist.com by As Silicon Valley fights for talent, universities struggle to hold on to their stars &nbsp; &nbsp; Excerpt: THAT a\u00a0computer\u00a0program can\u00a0repeatedly beat\u00a0the world champion at Go, a complex board game,\u00a0is a coup\u00a0for\u00a0the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence (AI). Another high-stakes game, however, is taking place behind the scenes, as firms [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,556,356,115,302,112,298,63,216,217,437,321,214,299],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-amazon","category-artificial-intelligence-agents-llms-and-related","category-colleges","category-community-colleges","category-corporate-business-world","category-data-related-items","category-google","category-microsoft","category-research","category-robotics","category-united-states","category-universities","category-workplace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54538"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54545,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54538\/revisions\/54545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}