Fear, FOMO, and the scientific exodus driven by ChatGPT
Nathan Lambert Apr 6Behind the curtain: what it feels like to work in AI right now
very single person I know working in AI these days (in both the academy and industry) has been sparked by the ChatGPT moment. The first iPhone moment of AI. Working in this environment is extremely straining, for a plethora of reasons — burnout, ambition, noise, influencers, financial upside, ethical worries, and more.
The ChatGPT spark has caused career changes, projects to be abandoned, and tons of people to try and start new companies in the area. The entire industry has been collectively shaken up — it added a ton of energy into the system. We now have model and product announcements on an almost daily basis. Talking to a professor friend in NLP, it’s to the point where all sorts of established researchers are ready to jump ship and join/build companies. This is not something that happens every day — getting academics to stop wanting to do research is a hilarious accomplishment. Everything just feels so frothy.
Graduate students are competing with venture-backed companies. From a high-level technologist’s perspective, it is awesome. From an engineer-on-the-ground’s perspective, it leaves some stability and naps to be desired. Seeing all of the noise makes it very hard to keep one’s head on straight and actually do the work.