Alarm over poaching of computer science academics

The dean of the University of Warwick’s King’s Cross campus in London, which coordinates its artificial intelligence projects, fears the poaching of top computer science brains in higher education in the United Kingdom by United States groups such as Amazon, Google and Uber is threatening Britain’s ability to build on a leading position in machine learning, writes Aliya Ram for the Financial Times.

“The top tech firms are sucking the juice from the universities … they’re offered huge salaries, four or five times as much [as in higher education],” said the dean, Abhinay Muthoo. “The question is who owns the knowledge that’s being produced, and also who is going to train future researchers?”

The British government last month unveiled plans to invest up to £300 million (US$406 million) in artificial intelligence (AI) research – including an initial £83 million for university projects – to nurture the country’s status as Europe’s centre for machine learning. Although the £300 million will not provide university academics with salaries to match those at big tech companies, it should make AI research in British higher education more attractive and potentially improve its quality.
Full report on the Financial Times site