Busy, busy...
7 months left on the PhD. Lots to do and not much time to blog. I almost have a committee sorted out, and hopefully in a few weeks I'll move to "PhD candidate" status. I know that seems a bit strange at this point, but it's because I've joined the program after a few years at a research institute so I'm doing all this in a compressed amount of time. Anyway, over the next 6 months I need to get some more research done and of course write my thesis. Hopefully that won't be too much of a problem as most of the material will be ripped from my papers and then massaged to fit together into one document. Still it's a lot to do in the next half year so don't expect to hear too much from me! In the middle of all this I'm also going on a trip to New Zealand for Christmas, then Rarotonga for a couple of weeks, and then Los Angeles for two days on the way home. Extra busy.
Another thing that I need to do is to work out what I'm doing next. One thing that got me thinking recently is the fact that a couple of very good AI theory guys I know who have done a few post-docs aren't having an easy time finding permanent positions. One has now taken another post-doc position as he didn't get any of the permanent positions, and another has given up completely and is now trying to find a job in industry. These guys are really good, and so seeing this is a bit of a worry. Given that I've worked for 5 years in industry, by the time I will have completed 2 post doc positions I'll be almost 40. If I then can't get a permanent position in a university and have to switch to industry, I'll be in trouble.
If I switch next year to business I'll be 33, and with 5 years industry experience already on my CV, I'm not looking too much like a career academic. That should make the switch a lot easier. Given that academia seems to offer little job security, little money and the pressure to publish all the time means that I'm unsure whether I'll ever be able to follow the longer term more ambitious things I'd like to work on, I'm seriously thinking about going to industry. Another problem is that in academia as a PhD grad you don't have much control over where you live next. You just have to follow the jobs shifting to a new city and possibly country every few years. That's bad news for relationships. I understand now why many academics' wives don't have much in the way of professional careers in the prime of their career building years they are having to shift from one random town to the next.
Another thing is that I find academia to be quite limiting in some ways. If you propose something really radical with a high chance of failure, it's almost sure to be rejected by the funding agencies. You simply can't go away and try something crazy for a few years, instead you have to produce small units of publishable work all the time as this is a key measure of how your performance is judged. Of course if you are the head of the department you can do some crazy stuff as you have a permanent position. But by then it's probably too late as your really creative and crazy days are already over you've been molded to the norm and blinkered by the dogma of your field. If I had $1 million in the bank, I'd shift somewhere cheap to live and embark on research so unconventional it would make respected academics wince.
Maybe somebody like Google would be interested in giving me a job that wasn't too bad. Or maybe I could find a niche and start my own business doing something interesting. In any case, I haven't lost my passion and belief that very powerful AI is not only possible, but that it's possible in the next few decades. That's the dream, now how do I live it? Getting a PhD in AI is just one step.
Another thing that I need to do is to work out what I'm doing next. One thing that got me thinking recently is the fact that a couple of very good AI theory guys I know who have done a few post-docs aren't having an easy time finding permanent positions. One has now taken another post-doc position as he didn't get any of the permanent positions, and another has given up completely and is now trying to find a job in industry. These guys are really good, and so seeing this is a bit of a worry. Given that I've worked for 5 years in industry, by the time I will have completed 2 post doc positions I'll be almost 40. If I then can't get a permanent position in a university and have to switch to industry, I'll be in trouble.
If I switch next year to business I'll be 33, and with 5 years industry experience already on my CV, I'm not looking too much like a career academic. That should make the switch a lot easier. Given that academia seems to offer little job security, little money and the pressure to publish all the time means that I'm unsure whether I'll ever be able to follow the longer term more ambitious things I'd like to work on, I'm seriously thinking about going to industry. Another problem is that in academia as a PhD grad you don't have much control over where you live next. You just have to follow the jobs shifting to a new city and possibly country every few years. That's bad news for relationships. I understand now why many academics' wives don't have much in the way of professional careers in the prime of their career building years they are having to shift from one random town to the next.
Another thing is that I find academia to be quite limiting in some ways. If you propose something really radical with a high chance of failure, it's almost sure to be rejected by the funding agencies. You simply can't go away and try something crazy for a few years, instead you have to produce small units of publishable work all the time as this is a key measure of how your performance is judged. Of course if you are the head of the department you can do some crazy stuff as you have a permanent position. But by then it's probably too late as your really creative and crazy days are already over you've been molded to the norm and blinkered by the dogma of your field. If I had $1 million in the bank, I'd shift somewhere cheap to live and embark on research so unconventional it would make respected academics wince.
Maybe somebody like Google would be interested in giving me a job that wasn't too bad. Or maybe I could find a niche and start my own business doing something interesting. In any case, I haven't lost my passion and belief that very powerful AI is not only possible, but that it's possible in the next few decades. That's the dream, now how do I live it? Getting a PhD in AI is just one step.