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美国硅谷正在广招人工智能人才
By Christina Bonnington
克里斯蒂娜·布灵顿
A view of people walking in the Facebook main campus in Menlo Park, California, May 15, 2012.
Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
2012年5月15日，在加州门洛帕克的Facebook主校区里，人们在散步
罗宾·贝克/法新社/盖蒂图片社
Artificial intelligence is the latest Silicon Valley darling. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple are using it in their image recognition algorithms, in their voice-based virtual assistants, and in their attempts to curate news and social media posts specifically for your eyes. It’s a hot area for smaller startups, too. Venture capital funding in AI has risen to more than $9.5 billion in the first five months of 2017 from $3.2 billion in all of 2014. It’s been called the biggest investment trend of the year, but it may also be the biggest hiring trend.
人工智能是硅谷最新的宠儿。谷歌、Facebook、亚马逊和苹果都在他们的图像识别算法中使用它，在他们的语音虚拟助手中，他们试图为你的眼睛专门管理新闻和社交媒体文章。对于规模较小的创业公司来说，这也是一个热门领域。今年前5个月，人工智能的风险投资已从2014年的32亿美元增长至95亿美元。这被称为是今年最大的投资趋势，而且也可能是最大的招聘趋势。
While the field dates back to the 1950s, only recently has AI branched out to become a mainstream computer science topic. That being the case, there are only a finite (and relatively small) number of experts in the field—a number that is dwindling in academia due to lucrative offers from tech companies.
对这个领域的研究可以追溯到上世纪50年代，但直到近几年，人工智能才开始成为主流计算机科学的主题。在这种情况下，这一领域的专家数量有限(而且相对较小)——由于科技公司提供的丰厚利润，学术界的专家数量正在减少。
In a report from the New York Times this week, Cade Metz details how big tech firms are luring AI specialists into their fold with salaries of up to $500,000 a year. “In the entire world, fewer than 10,000 people have the skills necessary to tackle serious artificial intelligence research, according to Element AI, an independent lab in Montreal,” Metz writes. At Stanford University, four well-known researchers have left or taken leave over the past few years. At another AI hub, the University of Washington, six of the department’s 20 professors are working in the industry on leave or partial leave. If professors and researchers are leaving academia, who’s to teach the next generation of AI specialists?
在本周纽约时报的一篇报道中，Cade Metz详细描述了科技公司如何将人工智能专家吸引到他们的年薪中，年薪高达50万美元。“在整个世界里，只有不到1万人拥有解决严重人工智能研究的必要技能，”Metz写道，“在蒙特利尔的一个独立实验室里，”Metz写道。在斯坦福大学，四名著名的研究人员在过去的几年里已经离开或离开了。在华盛顿大学的另一个人工智能中心，该部门的20位教授中，有6位正在从事休假或部分休假的工作。如果教授和研究人员离开学术界，谁来教授下一代人工智能专家?
This isn’t the first time a situation like this has happened. In 2015, Uber poached the majority of Carnegie Mellon University’s leading robotics lab to work on the company’s self-driving car project. After initially luring a couple of developers from the National Robotics Engineering Center to join its ranks, Uber eventually hired 40 former CMU staffers for its project (roughly one-third of the NREC’s total staff). This included a number of upper-level employees, including the organization’s director. “These guys, they took everybody,” one source told the Verge.
这样的情况已经不是第一次发生了，2015年，优步（Uber）挖走了卡内基梅隆大学最主要的机器人实验室，以研究该公司的自动驾驶汽车项目。在最初吸引了来自国家机器人工程中心的几名开发者加入之后，优步最终雇佣了40名前CMU的员工(大约是NREC总员工的三分之一)。这包括许多高级职员，包括组织的主管。“这些家伙，他们把所有人都带走了”一名知情人士透露。
As of March 2016, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, some of the vacancies left by Uber employees remained unfilled (though the NREC told the Post-Gazette at that time that it planned to use $11 million in new research funding to hire 15 to 20 new staffers). But CMU’s School of Computer Science dean Andrew Moore shrugged it off. “This kind of thing happens to us a few times a year,” Moore said to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We’re focused on ‘what’s next?’ ”
据匹兹堡邮报报道，截止2016年3月，优步员工的离开，留下的一些空缺职位仍未填满(尽管NREC当时告诉邮报，该公司计划用1100万美元的新研究资金招募15到20名新员工)。但是，CMU的计算机科学学院院长安德鲁摩尔对此不屑一顾，“这种事情每年多会发生，”摩尔对匹兹堡邮报说。“我们关注的是接下来会发生什么?”
According to Moore, this sort of thing is cyclical. Researchers may start out in academia, spend a few years applying their research commercially, then come back to academia with fresh perspectives and ideas. In a 2016 interview with TechCrunch, Moore said five to 15 staffers usually leave for industry jobs each year, taking leaves of absence up to four years. Some, but not all, end up coming back.
根据摩尔的说法，这种事情是周期性的。研究人员可能从学术界开始，花几年时间在商业上应用他们的研究，然后带着全新的观点和想法回到学术界。在2016年接受TechCrunch采访时，摩尔表示，5至15名员工通常会在每年的工作岗位上离职，休假的时间长达4年。有些人，但不是所有人，最后都回来了。
Hopefully, this is what we’re seeing now. And rather than solely relying on poaching researchers from academic institutions, tech firms (other than Uber) are taking things into their own hands in a more constructive way.
幸运的是，这是我们现在看到的。科技公司(除了优步之外)并不是单纯依靠从学术机构挖来的研究人员，而是以一种更具建设性的方式把事情掌握在自己手中。
Companies such as Google and Facebook are now offering courses to help staff get up to speed on AI. With so few experts to pluck from the field, programs like the Facebook AI Academy aim to make engineers proficient in deep learning. Once trained, they can then apply their new knowledge to other engineering groups at the company. Strategic acquisitions, such as Google’s purchase of DeepMind in 2014, can also help with the AI labor shortage—but only as long as there are AI startups to farm from.
谷歌和Facebook等公司目前正在提供课程，帮助员工加快人工智能的速度。由于很少有专家能从这一领域中挖出，像Facebook AI学院这样的项目旨在让工程师们精通深度学习。一旦经过培训，他们就可以将自己的新知识应用到公司的其他工程团队。战略收购，比如谷歌2014年收购DeepMind，也有助于人工智能人工智能的发展，但前提是有人工智能创业公司可以从这一领域获得投资。
Even so, for companies searching for Ph.D.-level expertise, demand far outweighs supply. If tech companies want to ensure a robust future of AI specialists, they’ll need to strike a balance between employing experts for their own needs and allowing them to continue teaching the next generation
即便如此，对于寻求博士级专业技能的公司而言，需求远远超过供应。如果科技公司想要确保人工智能专家的强大未来，他们就需要在雇佣专家为自己的需求和继续教育下一代之间找到平衡。
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.
未来时态（Future Tense）是斯莱特Slate、New America和亚利桑那州立大学的合作伙伴。
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