First-Year ML PhD Student Wonders If Academia Is a Waste of Time in the AI Era
Percolize · reddit · 2026-09-16
A first-year AI/ML PhD student questions the value of an academic PhD as AI races ahead: underfunded academia lags industry, exploding paper counts keep raising the bar, and pay/skills lag too. The bigger worry is how autoresearch and open-endedness will reshape researchers' future work — prompting thoughts of earning high salaries before it's too late. Seeks opinions.
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