In defense of academics joining frontier AI labs, by a Google DeepMind researcher
soumitrashukla9 · x · 2026-09-16
Soumitra Shukla, a Google DeepMind researcher, argues we should strongly support academics joining frontier labs:
- Much research at GDM, Anthropic, and OpenAI can only be done inside a lab or with lab collaborators.
- Given public negativity about AI, academic work inside labs helps people form better-informed views of the technology.
- He pushes back on the assumption that lab researchers must be doing something nefarious, calling it overblown.
A direct take from inside a lab on the academia-to-industry debate.
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