Yarin Gal: A PhD is about independent research, not tiny slices of giant projects
yaringal · x · 2026-09-22
Yarin Gal argues the point of a PhD is training to become an independent researcher — including coming up with your own ideas and executing them start to finish.
He sees little value in massive projects where each person contributes little, noting people can do that in industry instead. The take responds to a discussion of whether a 10-person lab should co-produce 2 big papers versus 10 papers with rotating first authors, reflecting wider debate over large-team paper mills in AI academia.
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