AI Researchers Push Back: A PhD Is for Decades-Long Research, Not an Industry Launchpad
DimitrisPapail · x · 2026-10-01
Researcher yzeng58 argues the AI boom has distorted what a PhD is for: it now looks like prep for an industry job, but its real purpose is long-term research that may not pay off for 10-20 years—backprop existed decades before deep learning took off. If you want to build something useful now, go to industry; if you believe in a problem industry ignores, go to academia. Former OpenAI researcher Dimitris Papail endorsed the take.
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