Prof. Yixuan Li on PhD anxiety in the AI era: I turned down OpenAI, no regrets
SharonYixuanLi · x · 2026-10-30
UW-Madison professor Yixuan Li published 'Time in the Chaos,' addressing PhD students' anxiety as AI accelerates science. She recalls writing her first ICLR paper in 2015 (fewer than 300 submissions, Bengio emailing them), joining Meta AI's early billion-image vision foundation model work in 2017, and turning down an OpenAI cofounder's invite in 2018 — a decision she calls '100% bad financially' but one she doesn't regret, because the quietness it preserved let her read, think deeply, and build her own research identity and lab.
Related event: Wisconsin Professor Addresses PhD Anxiety in the AI Era(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Nathan Young proposes prediction markets and AI reporting for AI-community accountability — NathanpmYoung · 2026-10-31
- NYC Marathon apps hit 240,000 — Delip Rao jokes agents freed researchers to run — deliprao · 2026-10-31
- The AlphaZero moment for AI coding: bespoke system designs humans can't reason about — mobileraj · 2026-10-31
- Tech debate reignites over 'uplifting' monkeys, an idea Palmer Luckey has floated — Darpinian · 2026-10-31
- Lawyers use writing as a check on their own reasoning — and LLMs threaten that — TuhinChakr · 2026-10-31
- Why AI workers should unionize now: leverage peaks early, safety is the wedge — GarrisonLovely · 2026-10-31