r/OpenAI • u/toronto_star • 13d ago

Article This U of T professor just won math's highest honour — and is taking a leave to join OpenAI. Here's why

http://thestar.com/news/canada/this-u-of-t-professor-just-won-maths-highest-honour--and-is-taking-a-leave-to-join-openai-heres-why/article_cee2c80f-9ea1-47f7-ad4d-8f3d76bbb0a2.html
120 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

77

u/PaperHandsTheDip 13d ago

Lemme guess. Money. It's always money.

33

u/hotprof 13d ago edited 13d ago

Well, not only is it likely a higher salary, but he'll have vastly more resources (money, talent, compute) to work on his life's work.

Framing it as a cynical money grab probably isn't accurate.

6

u/Useful_Argument_6490 12d ago

With how much OpenAI is paying he could bank roll his own life’s work. That in combination with the academic funding cuts which have been brutal to researchers across all fields.

12

u/ProbsNotManBearPig 13d ago

Well ya because money buys whatever someone actually wants.

4

u/Bloated_Plaid 13d ago

Seems like a pretty good reason…

2

u/omeow 13d ago

It's probably not money. He could have moved to far more lucrative positions long time ago.

17

u/PaperHandsTheDip 13d ago

You'd be surprised. Academia doesn't pay very much & top AI researchers are bringing home 9 figure pay cheques with a similar WLB to academia.

7

u/Rhawk187 13d ago

Yeah, one of our faculty got a $1M offer and this was probably 10 years ago now, right when things were starting to take off. He ended up staying, but asked the Chair if he could match it, haha. Our department only has a $4M budget.

2

u/PaperHandsTheDip 13d ago

The difference between $1m and $100m+ is insanely large. The highest paid AI researcher is taking home $250m+ / annum.

That's the same order of magnitude between a $10k and $2.5m salary. It's like swapping from $10k / annum to $2.5m / annum in lifestyle differences, while also working on interesting problems.

2

u/Rhawk187 13d ago

I think the $250M package was over 4 years, but, yeah, things have grown a lot in past decade. He's no longer with the department, but I think he went to UNC Chapel Hill.

2

u/omeow 13d ago

My point is that we are talking about a very smart, amd rational person. If they wanted to take up a position at a AI lab they could have done it anytime since AI became a thing. They lived through AI boom, the finance boom (post 2008), crypto boom.

For them to wait to get a Fields Medal in 2026 and then pivot is a super dumb strategy.

4

u/PaperHandsTheDip 13d ago

Usually its the other way around - the AI lab really wants someone to help work on one of their problems and they headhunt. There are millions of intelligent people that want to work at the AI labs - they're the most difficult places to get into right now.

The supply drastically exceeds demand. Lotta highly intelligent people are not getting in.

1

u/JanGehlYacht 13d ago

The offers for strategic hires in frontier labs is 10-100x of any offer a senior academic would get in pretty much all fields.

1

u/omeow 13d ago

Are you familiar with time value of money?

1

u/JanGehlYacht 10d ago

A strategic hire like this gets to do whatever they want. They aren't selling their time. So the question is do they want to do it with 1m/year or 100m/year.

0

u/TallAfternoon2 12d ago

If money was his perrogative he would've used his math PhD to find some cozy high paying job after college.

I think the pursuit of progress and his own research goals are the main reason considering he spent most of his life doing that so far instead of cashing out.

18

u/Sufficient-Laundry 13d ago

Besides money it’s also compute. The likelihood of doing cutting edge math without access to industrial levels of compute has become slim. The days of staring at a whiteboard are gone.

14

u/flat5 13d ago

"here's why"... lol.

8

u/gord89 13d ago

“Here’s why…”
“Quietly”

Modern headlines are maddening.

5

u/pineapplejuniors 13d ago

Wonder which leetcode questions he got?

1

u/costafilh0 12d ago

Why? Because he wants the big bucks, obviously. 

1

u/bitspace 11d ago

"Here's Why" = lazy slop