Facebook Says It's Not Destroying Academia With An AI Brain Drain

University of Washington researcher Luke Zettlemoyer will head up the Seattle lab and keep his faculty position, while Carnegie Mellon researchers Abhinav Gupta and Jessica Hodgins will spearhead the Pittsburgh office and keep their university affiliation on a part-time basis. Companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and others say the ability for AI researchers to continue their academic work has proven to be a valuable tool for recruiting the best talent. At the same time, large tech companies have learned that allowing their researchers to publish much of their work in peer-reviewed academic journals and speak at academic conferences is also key to those people agreeing to accept positions in the private sector. In a blog post, Facebook AI Research (FAIR) head Yann Lecun noted that it's a common practice for the company's researchers to stay involved with universities. Lecun himself has a dual appointment, splitting his time between Facebook and New York University.