[libdjml]

I applaud the positive spin, but the responses are due to the headline which suggests these salaries are normal.

If an article said “supermarket checkout clerks are earning over $1m” and the article explained that a couple of retired property investors decided to work at a supermarket, would you respond the same?

The harsh reality is, very few people will have the tenacity, intelligence, and opportunities to become a top 20 AI researcher, especially in their 20s.

[jasonkester]

You're doing it again. If you truly believe you can't bring in that kind of money unless you're "top 20" then you're never going to try.

And it's to your detriment, because there are a lot more than 20 people making that kind of money in software today.

Note further that AI is in fact a subset of software. There is nothing magic about it that somebody like yourself or anybody else here can't pick up.

You seem to grudgingly accept that doing so can make you a lot more money. But still you go out of your way to insist that you, personally can't do that.

Why?

[libdjml]

I don’t believe your statement that AI is just a subset of software. It’s almost entirely math. Furthermore, “somebody like yourself or anybody else can’t pick it up” is wildly untrue. You realize that the people in the articles are researchers, not practitioners, right? They’re the Albert Einstein’s of the industry dreaming up new deviations and architectures. I think you’re severely downplaying what they’ve achieved.

You might as well say that Michael Schumacher just drives a car pretty well, so most of us could spend a bit of time in training and win F1

The reason I go out of my way to insist I can’t do that is that I’m not in my 20s, and it would be delusional of me to think AI is “nothing magic” and I can watch some YouTube videos to become the worlds best.

[kafquaesque]

Agreed. At the same time—believing one can do something is something that can help people continue to be persistent when it doesn’t come right away? It gives a goal even if never achieved. I never made it to the Olympics but I did become a scholarship-college athlete by dreaming of being an Olympian(hopefully this doesn’t seem boastful). I like to know who the people are at the top of their game. It’s a good way to measure how much I may be able to improve. I can create a gap-analysis of how to get there.