[teiferer]

> The budget required for AI tools currently is negligible compared to other university expenses.

Is it? Do you have any idea what the salary of a mid-tier university researcher in an Eastern European country is? Or in Africa or south-east Asia? With sota LLM pricing you easily get into the same order of magnitude, so essentially labour cost would double for researchers at such universies. Not "negligible" at all.

[chis]

I feel like this is one of the most advantaged times in history in terms of regular citizens having access to cutting edge tools.

Looking online it seems like the low end estimate might be $30k a year for such math researchers? And ChatGPT pro or whatever you want will run $100 a month, and should be coverable by grants. I’m quite sure matlab alone cost more in the past