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Comment by lyxsus1 | Hacker News Reader

Really. Because "they" are not "Yoshua Bengio". "They" are the journalists.

In a link from this quote: "You have expressed concern that corporations have ‘stolen’ talent from academia. Is this still an issue?" https://www.nature.com/news/ai-talent-grab-sparks-excitement... I can't find a word "stolen" or anything similar being used at all.

Seems like it was introduced by a journalist who wrote final article. And considering that, it's not hard to believe that this journalist may have some opinions on economics that are far from reality, that (probably unconsciously) triggered his word-twisting reflex.

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And Yoshua Bengio replies,

> "It’s continuing. ..."

So he's not objecting to the phrasing, eh?

The linked article has this:

> The loss of expertise in academia concerns Yoshua Bengio, a computer scientist at the University of Montreal in Canada, which has also seen a surge in graduate-student applications. If industry-hired faculty members do retain university roles — as Hinton has at the University of Toronto and Ng has at Stanford University in California — they are usually only minor, says Bengio.

So it's obvious he's not concerned about corporations literally "stealing" students and faculty somehow, like unmarked vans and burly men in black turtlenecks, eh?

> And considering that, it's not hard to believe that this journalist may have some opinions on economics that are far from reality, that (probably unconsciously) triggered his word-twisting reflex.

The word "stealing" is in quotes in TFA.

We don't know exact question asked. And even if it contained exact "stealing" phrasing, it's possible mr. Bengio simply decided to ignore connotation for sake of productive conversation. It's clear both we and him are aware of brain drain happening but, he also have noticed mutual beneficial effects of the facts and I my personal believe is that had he felt important to object, he would, but he didn't. But that doesn't say much to support he believes it's unfair competition

I'm not sure where you're going with this, but my only point here is that it's silly for the OP to say that Bengio and/or the author of the piece somehow didn't understand that "more money" is part of the reason why people leave academia for industry. It was a stupid goddamned comment.

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