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Comment by rrr_oh_man | Hacker News Reader

> They chose to publish. So they are interested in seeing it reproduced or improved upon.

Call me cynical, but this is not what I experienced to be the #1 reason of publishing AI papers.

I hope someone could share their insight on this comment. I think the other comments are fragile and don't hold too strongly.

Marketing of some sort. Either “come to Google and you’ll have access to H100s and freedom to publish and get to work with other people who publish good papers”, which appeals to the best researchers, or for smaller companies, benchmark pushing to help with brand awareness and securing VC funding.

Come be dishwashers in the fancy kitchen! You can only have one chef after all and the line cook positions are filled long ago too, but dishes don't wash themselves.

It's commonly discussed in AI/ML groups that a paper at a top conference is "worth a million dollars." Not all papers, some papers are worth more. But it is in effect discussing the downstream revenues. As a student, it is your job and potential earnings. As a lab it is worth funding and getting connected to big tech labs (which creates a feedback loop). And to corporations, it is worth far more than that in advertising.

The unfortunate part of this is that it can have odd effects like people renaming well known things to make the work appear more impressive, obscure concepts, and drive up their citations.[0] The incentives do not align to make your paper as clear and concise as possible to communicate your work.

[0] https://youtu.be/Pl8BET_K1mc?t=2510

As someone not in the AI space, what do you think is the reason for publishing? Marketing and hype for your products?

Retaining your researchers so they don't get frustrated and move to another company that lets them publish.

and attracting other researchers so your competitors can't pick them up to potentially harm your own business

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