Ben Recht, David A. Forsyth, and Alexei Efros:

Facebook would like to have computer science faculty in AI committed to work 80% of their time in industrial jobs and 20% of their time at their university. They call this scheme “co-employment” or “dual affiliation.” This model assumes people can slice their time and attention like a computer, but people can’t do this. Universities and companies are communities, each with their particular missions and values. The values of these communities are often at odds, and researchers must choose where their main commitment lies. By committing researchers to a particular company’s interests, this new model of employment will harm our colleagues, our discipline, and everyone’s future. Like many harms, it comes with benefits for some. But the harm in this proposal outweighs the benefits. If industry wants to support and grow academic computer science, there are much better ways to achieve this.

The proposal will harm our discipline, because it will distract established talent from the special roles of academics: curiosity driven research. Academic scholarship has an excellent record of pursuing ideas into places that are exciting and productive, even if they don’t result in immediate, tangible benefits and especially if they ruffle the feathers of established, powerful institutions. You can’t do that if 80% of your time is spent not annoying a big company. Though big companies belabor promises of complete intellectual freedom to faculty, that can’t and won’t happen because the purpose of companies is to make money for shareholders.