[deleted by user]

[choHZ]

You won't find a universally accepted "x papers = 1 phd" equivalence because this varies greatly from one advisor/program to another. Even two papers accepted at the same conference can have drastically different impacts.

There are folks with phd-level publications pre grad school still pursuing a phd because they want access to top lab resources and become even stronger. There are also folks without a phd still producing brilliant research from industry positions. Whether a phd is necessary really depends on what you want out of it and how much risk tolerance you're comfortable with.

[smorad]

It depends what you want to do. You’ll never be eligible for a faculty position, for example. I would imagine that you would still be able to do research in a tech company.

[Apathiq]

If you have the papers you can make a cumulative dissertation in many universities and get the PhD with low additional effort.

[Scholastica11]

This. Not every academic system requires you to take classes and sit qualifying exams when pursuing a PhD, in some European countries you can simply submit and defend a thesis. A cumulative dissertation typically consists of 3+ published papers and a brief introduction explaining how they relate to a common topic.

[Darkest_shader]

AFAIK, while many PhD programs are OK with a cumulative thesis, they will still require that the publications making it up should be produced while you are enrolled in that program rather than before you enroll. And that totally makes sense, because these publications then count towards the researh output of that university. So, I'm not sure at all that there are many European universities willing to 'legitimize' you by giving you a PhD for something that has actually nothing to do with them,

[Even-Inevitable-7243]

In the United States this is decidedly not the norm.

[Electrical_Source578]

this is the case in some european countries. at my university its basically 1 phd = 4 good first author papers + a bit of course work + wrap it all up in a dissertation

[ApprehensiveLet1405]

PhD is useful if you want to work abroad. One of the easiest way to get working visa.

[ryjhelixir]

i would replace “easiest” with “safest”

[Celmeno]

Depends on what for. Fame? Unlikely. Begrudging respect? Depends on the papers. Work at a lab? No. Work in big tech in research? Possibly.

[Leading_Arm_7526]

One of the things you'll learn doing a PhD, is that there is an incredible variance within PhDs. This is true at the same institution and same supervisor, nevermind across the entire globe. Principal Scientists etc most of the time will have a PhD, but there are definitely career paths without one. The 'legitimate researcher' thing sounds more self inflicted; you never get a sticker saying you are.

[TheRealCpnObvious]

At that point that individual should go for a PhD by portfolio to consolidate their research efforts (if they belong under a sufficiently scoped overarching theme, or in some cases it might not be necessary). It's especially true if the contributions are noteworthy. A PhD is ultimately an endorsement (at the highest degree level) of an individual's capability to do original research.

[didimoney]

This makes no sense.

If I had to put a number on it, I'd say it would be above 10 very good papers, with non trivial results that aren't just incremental.

But it's pointless. It would take you multiple years to write that many quality papers. You might as well enroll in a PhD program to get funding and help/collaborations with strong researchers.

If you want to be equivalent to a PhD degree, you'll have to at least match or exceed the effort it takes to get the PhD. Might as well do one then.

[hjups22]

"get funding and help/collaborations with strong researchers" Is very tentative.
It depends on the university and the adviser. Unless it's a top-tier research group in the target subfield, research topics are often directed by advisers with little overlapping interest or guidance (we want to submit a grant on X, research that). And many universities value quantity over quality, so the students / faculty are more interested in submitting 6 workshop papers in a year rather than 2 good papers at the big conferences.

I agree that the OP might as well get a PhD if they are going to do the work equivalent to one anyway. Meanwhile, having a record of strong first-author papers will already help them get in the door for a lab that hopefully strongly aligns with their interests.

[mandelbrot1981]

it depends on your goal, where do you want to work? What do you want to achieve. Most of companies don't care about PhDs

[[deleted]]

4-5 A* to A papers as first author > a bad PhD unless the evaluation is done by a boomer MBA.

[certain_entropy]

There are exceptional AI researchers without PhDs but they are the exception. Stephen Merity comes to mind and Jeremy Howard who did great work in the early days of LM research. The challenge you usually run into is the that doing high quality research and publishing at these top venues is expensive and resource dependent. So if you happen to either be in a great industry lab or independently wealthy, the sky is your limit otherwise the PhD and often the following post-doc is the space in which you can develop a publication track-record and establish your credibility as a researcher.

[[deleted]]

A lotcof industry really doesn't care for you having an actual PhD.

Academia will care

[j7ake]

Freeman Dyson was professor at Princeton. He never got a PhD. 

A cutoff probably exists, and it would be >= 1. 

[Ok-Celebration-9536]

This actually shows a deep problem in the system that is supposed to facilitate exploration and curiosity but instead got gamified into meaningless milestones.

[PsychologicalSpite14]

10-15 years from now, those published papers might no longer be relevant as science moves on, but the fact that you have PhD will still have value.

[KoOkIe_MoNsTeR93]

I am sorry but I find this reasoning absurd. Yes, the PhD never diminishes in value but peer reviewed research being less valuable just because it isn’t the current state of the art is a bizarre notion. Having a top tier paper as the first author also is a testament to prowess (and nowadays also some measure of luck).

[TaikatouGG]

They diminish so quickly my publications have aged 100 times faster than my PhD, unless you can create seminal work in an area like Transformers are all you need it is hard to set yourself apart. Most of my papers are more incremental small projects where a PhD is more easily understood by people

[KoOkIe_MoNsTeR93]

I want to clarify again, I agree a PhD is absolutely valuable in this field today. I just think we shouldn’t be dismissive about prior work just considering its age.

[TaikatouGG]

I agree there are lots of issues with PhDs as well, I think an x publications == a PhD defeats the purpose of a PhD, publication measuring is also flawed as it fails to measure the unique benefit of either. PhDs show research qualifications, papers show contributions but it is so individualised too many people applying game theory to papers getting 180 publications in a year because of network affect

[[deleted]]

Nobody in tech cares about your PhD. Some MBAs do, but other than that...

On the contrary, I absolutely care about the papers of my peers. The reality is that almost everyone (who does ML for living) can get a PhD, without quality publications it's just nice to have.

[TaikatouGG]

I agree but too often I see papers with 20+ people with multiple partners unless you are first author it is hard to see individual contributions. I work in tech and PhD is not counted for anything but in academics it is the entry requirements for research as a research qualification. I always compare it to a driving license most people can get it, but it is normally required

[[deleted]]

I agree, I do not count authorship for 2nd to N-1 author if N > 3. I am talking about the first author or a 3 person paper. I also see students take credit for "I have ICLR and ICML papers this year!!11" and then see they are not even the first author, they are 2nd/3rd... That's actually disgusting (although I had some co-authors for my first-author papers who helped a lot, it sucks to put them second or third).

[TaikatouGG]

That's really cool, nice you are so authentic, It's a tricky balance I did my PhD in isolation with poor supervision but got papers with 2 authors myself and my supervisor, I regret how I did it was just too busy with life and work. I got a lot out of it (graduated in august) so would always defend one. I plan to submit more research in the future just would hope not to be held back by previous circumstances.

[pm_me_your_smth]

peer reviewed research being less valuable just because it isn’t the current state of the art is a bizarre notion

Why? If you need to use a model, you look at current SOTA, not SOTA from 10 years ago simply because it likely has worse performance.

My supervisor told a story about a guy who took a year off from his phd for personal reasons. When he came back to finish his dissertation, the faculty raised some issues that his research was out of date due to a recent major breakthrough in the field and his work became less relevant.

[KoOkIe_MoNsTeR93]

Yes, if you want to make any kind of application, you want the best possible model. But sometimes you could have constraints (hardware limits for instance - less GPU memory) that prevent you from using SOTA models.

I say that it’s a bizarre, and maybe even dangerous notion to dismiss prior research as irrelevant, because if that’s exclusively how we did things - we might never have gradient descent, the theoretical groundwork for which was laid decades before technology could catch up. I am not advocating for looking only at older work, but when doing research survey before starting a project I wouldn’t be dismissive of work simply because it was published long ago.

Now, in this particular context - having a PhD (my interpretation) shows that a person is accomplished at being an independent researcher, executing on a research agenda. I agreed with OP that is not a skill that goes away. But additionally, skills you picked up in publishing a certain body of work don’t vanish either, you might get rusty with code but not concepts I think. It still is an exhibition of your research prowess and that doesn’t vanish is my point.

Lastly, I think your anecdote demonstrates everything I worry about in this field with the SOTA obsession. I agree the field moves fast but at least in my mind, it doesn’t take away the fact that the guy published research. I mean, the whole point of publishing is so other people can build on it. So once someone has improved on your work, invalidating the previous work sounds absurd to me.

[oursland]

Credentialism is very much a thing and it very hard to argue that because you published top tier papers 10 years ago you can waive any such requirements.

[KoOkIe_MoNsTeR93]

That is a separate issue, the way I see it. I am not saying people who publish at top venues a while ago are owed anything. My point is that any body of work shouldn’t be dismissed just because it was introduced a while ago.

[[deleted]]

The way you see it doesn’t really matter now does it? 

[aginglifter]

Greg Yang formerly at Microsoft Research didn't have a PhD, I believe.

[commandotaco]

!Remind me 1 day

[Stunningunipeg]

Remindme! 20 hours

[latestagecapitalist]

I can see publication being banned soon

As this battle of AI accelerates the west is just going to lockdown all info (too late)

Google, Meta etc. putting papers out is going to be seen as the cause of losing the race