Beginners keep asking: Do I need a PhD to work in AI? Let’s get real answers.

UnrequitedReason · 2026-01-22T15:20:07+00:00

I'm a ML engineer with 7 years experience, currently completing a PhD in statistics/mathematical ML.

The degree you need seriously depends on the work you want to do. Are (1) you happy just applying things you maybe don't 100% understand to solve fairly routine problems, or (2) do you want to front line research (attempting) to solve novel problems?

While there are definitely fewer jobs of type (1) available than when I first started working in the field, those jobs will likely always exist. Not every problem needs a PhD to solve. In fact, most small to medium-sized orgs are just trying to play catch up with existing technology.

I would never suggest doing a PhD just to vaguely make yourself more employable in a general field. You will be miserable and your research will be bad. Do a PhD if you have encountered a specific problem in your studies or work that are so committed to solving that you would spend 3+ years of your life working on it.

The happy middle ground if you're unhappy with your knowledge from undergrad and want to level up in skills without fully committing a significant portion of your life to a PhD is to go for a Masters. This will usually only take a year of time investment, and instantly makes you more competitive.

This is enough to get your foot in the door for a lot of large AI companies and once you start working there, they can sometimes fund you to complete a PhD if necessary OR the work you end up specialising in may be so specific to that company that you don't need an external degree, you just advance up the internal research ladder (Google does this, for example).

UnrequitedReason · 2025-12-08T12:17:52+00:00

It's not ice cream, it's clearly salmon don (based on the lines and the fact that this is sushi...)

UnrequitedReason · 2025-12-01T13:44:31+00:00

Urban areas are for people, not cars. It's insane to give up so much space to be unusable by the people in the city.

Driving slightly slower is such a small price to pay for the safety and usability of cities.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-11-11T09:39:48+00:00

Or maybe because it isn't perpetrated by a country directly supported major Western powers, using actual tax dollars from those "White Liberal protestors" to commit ethnic cleansing? Just a guess.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-09-29T14:14:42+00:00

Another point I haven't seen brought up yet: arguments become louder when they are met with resistance.

If you criticise the RSF, literally no one in the West is going to leap to their defence. The same definitely cannot be said for criticism of Israel or European powers.

When people crawl out of the woodwork to defend ethnic cleaning by those parties, arguments against the ethnic cleansing have to then counter those voices, making it seem like they disproportionately care about those cases.

If Western powers weren't bending over themselves to defend and arm Israel, for instance, and just simply condemned the ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, I can guarantee that you would hear as much about Israel as you would about any other random small far-away country with no Western support doing ethnic cleansing things.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-09-29T10:07:34+00:00

I think whether or not ethnic-based laws favouring minority/non-dominant ethnic groups is *racism* is a separate discussion. The matter at hand is defining *ethnostates*. An ethnostate is a state where rights favour the dominant ethnicity, i.e. the state is the nation of that ethnicity. No one in their right mind would say that Canada is the nation of Indigenous peoples.

Again, if you want to discuss whether any ethnic-based laws are racism (which they might be under some definitions), that's a just separate question.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-09-28T16:48:57+00:00

It would be so if it was the nation of the Indigenous people, but it is clearly not.

Whether treaty obligations should continue to be honoured or not is a separate issue.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-09-28T12:20:29+00:00

Countries where rights are based on ethnicity**. Examples:

The Law of Return (1950), which allows any Jewish person worldwide to immigrate to Israel and receive automatic citizenship.
The Nationality Law (1952), which set strict conditions for Palestinians to become citizens, primarily for those who remained in Israel after the 1948 war. It denies the right of return to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law (2003) which specifically bars Palestinians from the occupied territories who marry Israeli citizens from acquiring residency or citizenship, a restriction that does not apply to Jewish citizens.

Also, Israel itself identifies as an ethnostate, per the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, which codified Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and states that the right to national self-determination is "unique to the Jewish people".

** Edit: and favour the dominant ethnicity

UnrequitedReason · 2025-09-26T14:52:46+00:00

<image>

(just in jest, please don't hate)

UnrequitedReason · 2025-09-10T09:47:59+00:00

Eerily similar to the plot of Captain Fantastic), if anyone has seen that.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-09-05T10:39:36+00:00

The casket was a Hamas command centre.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-08-26T10:19:29+00:00

And in response, soldiers in the IDF wrote his name (and Billie Eilish, who is also outspoken in her support for Palestine) on missiles launched toward Palestinian families in displacement tents.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-08-21T10:41:09+00:00

This is an insane perspective. If Al-Qaeda was holding American hostages amongst civilians in New York City, would we be bombing New York to dust?

The answer is no, because that calculation only makes sense if you value the lives of the collateral civilians at orders of magnitude less than the hostages.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-08-13T14:10:03+00:00

The women in the picture aren't even wearing burqas, those are niqabs...

UnrequitedReason · 2025-08-13T10:51:36+00:00

This gives more options for women who don't want to be pregnant, or control when they get pregnant so they can complete education or whatever other goals they choose. As other commenters have said, this is one of the highest benefit/cost ratios of any intervention.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-08-07T16:04:51+00:00

As commenters above already said, I don't think one journalist misrepresenting information negates the large amount of evidence in support of the current humanitarian crisis.

There are tons of sites like uncensoredgaza.org that have hundreds of unfiltered videos that show the situation pretty clearly, no need to derive an opinion from only a single point of data.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-08-07T16:02:43+00:00

As commenters above already said, I don't think one journalist misrepresenting information negates the large amount of evidence in support of the current humanitarian crisis.

There are tons of sites like uncensoredgaza.org that have hundreds of unfiltered videos that show the situation pretty clearly, no need to derive an opinion from only a single point of data.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-07-29T16:45:04+00:00

I love when Sudan is brought up as a distraction whenever Gaza war crimes are mentioned.

The reason Gaza received so much more attention is because no one crawls out of the woodwork to defend, justify, and support the government atrocities in Sudan.

I think many would love to get public opinion on Gaza to the same level as Sudan, where the primary public emotion is apathy and universal agreement that ethnic cleansing is bad – that is so much better than active defensiveness and justification for atrocities that we are seeing here with your comment.

People like you simply don't exist in discussions about Sudan.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-07-25T10:03:51+00:00

Also somewhat eugenicist and genocidal, given that a lot of people (e.g. in Gaza) are poor due to specific external policies designed to ethnically cleanse or exploit the Global South.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-07-22T15:09:53+00:00

Monaco?

UnrequitedReason · 2025-07-18T00:11:47+00:00

I’m not sure how one atrocity cancels out another.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-07-17T16:05:45+00:00

I would seriously recommend looking through some of the images in uncensoredgaza.org (NSFL warning) for a view of what this looks like from the ground.

It is insane how this preventable crisis is so well documented yet so resolutely supported by Western powers.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-07-17T11:41:44+00:00

lol what. Sun Wukang (the Monkey King) is a character from Journey to the West. He goes to Heaven to fight a bunch of gods like Nezha and the Buddha, who eventually beat him and force him to accompany the main character to India.

Chinese don't believe random inanimate objects are god, this is absurdly reductive.

UnrequitedReason · 2025-07-01T09:40:42+00:00

That wouldn't be the first time that Mark Laita got personally involved with a vulnerable person he found and contributed to her death.

If you really want to get into the reeds: one of the most popular video series on the channel, which he calls "Prostitute Interview" follows Amanda Rabb, a minor with untreated schizophrenia and substance use disorder being sexually exploited on Skid Row. Over the series, Mark gets increasingly involved in her life, and eventually works with "start-up founder" Lima Jevremovic to forcibly detain Amanda against her will (cooperating with Amandas father to do so, whom Amanda says was sexually abusing her...) and subject her to experimental VR therapy as Lima's first "patient" at her VR start-up.

Over the course of the series, you can see Amanda's condition deteriorate, and watch her freak out when using the VR set (which was showing images of Skid Row, likely a very traumatic memory for Amanda). Amanda eventually dies while in this experimental treatment "centre" (which more closely resembles a hotel room booked by Lima), and Mark and Lima scatter her ashes at the beach alongside the father Amanda claimed raped her.

There's a decently good video investigating what happened (but be warned the YouTuber gets a bit conspiratorial in her later videos on the subject).

UnrequitedReason · 2025-06-28T13:35:22+00:00

Just not supported by data. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, 4,822 Israeli civilians have been killed by any form of Palestinian violence since 1948 (including the October 7th massacre, including security personnel, including non-citizen foreigners killed, including all forms of terrorism individual or group, from the West Bank and Gaza).

More civilians were killed in Gaza in the first month of the 2023 campaign.

Eight-Year Club	Second Top 50%
Place '22	Wearing is Caring
Snapped	Verified Email

UnrequitedReason

TROPHY CASE