Skilled and Mobile: Survey Evidence of AI Researchers' Immigration Preferences

Abstract

Countries, companies, and universities are increasingly competing over top-tier artificial intelligence (AI) researchers. Where are these researchers likely to immigrate and what affects their immigration decisions? We conducted a survey ( = 524) of the immigration preferences and motivations of researchers that had papers accepted at one of two prestigious AI conferences: the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) and the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). We find that the U.S. is the most popular destination for AI researchers, followed by the U.K., Canada, Switzerland, and France. A country's professional opportunities stood out as the most common factor that influences immigration decisions of AI researchers, followed by lifestyle and culture, the political climate, and personal relations. The destination country's immigration policies were important to just under half of the researchers surveyed, while around a quarter noted current immigration difficulties to be a deciding factor. Visa and immigration difficulties were perceived to be a particular impediment to conducting AI research in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. Implications of the findings for the future of AI talent policies and governance are discussed. * Author order was randomized using the American Economic Association Author Randomization Tool (Confirmation ID: KiIBo0vkY2Vk).

10. Military Artificial Intelligence as a Contributor to Global Catastrophic Risk

“…Zwetsloot and Dafoe concur that this increased perception of insecurity in nuclear systems could lead to states feeling pressured during times of unrest to engage in pre-emptive escalations. 201 Finally, in an effort to gain a real or perceived nuclear strategic advantage against their adversaries, while engaging in an AI race, states may place less value on AI safety concerns and more on technological development. 202 This could result in what Danzig has called a "technology roulette" 203 dynamic, with increased risk of prematurely adopting unsafe AI technology in ways that could have profound impacts on the safety or stability of states' nuclear systems.…”

Artificial Intelligence: Arguments for Catastrophic Risk

“…(2023). For general taxonomies of AI risk, see Yampolskiy (2015), Zwetsloot and Dafoe (2019), Hendrycks et al. (2023).…”