And my desk has an ocean view 💅

@abbybertics.bsky.social s reports from campus about an education system in crisis, and asks what the future might look like as students begin to tap into a tool that can think quicker, write faster and teach better than many of their instructors.

🎙️Listen here: www.economist.com/podcasts/202... !

The way forward is to invest in true open-source software and infrastructure.

Read our full oped w/ Annie K. Lamar @ucsantabarbara.bsky.social #publicvoices of TheOpEdProject:

insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

@geometric-intel.bsky.social @ai-ucsb.bsky.social @ucsbengineering.bsky.social

🙌 To be sure, *some* companies are truly dedicated to open-source.

By generously sharing their resources, they have dramatically advanced science.

It's time universities do the same.

👩‍🔬 Science advances slowly, across decades.

Commercial tools, by contrast, advance quickly through mergers, pivots and quarterly earnings reports.

Tethering our infrastructure to private companies is like writing knowledge in disappearing ink.

🦾 If we continue to rent the foundations of our knowledge from private companies, we should not be surprised when the floor gives way beneath us.

💵 Without proper funding structures, essential research tools remain fragile, often maintained by overworked volunteers.

Universities must begin funding engineers at competitive salaries and recognizing software development as a legitimate form of scholarship.

👩‍💻 Universities are reluctant to fund software engineers at competitive salaries.

A skilled engineer can earn 5x more in industry than in academia, yet most grants deprioritize dedicated engineering roles.

🤔 Much of modern research rests on tools and platforms maintained not by universities or public institutions, but by corporations whose priorities can shift overnight.

Knowledge itself is being built on the shifting sand of corporate discretion.

Recently have been doing virtual reality experiments with mice in complex, open world environments.
No linear tracks.
No T-mazes.
No simple gratings.
No binary choices.
No blocky, high contrast environments.
Those are great for some experiments, but we want to focus on COMPLEX processing. (6/n)