Industry research funding is vastly eclipsing academia’s spend, but healthy development demands broad input.
The current boom in artificial intelligence (AI) would probably not exist were it not for work that began in academia. Many of the techniques that are now being used on an everyday basis, such as machine learning and natural-language processing, are underpinned by academic work into artificial neural networks that dates back decades. But it is true to say that much of the latest cutting-edge and high-profile research in AI is being done not in university labs, but behind the closed doors of private companies. Read more in Nature.