You explain why new researchers would want to join, but why would top researchers want to? It seems like they lose money and time in exchange for that warm feeling you get when helping people. Would that be enough?
In terms of legality, worker owned corporations exist, but I suspect it would be hard convincing people to give unrestricted funding to the corporation (I think most government grants are fairly specific about what you can spent the money on?).
My (outsider) perspective of the field is that private funding for academic style research is uncommon, and generally involves the funder directly hiring the researchers, which seems to have some things in common with what you’re saying (although since the researchers typically doesn’t own any portions of the organization, they have presumably have fewer incentives to mentor other people).
If non academic research counts (researching something so you can build a product), then a think something similar to what you’re proposing happens in some parts of the startup scene. For example, a group of people get together with an idea for a new product, start a company, research how to create/improve the product. Once the company transitions from solving scientific/technical problems to solving organizational problems, the founders leave and join or found new startups. The main difference here is that it’s a short term cycle instead of a long term commitment, but that doesn’t seem to stop people for providing mentoring.
You explain why new researchers would want to join, but why would top researchers want to? It seems like they lose money and time in exchange for that warm feeling you get when helping people. Would that be enough?
I think top researchers would only join (apart from the fuzzies) if they wanted to do something risky, like an AI person wanting to do something new that was not Deep Learning. There would be questions about whether they could build a community or find someone to publish what they were doing, but that if they succeeded they might get lots of funding down the line. But they would be getting funding from the other members of the syndicate as they were trying to work this out.
I think you are right about the government grants which might be a significant blocker.
You explain why new researchers would want to join, but why would top researchers want to? It seems like they lose money and time in exchange for that warm feeling you get when helping people. Would that be enough?
In terms of legality, worker owned corporations exist, but I suspect it would be hard convincing people to give unrestricted funding to the corporation (I think most government grants are fairly specific about what you can spent the money on?).
My (outsider) perspective of the field is that private funding for academic style research is uncommon, and generally involves the funder directly hiring the researchers, which seems to have some things in common with what you’re saying (although since the researchers typically doesn’t own any portions of the organization, they have presumably have fewer incentives to mentor other people).
If non academic research counts (researching something so you can build a product), then a think something similar to what you’re proposing happens in some parts of the startup scene. For example, a group of people get together with an idea for a new product, start a company, research how to create/improve the product. Once the company transitions from solving scientific/technical problems to solving organizational problems, the founders leave and join or found new startups. The main difference here is that it’s a short term cycle instead of a long term commitment, but that doesn’t seem to stop people for providing mentoring.
I think top researchers would only join (apart from the fuzzies) if they wanted to do something risky, like an AI person wanting to do something new that was not Deep Learning. There would be questions about whether they could build a community or find someone to publish what they were doing, but that if they succeeded they might get lots of funding down the line. But they would be getting funding from the other members of the syndicate as they were trying to work this out.
I think you are right about the government grants which might be a significant blocker.