100% agree. I am especially bothered by the implicit agism in the study. PhD students tend to be in their early to mid-20s. There is a much larger pool of older engineers in the United States who can be re-trained as AI specialists. Instead of a call to keep AI talents in the United States, we should be re-training existing talents in AI technologies.
Why are these older engineers not training themselves already, and who should be training them? If people in one of the highest demand and best paid professions out there cannot take some time to keep their skills up to date, why does it fall to some nebulous "we" to apply re-training to them?
If there's some geopolitical reason that it's a good idea for the government or someone to offer them free training programs, I'm all for it, but I'm not understanding the moral argument.
PhD programs are just not competitive from a pay or work/life balance that by implicit design they tend to deter people older with industry experience from starting along the path.
