Even so, the US still suffers from an AI talent shortage, exacerbated by existing immigration policies without the latest restrictions. Anecdotally, US-based AI researchers have long lamented the impact of unfriendly visa limits on their pace of innovation. In February 2019, when president Trump signed an executive order to institute a national AI strategy, Oren Etzioni, the CEO of the research nonprofit Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, argued in an op-ed that the move was critically missing a special visa program for AI experts. On Twitter, Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, concurred: “My collaborators' visa restrictions have been one of the largest bottlenecks to our collective research productivity over the last few years,” he said. Trump’s executive order will likely only make this shortage worse. CSET estimates that at least 35% of H-1B holders have an AI-related degree, and nearly three-quarters work in computing-related fields. Though the Trump administration hasn’t indicated how long the current visa suspensions could last, it has already contributed to “a growing sense of instability,” Zachary Arnold, a research fellow at CSET, says. As a result, more foreign nationals could choose not to bring their talents to the US because of uncertainty surrounding their ability to stay.
Based upon my experience at MIT it is clear that many foreign nationals are being supported by US Military funding and then taking their expertise back to be used against the United States. If AI, whatever that may mean, is so critical, there are clearly a wealth of US citizens more than capable of doing the R&D as required. Having foreign nationals being supported by US Defense and related entities and then allowing the Intellectual Property to go back to a country which has taken a clearly hostile position against the US is not only unacceptable but a clear threat.
During the Cold War we clearly did not support Soviet students in our doctoral programs. In today's environment, in a technology so critical to the US then we should be supporting US students. This also applies to many areas of biotech as well.
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