Trump’s campaign for foreign students may hinder critical artificial intelligence research

In some American colleges, international students make up the majority of doctoral students in departments such as computer science. At the University of Chicago, for example, foreign citizens represent 57 percent One of the newly registered doctoral students last year, according to the data published by the school.

Since international students often pay full tuition fees, they provide funding that schools can use to expand their programs. As a result, students born abroad do not generally take educational opportunities from Americans, but rather create more holes in general, according to a report Earlier this month was issued by the National Foundation for American Policy. Researchers from the non -party research center estimated that each additional doctorate granted to the international student in the field of STEM “is linked to an additional doctoral letter granted to a local student.”

“Restricting student visas and reducing the number of foreign citizens studying computer science” will deeply affect the field in the United States, “says Rebecca Wellet, a professor at the University of Chicago, who focuses on the sporting and statistical foundations of automated learning. Computing technology. ”

Mahran Sami, head of the Student University Sciences Department, describes the student visa policy changes as “opposite”. He refused to participate the number of foreign students who were registered in the Stanford Computer Science Program, which includes both graduate students and university students, but he admits that it is “a lot”.

“They add a lot to it, and they have decades for decades. It is a way to bring the best and brightest minds to the United States to study, and they end up contributing to the economy after that.” But he is now concerned that talent “will end up going to other countries.”

the The vast majority PhD students from China and India say they intend to stay in the United States after their graduation, while the majority of some other countries, such as Switzerland and Canada, are compared to planning to leave.

STEM graduates often continue abroad and who remain in the United States to work in American universities or private technology companies, or become the founders of an emerging company in Silicon Valley. Immigrants were established or participated in their founding Nearly two -thirds Among the best artificial intelligence companies in the United States, according to the 2023 analysis by the National Corporation for American Policy.

William Lazonik, an economist who has studied innovation and global competition on a large scale, says that the United States has witnessed an influx of foreign students studying STEM specialties that start in the eighties of the last century, as fields such as accurate electronics and biological pharmaceutical preparations were going through a technological revolution.

During the same period, Laczonik says, note that many American students choose to enter into funding professions instead of difficult science. “My sense, to be a faculty member in both public and private universities in the United States, is that foreign students who follow the profession of STEM Canon are computers because of the presence of graduate studies programs in related scientific and engineering disciplines,” says Larec.

Since the Trump administration is working to restrict the flow of international students and reduce funding of federal research, governments and universities have launched all over the world Detailed campaigns To court International students American scientists are keen to take advantage of a rare opportunity to pick up American talent.

“Hong Kong is trying to attract Harvard University students. The UK is creating scholarships for students,” says Sean Carver, Executive Director of the International Home, a residential center for students at the University of California, Berkeley. “They see this earning the brain. For us, it’s the migration of minds.”