Does depend on where your PhD lives and what subject their PhD is in from where, and how many hours of work you expect them to do a week, and whether you need to full-time "prompt" them to get them to function...

Would definitely rather have a single postdoc in a relevant STEM subject from somewhere like Imperial for less than half the overall cost than an LLM all in though. And I say that despite seeing the quality of the memes they produce with generative AI....

Depends on what these PhDs are supposed to do. Also is this an average Phd or a brilliant PhD level? There is a huge spectrum of PhDs out there. I highly doubt these phd level models are able to solve any problems in a creative way or discover new things other than regurgitating the knowledge they are trained on.

> Even PhD students, who's nominal salary is maybe $3-5k a month

Do they really get paid that much these days?

> $20k can't get you that many PhD. Even PhD students, who's nominal salary is maybe $3-5k a month, effectively costs double that because of school overhead and other stuff.

But you are not getting a PhD worker for 20K with "AI", that's just marketing.

Based on ubiquitous AI trainer ads on the internet that advertise their pay, they probably make <=$50/hr training these models. Trainers are usually remote and set their own hours, so I wouldn’t be surprised if PhDs are not making much as trainers.

Come to Italy where 1.1k is enough