alphagrep12345

I suck at staying in touch with people. So much that I'm planning to build an app, where I can make a list of contacts I care about and it'd notify me if I didn't speak to someone for a long time.

I want to keep it simple for the everyday user. However, I think I can add more features. One feature I thought was regarding gifting. Make a note of what each person is into in the form of tags. Say tags like loves-to-cook, etc. And make a list of gifts you can give to a tag - eg: a chef's knife.

What other features do you want? And how much would you pay for this app?

I'm trying to decide between ML PhD at 5-10 CS school (in USA) and RE at FAANG (It is one of the applied teams and not pure research teams like FAIR/Google Brain)

If going to industry is eventual goal, which of these two options is preferable?

ML PhD - Highly reputed but takes 5 years to finish. Not sure if the effort + wait is worth the reward. RE - Might not be cutting edge work. Focus is still on the product, but get to do decent amount of engineering + research for the product.

Eventually, I'd love to work in places like DeepMind, or AI applications like AI for drug discovery, AI for Climate Change, etc.

Towards this, is it beneficial to do a 5 year PhD or start from MLE/RE and graduate my way there? Really confused as to how to make this decision.

Thanks!

I'm thinking of creating a new AI powered note-taking app which has features like 'auto suggest', 'search using natural language', 'asking natural language question to get answer using notes as knowledge base ', etc.

What other features would you like to see?

PS: Suggest your wildest feature request.

For researchers who've founded a company before -

How would you approach your PhD if you want to start a company during/after your PhD? How would this influence the choice of advisor you choose, schools you pick, etc?

For background: I'm applying for a PhD in ML (NLP to be specific) and am actively thinking about this question

Majority of coffee fans say their local coffee shops make better coffee than starbucks. If that's so, why doesn't starbucks, with all it's money and resources become better than local coffee shops. What is it missing?