One disadvantage of your second proposal is that it rewards people who chose to prepare themselves to do AI research or AI development, which in turn incentivizes young people who have not yet chosen a career path to choose AI. (It is impractical to hide from the young people the news that AI researchers have been rewarded with US citizenship.) I would prefer a policy that punishes people for choosing to prepare themselves to be AI researchers, e.g., a policy that puts any Chinese national who studies AI at a university or gets a job as an AI researcher or apprentice AI researcher on a sanctions list maintained by the US government similar to the list of Russian entities who participated in the invasion of Ukraine!
Your first proposal is fine with me, particularly if China retaliates by imposing strict controls on the transfer of AI knowledge to the US: I’m for almost any restriction on the flow of knowledge useful for advancing AI between any 2 populations.
As I have written the proposal, it applies to anyone applying for an employment visa in the US in any industry. Someone in a foreign country who wants to move to the US would not have to decide to focus on AI in order to move to the US; they may choose any pathway that they believe would induce a US employer to sponsor them, or that they believe the US government would approve through self-petitioning pathways in the EB-1 and EB-2 NIW.
Having said that, I expect that AI-focused graduates will be especially well placed to secure an employment visa, but it does not directly focus on rewarding those graduates. Consequently I concede you are right about the incentive generated, though I think the broad nature of the proposal mitigates against that concern somewhat.
One disadvantage of your second proposal is that it rewards people who chose to prepare themselves to do AI research or AI development, which in turn incentivizes young people who have not yet chosen a career path to choose AI. (It is impractical to hide from the young people the news that AI researchers have been rewarded with US citizenship.) I would prefer a policy that punishes people for choosing to prepare themselves to be AI researchers, e.g., a policy that puts any Chinese national who studies AI at a university or gets a job as an AI researcher or apprentice AI researcher on a sanctions list maintained by the US government similar to the list of Russian entities who participated in the invasion of Ukraine!
Your first proposal is fine with me, particularly if China retaliates by imposing strict controls on the transfer of AI knowledge to the US: I’m for almost any restriction on the flow of knowledge useful for advancing AI between any 2 populations.
As I have written the proposal, it applies to anyone applying for an employment visa in the US in any industry. Someone in a foreign country who wants to move to the US would not have to decide to focus on AI in order to move to the US; they may choose any pathway that they believe would induce a US employer to sponsor them, or that they believe the US government would approve through self-petitioning pathways in the EB-1 and EB-2 NIW.
Having said that, I expect that AI-focused graduates will be especially well placed to secure an employment visa, but it does not directly focus on rewarding those graduates. Consequently I concede you are right about the incentive generated, though I think the broad nature of the proposal mitigates against that concern somewhat.