The advent of artificial intelligence brings to mind a baffling new world of self-driving cars, smart robots that do chores, and service industry jobs being lost to computerization. As this new world is built, tech companies are increasingly seeking researchers from universities, creating tension between commercial companies and institutes of education.

Facebook is specifically interested in AI and robotics to deal with the recent rash of misinformation and fake news on its website. The social media giant is opening up A.I. labs in Seattle, WA., and Pittsburgh, PA - these labs will be staffed by recent hires from the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon University. Though this does not sound insidious, Facebook’s use of these universities as recruitment grounds is a problem because these schools are struggling to retain professors.

Losing the most knowledgeable computer science and AI professors to tech companies will hinder the education of the next generation of engineers. Facebook’s actions were especially harmful to Carnegie Mellon, which lost “40 researchers and technical engineers…” from the robotics department to Uber, and its head of machine learning technology to JP Morgan. As tech companies and universities compete for the most knowledgeable researchers, implications for current computer science and engineering students grow dismal: this “brain drain” on universities, if it continues, will deprive students of the education needed to continue the current progression toward mechanization and efficiency.

Many from academia who are offered jobs with tech companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, or Baidu are convinced by astronomical salaries that make their university salaries pale in comparison. Some professors and researchers opt to balance both corporate and academic careers by retaining their professorships, but the tech job usually means that they will have less time to dedicate to their research and teaching.

The specific topics under the field of AI that Facebook needs expertise in are rather specific and complex, meaning that universities are among the only places where these companies can find top researchers. Facebook hired Luke Zettlemoyer, a professor at the University of Washington, who studies the intersection between artificial intelligence and linguistics: how technology understands human language. Other fields include computer vision technology and reinforcement learning, which is a way for robots to learn tasks by trial and error, a sort of operant conditioning for AI.

Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen is funding an effort to teach artificial intelligence “common sense” through his nonprofit, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, located in Seattle. This project aims to build a “database of fundamental knowledge that humans take for granted but machines have always lacked”. For example, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri can only respond to a basic set of questions and directives and often frustrate users with their inability to handle more complex commands. The project, called Project Alexandria, is so ambitious and difficult that it requires the best talent. Its chief researchers are overwhelmingly hired from the University of Washington.

A source of cognitive dissonance among these recruited professors is whether Facebook’s mission and reason for hiring align with their academic philosophy. Ed Lazowska, the Bill and Melinda Gates professor of computer science at the University of Washington, cites a set of recommendations being created by the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon that will suggest ways for tech companies and universities to share talent instead of fight for it. Professors will have to decide whether they want to educate the next generation or join the top commercial tech companies in mechanizing the future.