Why I Decided to Quit My PhD in AI

Yes. I dropped out. I quit. I left… no matter how you want to say it.

I was one year into this journey, passionate and immersed in the world of research and academia. However, I still decided to take the leap and focus on my startup and other projects like my YouTube channel.

Don’t get me wrong; the Ph.D. was a significant chapter, and I think it is definitely worth it for many, yet my hope was that my story might resonate with your inner debates and questions like: is a Ph.D. the right path for you?

Reasons for quitting the PhD:

• The desire to innovate and create was significantly growing.
• The love towards the startup world, and other projects like the YouTube channel.
• Enjoyment in fusing theoretical knowledge with real-world application.
• The urgency to create and the energy of startup culture became irresistible.
• Wanted to embark on a journey characterized by immediate innovation, rapid implementation, and seeing ideas transform into tangible solutions.
• The feeling of being drawn to quickly bringing ideas to life.
• The desire to fully own the work he was doing for motivation.
• The feeling of doing too much, yet not enough.
• The realization that most skills can be learned from the industry or personal projects/startups, thanks to talking with a dozen experts on my podcast.
• Stress. The Ph.D. was stressful, even if most of the stress was self-imposed.
• The feeling of doing two things halfway, juggling PhD with other projects.
• The desire to build AI models and work in the field, for which the PhD might not be worth the four years.

Who the PhD is for:

• Those in love with deep research.
• Individuals aspiring to be professors.
• Those dreaming about working on complex problems for a long time to solve them.
• People who want to work on a specific problem for a long period.
• People who love learning and teaching.
• People interested in gaining lots of invaluable skills for their life such as problem-solving, critical thinking, managing projects, structuring ideas and schedules, and self-motivation. Even though I (and many experts) am convinced they can be learned with a different path.
• Those who enjoy the whole process, enjoy learning, improving, sharing, and working on useful and long-term projects.
• Those looking to work at big companies like Google, Meta, etc., where having the "PhD" title has great value.

Learn more in my recent video about it: