  Countries, companies, and universities are increasingly competing over
top-tier artificial intelligence (AI) researchers. Where are these researchers
likely to immigrate and what affects their immigration decisions? We conducted
a survey $(n = 524)$ of the immigration preferences and motivations of
researchers that had papers accepted at one of two prestigious AI conferences:
the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) and the
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). We find that the U.S. is
the most popular destination for AI researchers, followed by the U.K., Canada,
Switzerland, and France. A country's professional opportunities stood out as
the most common factor that influences immigration decisions of AI researchers,
followed by lifestyle and culture, the political climate, and personal
relations. The destination country's immigration policies were important to
just under half of the researchers surveyed, while around a quarter noted
current immigration difficulties to be a deciding factor. Visa and immigration
difficulties were perceived to be a particular impediment to conducting AI
research in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. Implications of the findings for
the future of AI talent policies and governance are discussed.
