The CEO of Google Deepmind says there's a simple reason why Meta is spending millions of dollars to attract AI talent.
“The meta isn't on the frontier now. Maybe they can get back there,” said Demis Hassavis in an episode of the “Lex Fridman” podcast released Thursday. “They're behind and they need to do something, so it's probably rational what they're doing from their perspective.”
Over the past few weeks, Meta has launched an all-out talent war, offering frontier raceboat researchers such as Openai with a pay package of up to $100 million. Superintelligence Division. Recent well-known recruits include former Github chief Nat Friedman, former CEO of Scale AI, and former Openai researchers Shengjia Zhao, Shuchao Bi, Jiahui Yu and Hongyu Ren.
Hassavis said that while it is “rational” for Meta to make these offers, many people in the AI space “have safely ordered that technology.”
“There's something important, not just money,” he said. “Of course, we have to pay people the market rate and all of these things and that's going on up.”
Meta did not reply to a request for comment from Business Insider about Hassabis' comments.
Last week, human co-founder Benjamin Mann said his researchers weren't making the “hard choice” to stay.
“The people here are so mission-oriented that we may not be affected much more than many other companies in this space,” Mann said. “They took these offers and said, 'Well, of course, I'm not going to leave. My best case scenario in the meta is that we make money, and my best case in humanity is that we will affect the future of humanity.”
“We're doing well throughout this moment.”
Earlier this month, Business Insider reported how much Top AI Labs is paying technical staff based on federal visa submissions.
Openai has paid an average of $292,115 to the 29 technical staff listed in the filing, earning a maximum position of $530,000 and a lowest of $200,000. Humanity pays 14 technology recruits from an average of $387,500, with the highest-paid position earning $690,000 and the lowest $300,000.
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Mira Murati's new AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has paid two members of its technical staff a $450,000 salary, with the other earning $500,000.
Hassavis said AI research is not necessarily a salary profession.
“When we started in 2010, I remember not paying myself for years because I didn't have enough money. I couldn't raise money,” Hassavis said.
“Recently, interns have been paid the amount we raised as our first seed round,” he added.
The AI talent war is getting so intense that some analysts are worried that it will increase Increased cost To go ahead with AI.
In Google's revenue call on Thursday, analysts asked CEO Sundar Pichai about Google's “AI-related resource costs” and how competition affects the company's ability to retain talent.
In response, Pichai said Google had experienced such a moment before, and its retention metric is “health.”
“We will continue to look at both retention metrics and new talent, both are healthy,” Pichai said. “I know that individual cases can make headlines, but if you look deeper into the numbers, I think they're doing well throughout this moment.”
Companies are also implementing other tactics.
In April, BI reported some Google DeepMind UK staff are subject to non-competitive contracts that prevent them from working for a competitor for up to 12 months after completing their work at Google.
