AI Talent War: Humans Get Paid

Amid predictions about job security in the AI era, a small group of people who create AI have become extremely valuable. Tech companies are trying to hire AI leaders and researchers, and are offering large paychecks to get them.

Meta has been spending money to improve its AI operations. The company hopes that new talent will help its efforts, which are behind the competition and could risk future profits. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hired Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, as his chief AI officer, and invested $14.3 billion in Wang’s company. Zuckerberg also hired Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub, to work with Wang in leading Meta’s new superintelligence lab.

Meta then hired AI researchers from OpenAI, as well as employees from Google and Anthropic, which makes the Claude AI assistant. Zuckerberg announced Wang and Friedman’s roles and the opening of the superintelligence lab, stating that developing superintelligence is becoming a reality and that he is committed to Meta leading the way.

The competition between Meta and OpenAI for AI talent shows what is happening in the tech industry. Companies are trying to recruit AI leaders and workers, acknowledging that creating superintelligence depends on humans.

Companies often say AI can do magic, but the technology cannot completely function on its own. AI research scientists who focus on AI and advancements to it are considered the most important. They manage the training of models, fine-tune them, and make them adaptable for developers to use in their products. Some companies are willing to pay a lot of money for top talent.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that Meta offered $100 million compensation packages to some of his employees, but no one of importance accepted. However, people soon started leaving. OpenAI’s chief research officer, Mark Chen, expressed his frustration in an internal memo. To prevent more people from leaving, he promised to improve compensation and find ways to reward top talent.

David Horn, head of AI at Brex, said that humans are needed to develop and improve AI. He said that a few people can greatly impact a company’s success. Horn stated that people need to explain to AI what problems to solve and why. Brex is not developing AI, but is using the models that bigger companies produce to tailor it for the financial sector. Several levels of workers are needed to do this, including those who work with the AI, those who manage their work, and those who set the policies for how to work with AI.

Hiring is slowing in certain specialties because of AI. For example, software engineers are using AI to help them write code. Some companies have slowed hiring or discussed cutting jobs to save money. Customer service, data entry, and low-level finance jobs are at risk from AI. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that AI does half of the work within his company, but did not provide details. Salesforce has many job openings with AI-related terms in the title or description.