Recently, Sam Altman of OpenAI described Meta’s efforts to lure top AI experts away from his business with $100 million in signing incentives as “crazy.”
Chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth of Meta claims that OpenAI has been rejecting those outrageous proposals.
In an interview on Friday with CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime,” Bosworth claimed that Altman “neglected to mention that he’s countering those offers.”
Recently, the CEO of OpenAI revealed that Meta was providing his staff with enormous signing incentives in an appearance on his brother’s podcast, “Uncapped with Jack Altman.”
The CEO did not specify if OpenAI resisted the signing incentives in order to keep those top workers, but he did state that “none of our best people” had accepted Meta’s offers. Requests for comment from OpenAI and Meta were not answered.
These substantial signing incentives, according to the CTO of Meta, are an indication that the market is establishing a price for the best AI expertise.
In his twenty years as a technology executive, the market is establishing a price for a level of expertise that is quite amazing and rather unheard of,” Bosworth stated. However, that is a huge credit to those who, five or six years ago, put their heads down and chose to devote their time to a technology that was unproven at the time. They have since established themselves as a relatively small pool of people who can command an amazing market premium for the talent they have raised.
On June 12, Meta said that, as the social network firm advances its artificial intelligence research, it has paid $14.8 billion to acquire a 49% share in Scale AI, a data startup.
According to Peter Kafka, chief media and tech correspondent for Business Insider, the move seems to be a costly acquisition of Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, and a few of the company’s senior staffers.
According to Bosworth, The high offers for AI talent will push others to expand their skills, so the figures will look different in a few years. However, it’s a comparatively small amount now, and he believes they deserve it, he added.