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A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

nytimes.com

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Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#151

Post by brandall10 »

jgalt212 wrote: post #141
brandall10 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's best to look at this as expected value. A top AI research has the potential to bring in a lot more $$ than a top athlete, but of course there is a big risk factor on top of that.

If you imagine hard enough, you can expect anything. e.g. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Sure, but the idea these hires could pay out big is within the realm of actual reality, even if AGI itself remains a pipe dream. It’s not like AI hasn’t already had a massive impact on global commerce and markets.

Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#152

Post by thefaux »

magic_man wrote: post #138
BSOhealth wrote: post #111

These figures are for a very small number of potential people. This leaves out that frontier AI is being developed by an incredibly small number of extremely smart people who have migrated between big tech, frontier AI, and others. Yes, the figures are nuts. But compare them to F1 or soccer salaries for top athletes. A single big name can drive billions in that context at least, and much more in the context of AI. $5…

Top athletes they have stats to measure. I guess for these researchers I guess there are papers? How do you know who did what with multiple authors? How do you figure out who is Jordan vs Steve Kerr?

Yeah, who knew that Kerr would have the more successful overall career in basketball?

Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#153

Post by ignoramous »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #143
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #112

I take this as a contrarian signal that Meta has hit serious roadblocks improving their AI despite massive data advantages and are throwing a bunch of "Hail Mary" desperation passes to achieve meaningful further progress.

> I take this as a contrarian signal that Meta has hit serious roadblocks improving their AI despite massive data advantages Just a thought: Assuming that Meta's AI is actually good. Could it rather be that having access to a massive amount of data does not bring that much of a business value (in this case particularly for training AIs)? Evidence for my hypothesis: if you want to gain a deep knowledge about some comp…

> Assuming that Meta's AI is actually good. Could it rather be that having access to a massive amount ...

Most would say, vibe-wise Llama 4 fell flat in face of Qwen & friends.

Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#154

Post by AIPedant »

brandall10 wrote: post #136
AIPedant wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very major difference is that top athletes bring in real tangible money via ticket / merch sales and sponsorships, whereas top AI researchers bring in pseudo-money via investor speculation. The AI money is far more likely to vanish.

It's best to look at this as expected value. A top AI research has the potential to bring in a lot more $$ than a top athlete, but of course there is a big risk factor on top of that.

The expected value is itself a random variable, there is always a chance you mischaracterized the underlying distribution. For sports stars the variance in the expected value is extremely small, even if the variance in the sample value is quite large - it might be hard to predict how an individual sports star will do, but there is enough data to get a sense of the overall distribution and identify potential outliers.

For AI researchers pursuing AGI, this variance between distributions is arguably even worse than the distribution between samples - there's no past data whatsoever to build estimates, it's all vibes.

Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#155

Post by ignoramous »

AIPedant wrote: post #117
BSOhealth wrote: post #111

These figures are for a very small number of potential people. This leaves out that frontier AI is being developed by an incredibly small number of extremely smart people who have migrated between big tech, frontier AI, and others. Yes, the figures are nuts. But compare them to F1 or soccer salaries for top athletes. A single big name can drive billions in that context at least, and much more in the context of AI. $5…

A very major difference is that top athletes bring in real tangible money via ticket / merch sales and sponsorships, whereas top AI researchers bring in pseudo-money via investor speculation. The AI money is far more likely to vanish.

Another major difference is, BigTech is bigger than these global sporting institutions.

How much revenue does Google make in a day? £700m+.

Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#156

Post by ramesh31 »

There has to be more at play here. Was this some kind of acquihire? No 24 year old in the history of 24 year olds has been worth $250 million on the basis of their intellectual merit. Even granting that they were some kind of one-off super genius, no single human is that smart or productive, to be worth the bankroll of a literal army of PhDs. He has to be bringing more to the table.

Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#157

Post by brandall10 »

AIPedant wrote: post #154
brandall10 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's best to look at this as expected value. A top AI research has the potential to bring in a lot more $$ than a top athlete, but of course there is a big risk factor on top of that.

The expected value is itself a random variable, there is always a chance you mischaracterized the underlying distribution. For sports stars the variance in the expected value is extremely small, even if the variance in the sample value is quite large - it might be hard to predict how an individual sports star will do, but there is enough data to get a sense of the overall distribution and identify potential outliers.…

We’ve seen $T+ scale impacts from AI over the past few years.

You can argue the distribution is hard to pin down (hence my note on risk), but let’s not pretend there’s zero precedent.

If it turns out to be another winter at least it will have been a fucking blizzard.

Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#158

Post by soulofmischief »

Lol. I was leading development of a project that did everything his project Vy does and much more, before my company experienced a hostile takeover and I was squeezed out so they could pivot to a shitass AI sex bot company that ultimately ran through our warchest and failed. That was back in 2022-2023.

Maybe I need to get one of these recruitment agents.

Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#159

Post by ojbyrne »

AIPedant wrote: post #117
BSOhealth wrote: post #111

These figures are for a very small number of potential people. This leaves out that frontier AI is being developed by an incredibly small number of extremely smart people who have migrated between big tech, frontier AI, and others. Yes, the figures are nuts. But compare them to F1 or soccer salaries for top athletes. A single big name can drive billions in that context at least, and much more in the context of AI. $5…

A very major difference is that top athletes bring in real tangible money via ticket / merch sales and sponsorships, whereas top AI researchers bring in pseudo-money via investor speculation. The AI money is far more likely to vanish.

My understanding is that the bulk of revenue comes from television contracts. There has been speculation that that could easily shrink in the future if the charges become more granular and non-sports watching people stop subsidizing the sports watching people. That seems analogous to AI money.

Re: A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages

#160

Post by thefaux »

Honestly, I think a lot of this is as much marketing as it is about actual value. This helps the industry narrative about how transformative the tech is. These inflated comp packages perfectly match the inflated claims around the tech. "See this tech is so incredible we are paying people 1 BILLION dollars!"

These types of comp packages also seem designed to create a kind of indentured servitude for the researchers. Instead of forming their own rival companies that might actually compete with facebook, facebook is trying to foreclose that possibility. The researchers get the money, but they are also giving up autonomy. Personally, no amount of money would induce me to work for Zuckerberg.

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