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

nytimes.com

191–200 of 575 posts

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

#191

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…

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

#192

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.

OOf. Trying awfully hard to have a bad day there eh?

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

#193
Of course, their job is to make their own job redundant. If they are true believers, this is the last paycheck they might ever get.

After that, it's manual labor like the plebs or having enough savings to ~~last them the rest of their lives~~ invest and "earn" passive income by taking a portion of the value produced by people who still do actual work.

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

#194

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…

Hm, I thought that these salaries were offered to actual "giants" like Jeff Dean or someone extremely knowledgeable in the specifics of how the "business side" of AI might look like (CEOs, etc). Can someone clarify what is so special about this specific person? He is not a "top tier athlete" - I looked at his academic profile and it does not seem impressive to me by any measure. He'd make an alright (not even particularly great) assistant professor in a second tier university - which is impressive, but is by no means unique enough to explain this compensation.

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

#195

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…

Hm, I thought that these salaries were offered to actual "giants" like Jeff Dean or someone extremely knowledgeable in the specifics of how the "business side" of AI might look like (CEOs, etc). Can someone clarify what is so special about this specific person? He is not a "top tier athlete" - I looked at his academic profile and it does not seem impressive to me by any measure. He'd make an alright (not even particu…

A PhD dropout with an alright (passable) academic record, who worked in a 1.5-tier lab on a fairly pedestrian project (multimodal llms and agents, sure), and started a startup.. Reallyttrying to not sound bitter, good for him, I guess, but does it indicate that there's something really fucked up with how talent is being acquired?

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

#196

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…

It’s just a matter of taste, but I am pleased to see publicity on people with compensation packages that greatly exceed actors and athletes. It’s about time the nerds got some recognition. My hope is that researchers get the level of celebrity that they deserve and inspire young people to put their minds to building great things.

how do you know they are nerds?

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

#197

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…

It’s just a matter of taste, but I am pleased to see publicity on people with compensation packages that greatly exceed actors and athletes. It’s about time the nerds got some recognition. My hope is that researchers get the level of celebrity that they deserve and inspire young people to put their minds to building great things.

Sounds vindictive. And yet. According to Forbes, the top 8 richest people have a tech background, most of whom are "nerdy" by some definition.

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

#199

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…

Frontier AI that scales – these people all have extensive experience with developing systems that operate with hundreds of millions of users. Don’t get me wrong, they are smart people - but so are thousands of other researchers you find in academia etc. - difference here is scale of the operation.

Yeah, I guess if you have a datacenter that costs $100B, even hiring a humble CUDA assembly wizard that can optimize your code to run 10% faster is worth $10B to the company.

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

#200

why the negativity? no one bats an eye when ronaldo/messi or steph curry or other top athletes get insane salaries. These AI researchers will probably have far more impact on society (good or bad I dont know) than the athletes, and the people who pay them (ie zuck et al) certainly thinks its worth paying them this much because they provide value.

My personal negativity stems from Meta in particular having a negative net impact on society. And no small one either. Everything Zuckerberg touches turns to poison (basically King Midas in reverse). And all that money, all that progress, is directed towards the detriment of everyone but a few.

In contrast, a skilled football player lands somewhere between neutral and positive, as at the very least they entertain millions of people. And I'm saying that as someone who finds football painfully dull.

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