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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

#251

Post by godelski »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #130
MichaelZuo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just want the best, and they’re afraid of having second rates, B-players, etc., causing a bozo explosion. That seems like all the motivation that’s needed. Why why would they need fears about a quasi-facebook chatbot?

Coming from Meta, I have to wonder if the reason for this isn't more down to Zuck's ego and history. He seems to have somewhat lost interest in FaceBook, and was previously all-in on the Metaverse as the next big thing, which has failed to take off as a concept, and now wants to go all-in on "super-intelligence" (seems to lack ambition - why not "super-duper extra special intelligence"?) with his new vision being sma…

I don't think he gave up on the metaverse. Isn't AR glasses a stepping stone towards that? Or rather LLM voice assistant a stepping stone towards AR glasses? And the metaverse being a stepping stone towards a holodeck?

I mean I'm with you, I think these things are pretty far away and are going to cost a lot of money to make and require a lot of failure in the mean time. But then again, it looks like they spent ~$18bn on Reality Labs last year. So if he was funding it all on his own dime, his current $260bn of wealth would give him a good 14 years runway if we ignore interest. It would be effectively indefinite if he earns about a 5% interest on that money.

I guess I'm just trying to say, it's hard to think about these things when we're talking about such scales of wealth. I mean at those scales, I'm pretty sure the money is meaningless, that money (and the ability to throw it around) is more a proxy for ego.

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

#252

Post by nsriv »

TrackerFF wrote: post #245
apparent wrote: post #208

This is the result of the winner-take-all (most) economy. If the very best LLM is 1.5x as good as good as the next-best, then pretty much everyone in the world will want to use the best one. That means billions of dollars of profit hang in the balance, so companies want to make sure they get the very best people (even if they have to pay hundreds of millions to get it). It's the same reason that sports stars, musicia…

I don't think AI will be a winner-take-all scenario. If that is to happen, I think the following assumptions must hold: 1) The winner immediately becomes a monopoly 2) All investments are directed from competitors, to the winner 3) Research on AGI/ASI ceases I don't see how any of these would be viable. Right now there's an incremental model arms race, with no companies holding a secret sauce so powerful that they're…

I agree with you, and think we are in the heady days where moat building hasn't quite begun. Regarding 1) and 3), most models have API access to facilitate quick switching and agentic AI middleware reaps the benefits of new models being better at some specific use-case than a competitor. In the not-so-distant future, I can see the walls coming up, with some version of white-listed user-agent access only. At the moment, model improvement hype and priority access are the product, but at some point capability and general access will be the product.

We are already seeing diminishing returns from compute and training costs going up, but as more and more AI is used in the wild and pollutes training data, having validated data becomes the moat.

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

#253

Post by godelski »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #243
catmanjan wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can anyone still believe the AGI scam

If you think the possibility of AGI within 7-10 years is a scam then you aren't paying attention to trends.

I wouldn't call 7-10 years a scam, but I would call it low odds. It is pretty hard to be accurate on predictions of a 10 year window. But I definitely think 2027 and 2030 predictions are a scam. Majority of researchers think it is further away than 10 years, if you are looking at surveys from the AI conferences rather than predictions in the news.

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

#255

Post by aleph_minus_one »

tantalor wrote: post #249
SamvitJ wrote: post #220

One way to make sense of this specific case at least. - He's on track to becoming a top-tier AI researcher. Despite having only one year of a PhD under his belt, he already received two top awards as a first-author at major AI conferences [1]. Typically, it takes many more years of experience to do research that receives this level of recognition. Most PhDs never get there. - Molmo, the slate of open vision-language…

> could be worth... Exactly. What's the likelihood of that?

> What's the likelihood of that?

Sufficiently high that Meta is willing to pay such an amount of money. :-)

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

#256

Post by omnee »

Zuck made him and offer that couldn't be refused. But neither salaries or hype or hope are what AI should be measured against. LLM based AI should be measured against previous technological revolutions, in terms of sustained real income growth and ideally real income growth per person.

Right now capital expenses are responsible for most of AI's economic impacts, as seen by the infrastructure spend contributing more to GDP than consumer spending this year.

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

#258

Post by bloodyplonker22 »

SamvitJ wrote: post #220

One way to make sense of this specific case at least. - He's on track to becoming a top-tier AI researcher. Despite having only one year of a PhD under his belt, he already received two top awards as a first-author at major AI conferences [1]. Typically, it takes many more years of experience to do research that receives this level of recognition. Most PhDs never get there. - Molmo, the slate of open vision-language…

I agree on all points. However, if he already had several millions like Mira and Ilya, his choice to work for Zuckerberg would likely be different. Where is the glory in bending the knee to Meta and Zuckerbeg?

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

#259

Post by ceejayoz »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #258
SamvitJ wrote: post #220

One way to make sense of this specific case at least. - He's on track to becoming a top-tier AI researcher. Despite having only one year of a PhD under his belt, he already received two top awards as a first-author at major AI conferences [1]. Typically, it takes many more years of experience to do research that receives this level of recognition. Most PhDs never get there. - Molmo, the slate of open vision-language…

I agree on all points. However, if he already had several millions like Mira and Ilya, his choice to work for Zuckerberg would likely be different. Where is the glory in bending the knee to Meta and Zuckerbeg?

I’d forgo a lot of glory for $250M. I suspect I’m not rare in that.

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

#260

Post by exasperaited »

omnee wrote: post #256

Zuck made him and offer that couldn't be refused. But neither salaries or hype or hope are what AI should be measured against. LLM based AI should be measured against previous technological revolutions, in terms of sustained real income growth and ideally real income growth per person. Right now capital expenses are responsible for most of AI's economic impacts, as seen by the infrastructure spend contributing more t…

And yet this one guy's deal possibly represents 0.5% of the total profit that everyone except Nvidia is making out of this wave of AI. Maybe even more.
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