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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

#261

Post by p1esk »

godelski wrote: post #239
storus wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLaMA 4 is barely better than LLaMA 3.3 so a year of development didn't bring any worthy gains for Meta, and execs are likely panicking in order not to slip further given what even a resource-constrained DeepSeek did to them.

> given what even a resource-constrained DeepSeek did to them. I think a lot of people have a grave misunderstanding of DeepSeek. The conversation is usually framed comparing to OpenAI. But this would be like comparing how much it cost to make the first iPhone (the literal first working one, not how much each Gen 1 iPhone cost to make) with the cost to make any smartphone a few years later. It's a lot easier and chea…

If comparing Deepseek to OpenAI, sure. But OP is comparing DeepSeek to Meta: both are followers.

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

#262

Post by atleastoptimal »

godelski wrote: post #253
atleastoptimal wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, AI researchers have continually underestimated the pace of AI progress

https://80000hours.org/2025/03/when-do-experts-expect-agi-to...

>One way to reduce selection effects is to look at a wider group of AI researchers than those working on AGI directly, including in academia. This is what Katja Grace did with a survey of thousands of recent AI publication authors.

>In 2022, they thought AI wouldn’t be able to write simple Python code until around 2027.

>In 2023, they reduced that to 2025, but AI could maybe already meet that condition in 2023 (and definitely by 2024).

>Most of their other estimates declined significantly between 2023 and 2022.

>The median estimate for achieving ‘high-level machine intelligence’ shortened by 13 years.

Basically every median timeline estimate has shrunk like clockwork every year. Back in 2021 people thought it wouldn't be until 2040 or so when AI models could look at a photo and give a human-level textual description of its contents. I think is reasonable to expect that the pace of "prediction error" won't change significantly since it's been on a straight downward trend over the past 4 years, and if it continues as such, AGI around 2028-2030 is a median estimate.

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

#263

Post by parineum »

bbminner wrote: post #195
bbminner wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> and started a startup

You bring up the only relevant data point at the end, as a throw in. Nobody outside of academia cares about your PhD and work history if you have a startup that is impressive to them. That's the only reason he's being paid.

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

#264

Post by adammarples »

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…

Who the heck is making profit?

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

#265

Post by p1esk »

TrackerFF wrote: post #180
InterviewFrog wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the uncomfortable truth. Only a small group of people are capable of operating at an elite level. The talent pool is extremely small and the companies want the absolute best. It is the same thing in sports as well. There will only ever be one Michael Jordan one Lionel Messi one Tiger Woods one Magnus Carlsen. And they are paid a lot because they are worth it. >> Meta seem to be spending so much so they don't…

Hot fucking take - but if these 100 (or whatever small number is being thrown around these days) elite researchers disappeared overnight, the world would go on and little of it would be noticed. New people in the field would catch up, and things would be up to speed quick enough. It is not a question of exquisitely rare intellect, but rather the opportunity and funding/resources to prosper.

You can say the same about any set of 100 people.

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

#266

Post by Waterluvian »

hkt wrote: post #204
gherkinnn wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Those are nerds who did founding rather than being an employee, though. Maybe that's the distinction they're trying to make?

I don’t think this distinction actually exists. At that salary this person is moving from being a founder of his own company to being a founder of his own business unit inside Facebook.

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

#267

Post by parineum »

meekaaku wrote: post #67
ehnto wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do bat an eyelid, many leagues even introduce salary caps in order to quell the negative side effects of insane salaries in sports.

ok maybe bat an eyelid, but I dont see news articles about athletes in such negativity, citing their young age etc.

You must not follow sports very close. Every time a young supports signs his first big deal, people freak out and compare it to the last superstar's deal. "Young players getting too much money before they earned it" is a trope at this point.

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

#268

Post by p1esk »

ofjcihen wrote: post #186
InterviewFrog wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the uncomfortable truth. Only a small group of people are capable of operating at an elite level. The talent pool is extremely small and the companies want the absolute best. It is the same thing in sports as well. There will only ever be one Michael Jordan one Lionel Messi one Tiger Woods one Magnus Carlsen. And they are paid a lot because they are worth it. >> Meta seem to be spending so much so they don't…

While I don’t doubt that these people have great experience and skills what they really have that others don’t is connections and the ability to market themselves well.

All you need is to publish a couple of right papers and/or significantly contribute to a couple of right projects. If you have brains for that you’ll be noticed.

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

#269

Post by parineum »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #262
godelski wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, AI researchers have continually underestimated the pace of AI progress https://80000hours.org/2025/03/when-do-experts-expect-agi-to... >One way to reduce selection effects is to look at a wider group of AI researchers than those working on AGI directly, including in academia. This is what Katja Grace did with a survey of thousands of recent AI publication authors. >In 2022, they thought AI wouldn’t be a…

Those are differences of magnitude, AGI is a difference of kind.

No amount of describing pictures in natural language is AGI.

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

#270

Post by diamond559 »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #234
torginus wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

10% is an enormous amount. Let’s say 1%. Even if it’s 1% at the scale you’re talking that’s 1B to the company. So still worth it. Wild.

Yeah but then you factor in the costs of building and running the machines vs the revenue and realize they are actually burning money for the blind hope of major breakthroughs in cognitive understanding that could be centuries away.
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