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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

#371
post #326
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Various BigCo-s have been reporting good results recently and highlighted significant AI role in that. That may be a BS of course, yet even if it is half-true we're talking about tens/hundreds of billions of revenues. With 10x multiple it supports a trillion like generic valuation of AI in business right now.

How much has the whole industry invested in AI vs how much revenue has AI generated in total?

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

#373

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…

This is IMO a comical, absurd, Beeple NFT type situation, which should point us to roughly where we are in the bubble. But if he's getting real, non-returnable actual money from Meta on the basis of a back of envelope calculation for his own startup, from Meta's need to satiate Mark Zuckerberg's FOMO, then good for him. This bubble cannot burst soon enough, but I hope he gets to keep some of this; he deserves it simp…

I'm not a conspiracy person, but it's hard not to believe that some cruel god sent us crypto just a few years before we accidentally achieved AGI just to mess with us. So many people are confident that AGI is impossible and LLMs are a passing fad based to a large degree on the idea that SV isn't trustworthy -- I'd probably be there too, if I wasn't in the field myself. It's a hard pattern not to recognize, even if n~=2.5 at most!

I hope for all of our sake's that you're right. I feel confident that you're not :(

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

#374

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…

Most likely won't be a winner-take-all, but something like it is right now, a never ending treadmill where the same 3 or 4 players release a SOTA model every year or so.

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

#375
post #367

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…

You’re right. It would be unfortunate if something like Grok takes the cake here.

Why?

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

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a PhD in a related field like math or computer science.

actually applied math or statistics.

it also helps if you happen to know a bunch of openai trade secrets.

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

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is IMO a comical, absurd, Beeple NFT type situation, which should point us to roughly where we are in the bubble. But if he's getting real, non-returnable actual money from Meta on the basis of a back of envelope calculation for his own startup, from Meta's need to satiate Mark Zuckerberg's FOMO, then good for him. This bubble cannot burst soon enough, but I hope he gets to keep some of this; he deserves it simp…

Bubble might not burst, if we can improve productivity in every field even 0.5%, that’s massive.

Woah, a whopping 0.5%. That's like working 12 minutes more every week. I waste much more time every day because of how slow and sluggish Windows 11 is.

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

#379

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?

This is such a weird sentiment to me, comparing taking one of the highest paying corporate jobs in the history of humanity to bowing down to some dictator.

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

#380

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?

It's strange that Zuck didn't just buy options on that guy? (Or did he? Would love to see the terms.)

Zuck's advantage over Sir Isaac (Newton) is that the market for top AI researchers is much more volatile than in South Sea tradeables pre-bubble burst?

Either that or 250M is cheap for cognitive behavior therapy

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