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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

#501

Post by Voultapher »

lostmsu wrote: post #488
Voultapher wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are under a misconception as to how this work. Let's say Meta wants to give this person 100M in stock, they don't have to buy 100M worth of stock when the option vests. What they do is, go into their accounting software and look at how many shares they have, let's call this amount X. And they will increase the total number of shares from X to X+Y where Y is worth 100M at current valuation. They never need…

This is plain wrong AFAIK. You can't just print Y stock on a whim because that would dilute shareholders.

https://money.stackexchange.com/a/155106 the argument is that it doesn't dilute the stock because the thing they bought makes the company that much more worth. If they trade newly created shares for a metric ton of gold, that logic seems quite plausible, but it get's more sketchy when things like IP or companies are bought. Or as in this case even more sketchy, where I'd argue this one person will not raise the value of Meta by $250M, effectively scamming the investors.

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

#502

Post by Voultapher »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #481
Voultapher wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are under a misconception as to how this work. Let's say Meta wants to give this person 100M in stock, they don't have to buy 100M worth of stock when the option vests. What they do is, go into their accounting software and look at how many shares they have, let's call this amount X. And they will increase the total number of shares from X to X+Y where Y is worth 100M at current valuation. They never need…

Sure, but it's highly liquid stock in a publicly listed company. If someone asked me if I want 99M in cash or 100M in Meta stock, I would rather take 100M in Meta stock. That's how liquid it is. You seem to treat Meta stock as if it was some cryptocurrency with daily volume measured in thousands.

On the receiving side sure, if the contract is written such that you are actually allowed to sell the shares easily, which often you are not.

My main point is that $250M sounds like a huge number, and that it shows how extreme the value of AI is seen. But that's exactly the point. They want to be perceived as thinking AI is worth extreme amounts of capital, suggesting it will ROI even more. Otherwise they wouldn't be spending $250M on one guy right? But here comes the catch, they don't think that one person is worth $250M, they can print money for free and claim this guy is worth this much without having to pay for it. Effectively diluting existing shareholder value. This whole thing works because Meta is seen by investors as a growth stock, they have 10-100x larger earnings to share values than mature stocks like Ford. They are printing money to be able to print more money in the future. Follow up reading [1]

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/07/rah-rah-rasputin/

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

#503

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

turnsout wrote: post #475
jdefr89 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just shows you how warped the minds of the general public are. They fail to realize the only thing Jobs did was know the right people then take all the credit…

This is how (checks notes) everything has always worked. In a large project such as introducing the first GUI for general use, you can't do everything yourself. If you're within a company, you hire people. You take inspiration from the outside. It's a team effort, and not the result of a lone genius. That does not diminish what Jobs did. The Mac and the Lisa were underway before the Xerox PARC visit. The idea of mixe…

The Lisa product - a business-focussed follow on to the Apple II, was initiated before Jobs visited Xerox, but nonetheless copied Xerox's Alto GUI.

https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-lisa-apples-most-influe...

Lisa attracted a lot of interest, but was outrageously expensive (~$50K in 2025 dollars) as well as being slow. The Mac in its final form is best regarded as a cheaper performant Lisa.

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

#504

Post by Der_Einzige »

mattlondon wrote: post #107
firesteelrain wrote: post #81

When will the bubble pop?

When more than 1 company has "AGI", or whatever we're calling it, and people realise it is not just a license to print money. Some people are rightly pointing out that for quite a lot of things right now we probably already have AGI to a certain extent. Your average AI is way better than the average schmuck on the street in basically anything you can think of - maths, programming, writing poetry, world languages, mus…

This is my exact take to a tee and also the exact take of Peter Norvig!!!!

https://www.noemamag.com/artificial-general-intelligence-is-...

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

#505

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

cesarb wrote: post #500
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xerox created the GUI, and much of modern computing, but Jobs/Apple certainly deserve credit for the smartphone. Before the iPhone the phone market was primarily "feature phones" - flip phones with a keyboard and a few built-in JavaScript apps. The Blackberry wasn't much different - just a better keyboard with a focus on messaging/business use. The iPhone was quite radical - masterfully presented as an iPod, phone, a…

The smartphone is nothing more than a merge of a traditional cell phone (what we now call "feature phone") and a PDA. Such a merge would happen sooner or later, either with PDAs acquiring the ability to also act as cell phones, or with cell phones gaining the ability to also act as PDAs. Apple might have accelerated that change, but it was inevitable.

I don't think that framing really gives enough credit to how novel the iPhone was, and how it shook up the market when it was introduced.

Yes, PDAs had already been a thing for a long time (Psion Organizer), and Apple themselves had experimented with this category too with the Newton, before the Palm Pilot then became so dominant.

What was novel about the smart phone - really it's defining characteristic, was it wasn't a primarily single purpose device like a PDA, or phone, or MP-3 player/iPod, or camera, or handheld web browser, but rather a universal hand held computer/communications device, and one whose functionality was not limited to what you got out of the box. The large touch screen, with gesture-based UI, was also quite novel, and a large part of what made it successful and generic.

It's easy to look in the rear view mirror and say that most inventions/innovations were inevitable and just a product of their times, but the iPhone was quite shocking when first launched and did shake up the industry - nobody was expecting it, or expecting how popular such a device would be. Steve Ballmer famously laughed at the iPhone after it's launch and questioned who would want it, given the high cost and lack of a keyboard (a feature, not a deficit!).. and then of course went on to try unsuccessfully to copy it.

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

#506

Post by thatguysaguy »

matt_cogito wrote: post #257

Am I reading this correctly: an AI researcher might get paid roughly the same amount of money as the largest transfer of a soccer player in history (Neymar at €220M)? There is hope for humanity. Jokes aside, how and why?

At least part of is is that the capex for LLM training is so high. It used to be that compute was extremely cheap compared to staff, but that's no longer the case for large model training.

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

#507

Post by ath3nd »

Eisenstein wrote: post #495
hattmall wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is actually a great example. It's a major scientific accomplishment but pretty much the least cost effective method of energy generation. Nuclear allowed us to generate huge amounts of energy to waste on whatever we like when the real focus should be on massively decreasing energy demands. But of course that doesn't make anyone money.

Decreasing energy demands isn't going to happen though, and energy should not be thought of as a profit generator. You can spend all your effort trying to do something that isn't going to happen without forcing people to do it, and you can lament that public needs don't make profits, or you can deal with the reality of the situation and accept that things aren't ideal.

> and you can lament that public needs don't make profits, or you can deal with the reality of the situation and accept that things aren't ideal.

Ah, so we have to "deal with the reality of the situation and accept things"? You know who also was being told that? French peasants and middle class, by their king Louis XVI, who told them that they had to accept plummeting living standards and wages. You know how it ended up, right? The king had to deal with the reality of a guillotine.

Some people might accept being used and abused by the capitalistic system as a "natural order of things", but there are people who can envision a world where not everything is about profit, and there are such things as public goods, services, resources, housing, benefits, etc.

> Decreasing energy demands isn't going to happen though, and energy should not be thought of as a profit generator

Says who? Not everything is about profit. The fact that so many in today's society are thinking of capitalism is the natural order of things doesn't make capitalism less fragile, especially if it continues not serving society. When something doesn't serve society, society gets rid of it (usually violently) and replaces it with something else. Many CEOs and oligarchs nowadays forget that, just like the kings before them, until a Luigi comes and reminds them.

> lament that public needs don't make profits,

Whatever the public needs, eventually the public will get, with or without profits involved, and with or without the agreement of the "ruling" class.

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

#508

Post by beala »

scoreandmore wrote: post #492
SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were me, yeah, park it in bonds and live off the interest on a tropical beach. Spend my days spearfishing and drinking beers with the locals. Have no concerns except how even my tan is (and tbh I don't see myself caring too much about that). I'd forget the word shareholder even exists.

I met a youngster on Boca del Toro island in Panama a decade or so ago. I was about to be fired from my FAANG job so I used up years and years of vacation for one big trip before I was let go. We hung out for a few days while I was there (I don’t recommend the place at all btw). He cashed out from early twitter and was setting up surf schools all of the world. All he did was travel, surf, drink, and fuck. I’m still a…

Setting up an international chain of surf schools actually sounds quite ambitious and stressful, though.

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

#509

Post by specialist »

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 don't think AI will be a winner-take-all scenario.

AI? Do you mean LLMs, GPTs, both, or other?

Why won't AI follow the technology life cycle?

It'll always be stuck in the R&D phase, never reach maturity?

It's on a different life cycle?

Once AI matures, something prevents consolidation? (eg every nation protects its champions)

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

#510

Post by Eisenstein »

ath3nd wrote: post #507
Eisenstein wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decreasing energy demands isn't going to happen though, and energy should not be thought of as a profit generator. You can spend all your effort trying to do something that isn't going to happen without forcing people to do it, and you can lament that public needs don't make profits, or you can deal with the reality of the situation and accept that things aren't ideal.

> and you can lament that public needs don't make profits, or you can deal with the reality of the situation and accept that things aren't ideal. Ah, so we have to "deal with the reality of the situation and accept things"? You know who also was being told that? French peasants and middle class, by their king Louis XVI, who told them that they had to accept plummeting living standards and wages. You know how it ended…

That whole comment comes off as unhinged and has nothing to do with development of energy infrastructure for a world population that has growing energy needs.
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