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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

#531

Post by apparent »

discreteevent wrote: post #410
groestl wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now there's an incremental model arms race Yes, but just like in an actual arms race, we don't know if this can evolve in a winner takes all scenario very quickly and literally.

> just like in an actual arms race In an actual arms race you use your arms to actually physically wipe out your enemy. It's not just like an arms race.

Well, an "arms race" doesn't always involve using the arms. For example, the Cold War was an arms race, but it was focused on the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, not their actual use.

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

#532

Post by apparent »

ascorbic wrote: post #405
apparent wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because it's MechaHitler?

So should we root for Gemini (which depicted Nazis as Black/Asian/etc.) instead? Or Microsoft (whose prior AI chatbot had Nazi-esque tendencies as well)?

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

#533

Post by godelski »

fdr wrote: post #388
godelski wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm mostly with you but it also depends how it exactly plays out. Like I definitely think it is better for society if the economic forces are incentivizing pursuit of knowledge more than pursuit of pure entertainment[0]. But I think we also need to be a bit careful here. You need some celebrities to be the embodiment of an idea but the distribution can be too sharp and undermine, what I think we both agree on…

I think it's pretty funny because, for example, Katalin Karikó was thought to be working in some backwater, on this "mRNA" thing, that could barely get published before COVID...and, the original LLM/transformer people were well qualified but not pulling quarter billion dollars kicking around trying to improve machine translation of languages, a time-honored AI endeavor going back to the 1950s. The came upon something…

  > Katalin Karikó was thought to be working in some backwater, on this "mRNA" thing, that could barely get published
There's a ton of examples like this, and it is quite common in Nobel level work. You don't make breakthroughs by maintaining the status quo. Unfortunately that means to do great things you can't just "play it safe"

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

#534

Post by tonyhart7 »

aianus wrote: post #517
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…

Meta buys back stock all the time, in practice they do the opposite of diluting shareholders. You're right that they don't need to do this.

right, meta literally profit 50+ billion last year or 2 years ago, they literally buy back all the time

also most tech company do this originally as tax loophole for big tech

its nothing to do with printing money or another theory conspiracy like another commenter says

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

#535

Post by kevinventullo »

ath3nd wrote: post #450
bbor wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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~…

Dude, LLMs are a very sophisticated autocomplete with a few tricks down their sleeve. From that to AGI or Zuck's "superintelligence" is just light years... LLMs are a dead end for "intelligence". We are talking about the promises of the same crop of people who brought you full Autopilot on Tesla (still waiting since 2019 when it was supposed to happen), or the Boring Tunnel, the Metaverse, and their latest products a…

Tesla self-driving aside, have you ridden in a Waymo? It’s actually pretty magical.

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

#536

Post by jjmarr »

nextworddev wrote: post #490
ascorbic wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those are just the sort of cases that are more likely to switch to the latest, greatest and cheapest when they come around. The fact that even these haven't become winner takes all is a strong signal that these models have sticking power.

No because more than half of open router is character chat and writing ad copies… so it’s not indicative of the important use cases

The top 3 apps are Kilo Code, Roo Code, and Cline.

These are all coding assistants. While they can be turned into waifus they're not intended as such.

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

#538

Post by SJC_Hacker »

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.

Depending on if shareholders have anti-dilution protection, you can

It’s typical in startups for early employees to not have thís protection

VCs demand it

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

#539

Post by missedthecue »

How are these pay packages structured? If Meta stock is flat for the next 10 years (like microsoft from 2001-2011) do these guys walk away with a bunch of worthless options? I have to imagine it's not pure cash wired to their Wells Fargo checking account.

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

#540

Post by JonChesterfield »

missedthecue wrote: post #539

How are these pay packages structured? If Meta stock is flat for the next 10 years (like microsoft from 2001-2011) do these guys walk away with a bunch of worthless options? I have to imagine it's not pure cash wired to their Wells Fargo checking account.

Public companies do restricted stock units, not options to buy illiquid stock. Every N months another chunk becomes available to sell (and M% of it immediately evaporates as income tax).
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