Alexandr Wang says it’s ‘unfair’ to say Meta’s AI researchers are just there for the money
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Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang said his team isn’t just about money.
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Amid the AI talent wars, Meta has reportedly made huge offers, including $100 million packages.
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Wang called it a “wrong assumption” that Meta’s only reason for poaching some key members was money.
Meta has made huge leaps in the war for AI talent, but the tech giant’s AI chief isn’t happy with the narrative that his team consists of a group of mercenaries.
“I think it’s one of the bigger ones, like narrative breaches, or maybe differences between the outside perception and what daily life is actually like on the inside,” Wang told tech journalists Ashlee Vance and Kylie Robison during an interview for the “Essential Memory” podcast that aired Wednesday.
Vance asked Wang about his reputation. Meta’s Super Intelligence Laboratory It consists of top AI researchers who were lured away from rival companies at least in part by very generous terms offered by Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his team were brought to the table. Top AI researchers reportedly received $100 million offers.
“I think it’s a false assumption to think that researchers are motivated only by money or something like that,” Wang said. “And for most of them, actually, you know, the financial prospects of staying where they are look very good, they also look very, very, very strong.”
Wang said the people Meta hires are motivated by other factors rather than money, including the possibility of having large amounts of computing at their disposal. Business Insider previously reported how this happened Private computing makes up a large part of the hiring proposition of leading technology companies.
“People joined because there was a high ratio of compute per researcher, so they could make more progress than maybe they could before wherever they were, because there’s a huge concentration of talent as people see that this is a pretty small, really crack group, and we’re going to give them the resources and freedom to make very bold research bets,” Wang said.
WangCo-founder of Scale AI, he has been seen as one of the biggest prizes in the AI talent war. Meta spent $14 billion to buy nearly half of Scale AI and persuade Wang. Leading a new AI team. Meta’s other notable hires include former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, who led the development of AI products; Ruoming Pang, head of Apple’s basic model team; and Trapit Bansal, a former senior researcher at OpenAI.
Beyond compensation packages, rival AI and technology executives have mocked Meta’s efforts to influence AI researchers. Vance asked Wang about OpenAI’s chief research officer, Mark Chen. Zuckerberg hand-delivered homemade soup to an anonymous OpenAI employee.
