Amid the cutthroat war for AI talent, tech giants are offering astronomical sums to lure a tiny pool of top engineers from rivals. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expects the market for these geniuses to remain intense, but he estimated there are “many thousands of people” capable of making key discoveries in superintelligence who could conceivably be found.
The amounts of money being offered to hire AI geniuses is mind-boggling, as tech giants like Meta, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI fight over a tiny talent pool in their race to achieve the next breakthrough.
And the cutthroat competition doesn’t look like it will ease anytime soon.
“Definitely this is the most intense talent market I have seen in my career,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC on Friday. “But if you think about the economic value being created by these people and how much we’re spending on compute, you know, maybe the market stays like this. I’m not totally sure what’s gonna happen, but it is a crazy intense comp for a very small number of people right now.”
Exactly how small is that group of people, and what do they know that others don’t, CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin asked.
