Openai Boss: Meta Offering $100m Plus To Poach My Staff

The leader of OpenAI, Sam Altman, says members of his squad person been getting "giant offers" from rival tech patient Meta, including $100m (£74.3m) "signing bonuses."

Meta - which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp - is attempting to boost nan artificial intelligence (AI) broadside of its business, including precocious spending $14bn (£10.4bn) to bargain 49% of of nan startup, Scale AI.

However Mr Altman said "at slightest truthful far" nary of his "best people" had been persuaded to jump ship.

BBC News has contacted Meta for a response.

Speaking connected his relative Jack's podcast, Sam Altman said he respected Meta's aggression successful competing pinch OpenAI, which makes nan world's champion known AI-powered product, ChatGPT.

He said successful summation to nan signing bonuses, Meta was offering much than that successful "compensation per year", though did not spell retired whether that was successful wages aliases banal options and different incentives.

But Mr Altman said he thought group were staying astatine OpenAI because of its "mission" of creating superintelligence and nan "economic awards and everything other flowing from that".

OpenAI and different AI firms deliberation artificial wide intelligence (AGI) is not acold off, which would mean AI systems tin execute arsenic good arsenic - aliases amended than - humans.

Superintelligence is nan adjacent step, wherever nan purpose is to create AI which tin vastly outperform quality cognitive abilities.

Big tech firms are spending immense amounts of money pursing these goals.

For example, successful January OpenAI announced a associated deal pinch different funders to walk $500bn connected a number of caller information centres - which powerfulness AI - successful nan US.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Altman said he thinks OpenAI has "a overmuch amended changeable astatine really delivering connected superintelligence, and besides whitethorn yet beryllium nan much valuable company."

He said it is "a really typical culture" astatine OpenAI which attracts engineers to nan company, particularly erstwhile it comes to innovation.

"There's galore things I respect astir Meta arsenic a company, but I don't deliberation they're a institution that's, like, awesome astatine innovation," he told his brother.

Though he called Meta's pursuit of superintelligence "rational," he compared it to Google's grounded attempt astatine mounting up a societal media level to rival Facebook.

Sam Altman's comments are conscionable nan latest illustration of nan starring figures successful tech offering opinions connected what their rivals are doing, pinch podcasts being a celebrated mean for these sometimes unflattering appraisals.

On Joe Rogan's podcast successful January, Meta laminitis Mark Zuckerberg praised Apple's iPhone arsenic "obviously 1 of nan astir important inventions astir apt of each time."

But he added nan institution had precocious "been truthful disconnected their crippled successful position of not really releasing galore innovative things."

However, that put down is arsenic thing compared to Mr Zuckerberg's stormy narration pinch chap tech titan Elon Musk, pinch nan brace threatening to conflict each different successful a cage.

Musk is besides presently progressive successful a ineligible battle pinch Sam Altman complete nan founding of OpenAI.