AI Research

the humans getting multi-million dollar pay packages

Published

2 months ago

July 4, 2025

Nearly every day, another business luminary makes a gloomy prediction about job security in the AI era. Well-known venture capitalist Vinod Khosla recently said artificial intelligence could wipe out 80% of all jobs by 2030 while Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned about likely job cuts at the retail giant due to automation.

And yet, amid all the pessimism, one tiny group of humans has become extraordinarily valuable: Those creating AI. Many tech companies are scrambling to hire top-notch AI leaders and researchers, using multi-million dollar paychecks to entice them.

The latest example of how essential some humans are in the AI era came in the last few weeks, when Facebook-parent Meta went on a spending spree to beef up its all-important AI operations. The company is betting that the infusion of new talent will jumpstart its efforts, which are said to be lagging the competition and putting tens of billions of dollars in future profits at risk.

The push started with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hiring Alexandr Wang, CEO of AI labeling startup Scale AI, to be his first chief AI officer, and making a $14.3 billion investment in Wang’s company. Zuckerberg also recruited former GitHub (GTLB) CEO Nat Friedman to partner with Wang in leading Meta’s new superintelligence lab.

Just days later, Meta (META) went on another hiring blitz by poaching a number of AI researchers from ChatGPT maker OpenAI, along with employees from Google (GOOG) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), maker of the Claude AI assistant.

“As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight,” Zuckerberg wrote in a memo on Monday to formally announce Wang and Friedman’s new roles and the opening of the superintelligence lab. “I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. · Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC

The AI talent war between Meta and OpenAI is just an extreme example of what’s happening across the tech industry. Companies large and small are fighting to recruit big-name AI leaders and their foot soldiers, readily acknowledging that developing superintelligence, or AI that’s vastly smarter than humans, hinges on the work of actual humans.

In their sales pitches, companies often claim AI can perform magic. But for now at least, the technology can’t entirely perform its magic on itself.

AI research scientists who are focused on foundational AI and making sci-fi advancements to it are considered to be at the top of this new pecking order. They oversee the training of vast general-purpose models, fine tune them, and make them more adaptable for developers to incorporate into their products.

Some companies are willing to pay big money—including millions of dollars in salaries, stock options, and bonuses—for what they consider to be the top talent in that cohort.

OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) CEO Sam Altman recently claimed that Meta had dangled $100 million compensation packages in front of some of his employees, and then boasted that no one of significance had accepted such an offer.

However, within days, the exodus began. Ultimately, OpenAI’s chief research officer, Mark Chen, erupted about it in an internal memo, Wired reported. “I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something,” he wrote. To keep other workers from leaving, he vowed to be “more proactive than ever before” by “recalibrating comp,” or compensation, and “scoping out creative ways to recognize and reward top talent.”

David Horn, head of AI at financial services company Brex, agreed that humans are essential for developing and perfecting AI at his company and others. A few individuals, he said, can have a huge impact on a company’s ultimate success.

“You still need people who can tell AI what problems to solve when we’re working with AI tools,” Horn said. “What we found is that the value humans bring to a task is not necessarily putting in the effort but being able to very clearly explain what needs to be done—and also, more importantly, why.”

Unlike many of the major tech companies, Brex isn’t developing foundational AI. Rather, it’s building on top of the super-sized models that those bigger companies produce, specifically to tailor it for the financial sector. Several layers of workers are needed to do the job, Horn said. They include those who work directly with the AI, others who manage their work and the product pipeline, and still more who set the policies, or broader strategy, for how to work with AI on particular tasks.

Of course, not everyone in tech is in as big demand as AI researchers are.

Because of AI, hiring is slowing in certain specialties.

Software engineers, for example, are increasingly enlisting AI to help them write code. In response, some companies have slowed hiring or, like Amazon, discussed cutting jobs to save on costs.

Customer service, data entry, and low level finance jobs are particularly vulnerable to advances in AI.

Last week, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff gave a sense of where humans stand in the AI era, saying that AI does up to half of the work within his company. He didn’t provide any details about what he meant. And as chief salesman for Salesforce’s AI products, it’s clearly in his interest to talk up AI’s success.

But a glance at Salesforce’s website shows something that Benioff didn’t mention: Salesforce has dozens of job openings with AI or related terms in the title or description.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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AI Research

PH kicks off 2025 Development Policy Research Month on AI in governance

Published

1 hour ago

September 6, 2025

The Manila Times

THE Philippines cannot rely on new technology alone to thrive in the age of artificial intelligence. Strong governance policies must come first — this was the central call of the 2025 Development Policy Research Month (DPRM), which opened on Sept. 1 with a push for AI rules that reflect national realities.

“Policy research provides the guardrails that help governments adopt technology responsibly,” said PIDS president Dr. Philip Arnold Tuano. Without such guardrails, he warned, the benefits of AI may never outweigh the risks.

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHT The 2025 Development Policy Research Month kicked off with a push for AI rules that reflect the country’s realities. PHOTO FROM PIDS

Established under Proclamation 247 (2002), DPRM highlights the role of policy research in shaping evidence-based strategies. This year’s theme, “Reimagining Governance in the Age of AI,” underscores that while AI offers tools for efficiency and transparency, policies must come first to address risks such as digital exclusion, bias, cybersecurity threats, and workforce displacement.

PIDS, as lead coordinator, works with an interagency steering committee that includes the BSP, CSC, DBM, DILG, legislative policy offices, PIA, PMS, and now the Department of Science and Technology, which joins for the first time, given its role in AI research and governance.

The highlight is the 11th Annual Public Policy Conference on Sept. 18 at New World Hotel Makati, featuring global experts. Activities nationwide will amplify the campaign, supported by the hashtag #AIforGoodGovernance.

Learn more at https://dprm.pids.gov.ph.

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AI Research

Can artificial intelligence be helpful in school?

Published

2 hours ago

September 6, 2025

The Editors

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the classroom has been a major topic for the past few years.

Source: Youtube

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Nvidia says ‘We never deprive American customers in order to serve the rest of the world’ — company says GAIN AI Act addresses a problem that doesn’t exist

Published

2 hours ago

September 6, 2025

Anton Shilov

The bill, which aimed to regulate shipments of AI GPUs to adversaries and prioritize U.S. buyers, as proposed by U.S. senators earlier this week, made quite a splash in America. To a degree, Nvidia issued a statement claiming that the U.S. was, is, and will remain its primary market, implying that no regulations are needed for the company to serve America.

“The U.S. has always been and will continue to be our largest market,” a statement sent to Tom’s Hardware reads. “We never deprive American customers in order to serve the rest of the world. In trying to solve a problem that does not exist, the proposed bill would restrict competition worldwide in any industry that uses mainstream computing chips. While it may have good intentions, this bill is just another variation of the AI Diffusion Rule and would have similar effects on American leadership and the U.S. economy.”

Earlier this week, U.S. legislators introduced the GAIN AI Act of 2025 as part of their defense policy package, aiming to restrict the export of advanced AI GPUs and prioritize access for domestic buyers. If passed into law, this measure would enforce strict export licensing conditions for AI accelerators to D:5 countries of concern (read: China), particularly targeting sales to China and nations closely aligned with it.

The bill outlines specific technical thresholds to classify a chip as ‘advanced,’ taking a page from the Biden administration’s 2023 book when it comes to benchmarks, but making them stronger when it comes to memory bandwidth. Any GPU with a total processing performance (TPP) of 2,400 or higher, a performance density over 3.2 (TPP divided by die area), or bandwidth exceeding 1.4 TB/s (DRAM), 1.1 TB/s (interconnect), or 1.7 TB/s combined would be subject to export controls. Products exceeding a TPP of 4,800 would be outright barred from export to restricted countries, which include Nvidia’s H100 (TPP 16,000) and B300 (TPP 60,000), as well as AMD’s Instinct MI308.

In accordance with new rules, exporters (i.e., AMD and Nvidia) would need to certify that U.S. buyers were given the first opportunity to purchase, that there are no pending domestic orders, and that the export will not slow local shipments or favor foreign clients with better pricing or contract terms. Additionally, they must ensure that foreign buyers will not use the hardware to compete against American firms globally. If any of these conditions are unmet, the export license must be denied.

The new export rules would obviously apply even to older AI GPUs — assuming they are still in production, of course — like Nvidia’s HGX H20 or L2 PCIe, which still meet the defined performance thresholds set by the Biden administration. Although Nvidia has claimed that H20 shipments to China do not interfere with the domestic supply of H100, H200, or Blackwell chips, the new legislation could significantly formalize such limitations on transactions in the future.