Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis has reacted to Meta poaching AI talent from other startups while offering hefty packages to potential recruits. Hassabis called Mark Zuckerberg’s company’s poaching attempts ‘rational’, given that they are lagging behind in the generative AI race compared to the competition.
Notably, Meta had started its Superintelligence Labs earlier this year, headed by former Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang and ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. The new initiative was set up after a dull reception to its Llama model launches in April.
Reports suggest that Zuckerberg was personally involved in the hiring for this team, wooing top talent with packages going as high as $200 million a year. What followed were reports of several AI researchers from OpenAI, Google, and even Apple quitting their respective companies, as the war for AI talent
‘There’s more important things than just money’: Hassabis
Reacting to Meta’s hiring push, Hassabis said, “There’s a strategy that Meta is taking right now… I think the people that are real believers in the mission of AGI and what it can do—and understand the consequences, both good and bad—are mostly doing it to be at the frontier, so they can help influence how that plays out and steward the technology safely into the world.”
He added, “Meta right now are not at the frontier. Maybe they’ll manage to get back there. And it’s probably rational, what they’re doing from their perspective—because they’re behind and they need to do something. But I think there are more important things than just money. Of course, one has to pay people market rates—and those continue to go up.”
Hassabis also reflected on how drastically the AI industry has changed since DeepMind’s early days. “We couldn’t raise any money. I didn’t pay myself for a couple of years. And these days, interns are being paid what we raised as our entire first seed round.”
