Meta focuses on AI, Mark Zuckerberg on hiring spree, offers salary of astronomical amount of...

In an attempt to build a "superintelligence" team, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is focusing on the development of Artificial Intelligence and he is ready to pay an astronomical amount for the right candidates. Not only this, he is so serious about his ambitious plans that the Facebook owner is personally sending emails and WhatsApp messages. A candidate could not believe that the Meta CEO could personally send him a message and left it thinking it was a fake message.

Mark Zuckerberg offers astronomical salary

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mark Zuckerberg has gone to the extent of offering an annual salary of $100 million or Rs 860 crore for the right person who can execute his ambitious AI plan. In an attempt to go to the top of the AI landscape and dominate it, Meta has crossed boundaries and Mark Zuckerberg is so involved personally that he has sent direct messages, held private meetings, and extended conversations, much to the surprise of the prospective candidates. 

Meta invests in AI startup Scale AI

Earlier, Zuckerberg invested $14 billion in AI startup Scale AI to secure a stake in the company and got its CEO Alexandr Wang on his board. The deal is considered one of the most significant and high-profile hires in the AI sector till now. Wang now leads Zuckerberg’s newly built AI team. Besides, the Facebook owner also contacted Aravind Srinivas, co-founder of Perplexity, an AI-powered search startup. He has reportedly evinced interest in acquiring the company. Earlier, Mark Zuckerberg also tried to poach employees from rival OpenAI, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later claimed that none of his key employees accepted Zuckerberg's offer. The Wall Street Journal has reported that some of the AI professionals who rejected the offer did so due to the lack of clarity around Zuckerberg’s idea of "superintelligence" and Meta's execution plan. Though the ambiguity over the concept of "superintelligence" continues to exist, Zuckerberg considers the AI division the most important area where he can make a lasting impact at Meta.

If media reports are to be believed, some of the high-level professionals are hesitant to join Meta due to its chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, who has a different opinion on how AI should move forward. He is unconventional in the sense that while most AI experts want to emphasise developing large language models (LLMs) to achieve superhuman AI, LeCun has different plans.