OpenAI Sam Altman has reacted to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent AI talent poaching spree. Altman’s full-throated reply to OpenAI researchers on Monday, obtained by WIRED argues that OpenAI offers the only solution for people who want to create artificial general intelligence. The company, he says, is currently evaluating its compensation policy for all of their research staff.
Meta’s recruitment efforts were also dismissed, with the statement that the actions of the company could result in deep-seated cultural problems.
“We have gone from some nerds in the corner to the most interesting people in the tech industry (at least),” He posted on Slack. “AI Twitter is toxic; Meta is acting in a way that feels somewhat distasteful; I assume things will get even crazier in the future. After I got fired and came back I said that was not the craziest thing that would happen in OpenAl history; certainly neither is this.”
This news follows a big announcement by Zuckerberg. Meta’s CEO, Michael A. Levy announced on Monday that the company was launching a new product. sent a memo Staff introducing the new superintelligence group, led by Nat Friedman who was previously the head of GitHub and Alexandre Wang from Scale AI. There were also a few women on the list. people from OpenAIShengjia Zhang, Shuchao bi, Jiahui Yo, and Hongyu Ren are among the researchers. Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief researcher. told staff This is what it was like “someone has broken into our home and stolen something.”
Altman used a different voice in Monday’s letter about departures.
“Meta has gotten a few great people for sure, but on the whole, it is hard to overstate how much they didn’t get their top people and had to go quite far down their list; they have been trying to recruit people for a super long time, and I’ve lost track of how many people from here they’ve tried to get to be their Chief Scientist,” He has written. “I am proud of how mission-oriented our industry is as a whole; of course there will always be some mercenaries.”
Then he added, “Missionaries will beat mercenaries” OpenAI has noted the compensation of all research organizations. “I believe there is much, much more upside to OpenAl stock than Meta stock,” He has written. “But I think it’s important that huge upside comes after huge success; what Meta is doing will, in my opinion, lead to very deep cultural problems. We will have more to share about this soon but it’s very important to me we do it fairly and not just for people who Meta happened to target.”
Altman then told people that they should stay at OpenAI. “I have never been more confident in our research roadmap,” He has written. “We are making an unprecedented bet on compute, but I love that we are doing it and I’m confident we will make good use of it. Most importantly of all, I think we have the most special team and culture in the world. We have work to do to improve our culture for sure; we have been through insane hypergrowth. But we have the core right in a way that I don’t think anyone else quite does, and I’m confident we can fix the problems.”
“And maybe more importantly than that, we actually care about building AGI in a good way,” he said. “Other companies care more about this as an instrumental goal to some other mission. But this is our top thing, and always will be. Long after Meta has moved on to their next flavor of the week, or defending their social moat, we will be here, day after day, year after year, figuring out how to do what we do better than anyone else. A lot of other efforts will rise and fall too.”
Several high-ranking Meta employees responded in Slack to the question about OpenAI’s superior culture. “[T]hey constantly rotate their top focus,” One said, “Write one.” The other said: “Yes we’re quirky and weird, but that’s what makes this place a magical cradle of innovation,” Write one. “OpenAI is weird in the most magical way. We contain multitudes.”
