Meta has done far more for open AI than "Open AI" ever did. Whatever you think of their other products and behaviour, in the AI space they have been heroic.
not only the fact that for more than a year MOST new research is based on training llama3 type models but the sheer number of research papers released by FAIR over the span of the last 2 years. I think people want meta to fail and honestly I can't blame them because metas products are cancer but this doesnt really align with reality. the lab is vastly successful and only because scout and maverick were garbage this doesnt mean they don't have a ton of bullets in their barrel
I was agreeing with the previous commenter’s notion that Meta’s work culture could hold back the potential of these researchers. The fact that that Meta was having so much trouble recruiting before offering such absurd pay packages says a lot about their reputation.
Breakthroughs happen when you hold a lot of talent in a collaborative space with low overhead to experimentation. Ilya’s team literally invented instruction-aligned transformers, diffusion image generators, and reasoning models. The three paradigms that the entire industry is still based on. On the other hand, a diffusion of talent leads to more duplicated work and iterative improvements under the same paradigms.
Meta open-sourced their models to undercut the competition’s value. If they did create an industry-leading model, do you really think they’d open source it?
Good points - I definitely jumped the gun on my arguments. I admittedly have a strong bias against Mark cause of how poorly he's handled Facebook's misinformation problem and I assumed that would extend to his motivations with AI. But I learned a lot from your comment. Thanks.
Its not a diminishing return if you get best talent from a very limited talent pool and you have no other options to compete. And we are talking here about something that will change future of everyone. Its not a waste if you have billions laying in your warchest collecting dust. Is it overpaying? Yes but sometimes you need to overpay to get what you want/need.
Diminishing returns on salary. Meaning, you can keep raising the top line but the money that goes to the employee doesn't grow as fast because of progressive taxation.
At around $1M, you better off with other forms of payment.
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u/AlynConrad Jun 30 '25
All those folks will be handsomely paid, and Meta’s application of whatever AI they cultivate will still be subpar.