Mark Zuckerberg allegedly offered $100M to steal OpenAI employees

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has revealed that Mark Zuckerberg may have tried to lure some of his employees with bonuses of up to several million dollars, in order to recruit them for Meta’s recently unveiled “superintelligent” AI project.

In a discussion on the future of AI on the podcast hosted by his brother Jack Altman, Sam Altman pointed out that the race to develop artificial intelligence had, in his opinion, taken a turn completely out of proportion.

In particular, he cited Meta’s recent alleged attempt to poach some of its key employees by offering them gigantic bonuses of up to $100 million.

He took the opportunity to openly denounce this approach, warning that such a recruitment method could foster a toxic culture in a fast-growing, high-stress technology sector.

On the Uncapped podcast, Altman openly voiced his concerns about the potential impact of Zuckerberg’s initiatives on the artificial intelligence ecosystem: «I don’t think that’s going to set up a great culture.»

Altman says he’s fortunate that none of his employees seems, so far, to have given in to Meta’s offers.

While Zuckerberg is deploying considerable resources, from huge investments to aggressive recruitment, to catch up in the AI race with his “superintelligence” project, Altman takes a more measured stance: in his view, the real impact of AI may well not justify the scale of the investments involved.