In a recent podcast episode, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had offered top AI researchers from OpenAI and Google's DeepMind salaries of over $100 million to form a new superintelligence team. However, Sam Altman stated that these recruitment attempts were largely unsuccessful, as the exceptional talent at OpenAI did not accept these lucrative offers.

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Image source note: The image was generated by AI, licensed by MidJourney.

During the show, Sam Altman mentioned: "Meta began offering huge employment packages to many people on our team, with signing bonuses reaching up to $100 million and annual compensation far exceeding that figure. I am relieved to see that so far, our talented employees have chosen not to accept these offers." He believes that the employees at OpenAI see greater opportunities for achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and they also believe that OpenAI has the potential to become a more valuable company in the future.

In addition, Sam Altman pointed out that Meta’s emphasis on high employee compensation may not foster a healthy corporate culture. He believes that innovation culture is the key to OpenAI’s success, while Meta’s current AI efforts have not been as successful as expected. Although Sam Altman respects certain aspects of Meta, he believes that the company lacks strong innovation capabilities.

It is understood that Meta attempted to recruit OpenAI's chief researcher Noam Brown and Google’s AI architect Koray Kavukcuoglu, but these efforts all failed. Sam Altman emphasized that companies not only need to keep pace with AI developments but also require true innovation to maintain competitiveness.

As Meta forms its new AI team, companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google's DeepMind are also moving full steam ahead. Sam Altman stated that OpenAI is expected to release an open AI model soon, which could put Meta at a further disadvantage in the AI race.

In the latter part of the podcast, Sam Altman also mentioned an AI-driven social media feed that he hopes to explore—a custom information stream based on user needs, replacing traditional algorithm-based recommendations. OpenAI is currently developing such a social network application internally, while Meta is experimenting with AI social networks through its Meta AI app.

Although it remains unclear whether an AI-driven social network will succeed, it is evident that the AI talent war between Sam Altman and Zuckerberg is heating up.

Key points:

📌 Meta offered top talents from OpenAI and Google's DeepMind up to $100 million in recruitment packages but failed to attract excellent employees.  

💼 Sam Altman believes that OpenAI employees value the company's innovative culture and prospects for AGI development.  

🤖 OpenAI is developing an AI-based social media application in an effort to compete with Meta in the social networking field.