The CEO of OpenAI asserts that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has attempted to attract leading artificial intelligence experts by offering a staggering $100 million (£74 million) “crazy” signing bonus, intensifying the competition for talent in this rapidly expanding industry.

Sam Altman discussed this offer during a podcast on Tuesday. Meta has not confirmed the claims. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, indicated there was no further comment beyond the CEO’s remarks.

“They started making these enormous offers to a lot of people on our team – a signature bonus of $100 million plus compensation,” Altman stated during a podcast hosted by his brother, Jack. “It’s unbelievable. I’m really pleased that none of our top talent has decided to accept it, at least for now.”

He remarked:

Recently, Meta initiated a $15 billion initiative aimed at developing computerized “superintelligence,” AI that can outperform humans in all domains. The company has acquired a significant stake in the startup Scale AI, valued at $29 billion and founded by 28-year-old programmer Alexandr Wang.

Last week, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Deedy Das, tweeted that “the competition for AI talent is absolutely absurd.” Das, principal at Menlo Ventures, noted that despite Meta offering a $2 million salary, he had lost AI candidates to competitors.

In another report from Aintopic, an AI firm backed by Amazon and Google and founded by an engineer who left Altman’s company, it was revealed that it is “poaching the top talent from its two main rivals, OpenAI and DeepMind.”

The race to recruit top developers is driven by rapid advancements in AI technology and the quest to achieve human-level AI capabilities, known as artificial general intelligence. A recent estimate from the Carlisle Group, cited by Bloomberg, forecasts spending on hardware to exceed $1.8 trillion by 2030 for computational power.

Some tech firms are acquiring entire companies to secure top talent, such as Meta’s Scale AI investments and Google’s $2.7 billion purchase of Calither.ai last year. He co-authored a 2017 research paper warning that is regarded as a significant contribution to the current wave of large-scale language model AI systems.

Meta began as a social media platform, while OpenAI was originally a nonprofit but transitioned to a for-profit model last year. The two entities now find themselves in competition. Altman expressed skepticism about Meta’s capability in advancing AI, stating, “I don’t believe they are a company that excels at innovation.”

He recalled Zuckerberg’s early assertions about developing social media features during Facebook’s inception, but noted that “it was evident that it wouldn’t resonate with Facebook users.”

“I perceive some similarities here,” Altman remarked.

Despite significant investments in the sector, Altman indicated that the outcomes “should lead to legitimate superintelligence rather than just incremental improvements. [and] It doesn’t have as profound an impact as we might expect.”

“You can achieve these remarkable feats with AI, yet still live your life much as you did two years ago,” he commented.

“I believe the next five to ten years could be pivotal for AI in terms of discovering new scientific advancements, which is a bold assertion, but I genuinely believe it to be true. [AI has accomplished].”