The $1 billion AI job position that Meta and Mark Zuckerberg can’t fill
Despite staggering offers, top AI talent keeps rejecting Meta’s advances, exposing the challenges behind Zuckerberg’s superintelligence vision.
Mark Zuckerberg is hugely excited about Meta’s new Superintelligence Lab, which he announced in what some have described as a “hostage-style video” on Wednesday (July 30).
The Facebook founder insists Meta’s main vision for artificial intelligence differs from that of other big players in the industry, who he claims are focused on “scientific and economic advances” and “automating all of the valuable work.”
Mark Zuckerberg explains Meta’s AI goal
“I think an even more meaningful impact in our lives is going to come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, be a better friend and grow to be the person you aspire to be,” Zuckerberg explains in the video.
“At Meta, we believe in putting the power of superintelligence in people’s hands to direct it to what they value in their own lives. Some of it may be about improving productivity, but a lot of it may be more personal in nature.”
Top AI talent turns down Meta
While many would agree that general principle is admirable, so far few have been keen to work alongside the Meta CEO to make it happen, with numerous individuals having reportedly turned down obscenely lucrative job offers with the company.
According to Wired, “more than a dozen” staffers at Thinking Machines Lab, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, were offered eye-watering amounts of money to jump ship, only for them all to decline.
Per the same source, that includes one person who rejected an offer in excess of $1 billion to join Zuckerberg’s clan.
Meta’s AI frustrations
The knock-backs are a source of more AI-related frustration for Meta, who have resorted to throwing incredible sums of cash around in an effort to catch the companies leading the AI revolution, such as OpenAI and Google.
Meta’s most recent setback came in the shape of the Llama 4 large language model, released in April, which failed to live up to expectations set by previous releases. One AI scholar even claimed the model trained on test sets, the AI equivalent to a student passing an exam having previously seen the answers.
Zuckerberg’s Superintelligence Lab leaders
Zuckerberg does at least have two Superintelligence Lab leaders in place in the shape of Scale AI cofounder Alexandr Wang and Ruoming Pang, ex-head of Apple Intelligence.
That said, Apple Intelligence has drawn a huge amount of criticism from those in the know, while many iPhone users have reported turning it off, citing broken features, unclear marketing, misleading ads and a negative effect on battery life as issues.
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