Mark Zuckerberg is literally inviting rival researchers to his homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe, dangling seven-to-nine figure salaries to form an AI “super-intelligence” super squad.
He's poaching talent from Google DeepMind, Sesame AI, and Scale AI. What does that signal?
1. Meta is all in.
Zuck is betting the farm to win the AI race by any means necessary. In the past he's copied competitors products (see Stores, Reels, Threads, etc); now he's land grabbing their talent.
2. Big Tech just hit fast-forward.
When one company will pay $100 million for a single researcher, every competitor must rethink comp, equity, and mission or risk losing their A-players.
3. AI Safety and job security for us "regulars"? Simply afterthoughts.
Alignment, guardrails, and workforce impact rank far below speed and market share. That’s a risky gap when early reports already show LLMs blackmailing researchers to prevent getting shut down.
I’m pro-AI, but the arms race is moving at a staggering pace. Are you ready for what's coming?
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