I also noticed this! And wondered how much evidence it is (and of what). I don’t think of Meta as especially rational in its AI-related behaviour. Maybe this is Zuckerberg trying to make up for Le Cun’s years of bad judgement.
Hmm, I actually kind of lean towards it being rational, and labs just underspending on labor vs. capital for contigent historical/cultural reasons. I do think a lot of the talent juice is in “banal” progress like efficiently running lots of experiments, and iterating on existing ideas straightforwardly (as opposed to something like “only a few people have the deep brilliance/insight to make progress”), but that doesn’t change the upshot IMO.
Salaries have indeed now gotten pretty high—it seems like they’re within an OOM of compute spend (at least at Meta).
I also noticed this! And wondered how much evidence it is (and of what). I don’t think of Meta as especially rational in its AI-related behaviour. Maybe this is Zuckerberg trying to make up for Le Cun’s years of bad judgement.
Hmm, I actually kind of lean towards it being rational, and labs just underspending on labor vs. capital for contigent historical/cultural reasons. I do think a lot of the talent juice is in “banal” progress like efficiently running lots of experiments, and iterating on existing ideas straightforwardly (as opposed to something like “only a few people have the deep brilliance/insight to make progress”), but that doesn’t change the upshot IMO.