Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is offering some of the most generous recruitment packages in tech history as it aggressively seeks to reposition itself as a leader in generative artificial intelligence (AI).
The tech giant, one of the so-called magnificent seven, has offered signing bonuses of up to $100 (£79m) to attract top talent from competitors, including OpenAI, as reported by .
Zuckerberg himself has reportedly personally reached out to hundreds of engineers and researchers in recent months, sometimes contacting them directly via email or Whatsapp.
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One such approach resulted in a planned $14.3bn deal for a 49 per cent stake in Scale AI, a data-labelling firm founded by 28 year old billionaire Alexandr Wang, who is now set to join Meta's 'superintelligence' unit.
The company is also in negotiations to bring on board Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, high-profile AI investors and entrepreneurs, in a deal worth over $1bn.
If successful, these hires would represent one of Meta's most significant steps yet in its bid to compete with OpenAI and Google Deepmind in the development of generative AI products.
The new unit will not focus on frontier research, but rather product development – building tools that are ready for deployment across Meta's platforms.
The company has not made any formal comment.
AI vs humans
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This renewed investment from Meta comes amid growing concerns about the impact of AI on jobs.
In London, Artisan Ai, a startup from Silicon Valley, has sparked controversy with its ad campaign displayed at Old Street Station which proclaims: "Stop hiring humans. Artisans don't WFH from Ibiza" and "Artisans are excited to work 70+ hours a week".
This campaign centres around Ava, the company's premier AI sales representative, currently employed by over 300 companies.
British entrepreneur Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, who established Artisan in 2023, claims that Ava can substitute human business development representatives and is capable of generating substantial recurring revenue.
Following on from a campaign that went viral in San Francisco, these adverts have been met with criticism for their seemingly dismissive attitude towards human employees. In response to this backlash, Carmichael-Jack has made a statement asserting that it was not the intention of the advertisement to belittle the value of human workers.
AI enters hiring
In related news, this week saw AI recruitment firm Metaview secure $35m during its Series B funding round, with Google Ventures leading the investments.
Metaview, headquartered in London and created by former figures from Uber and Palantir, is developing technology that automates elements of the recruitment process like transcribing interviews and composing job listings.
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Siadhal Magos, the chief executive, expressed that the technology is designed to rectify persistent inefficiencies within recruitment operations.
Speaking to Fortune, he highlighted that even top-tier companies continue to rely on intuition and memory for new hires, illustrating how traditional employment methods are increasingly being influenced by AI technology.
Vidu Shanmugarajah of Google Ventures has observed that recruitment is "an area where digitalisation skipped a step," highlighting the profound improvements large language models (LLMs) can bring to optimisation processes.
As artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly evolves, global institutions are voicing increasing concern regarding its impact on jobs.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in a recent statement, alerted that AI could disrupt up to 40 per cent of jobs globally, potentially instigating significant structural changes in the global economy.
In a similar vein, the United Nations (UN) has issued warnings that AI poses risks of widening the developmental chasm among nations if disparities in access persist.
By 2030, the World Economic Forum estimates that AI will radically change 60 per cent of businesses, altering job functions and the landscape of skills required.
Amidst these developments, the aggressive headhunting campaign by Mark Zuckerberg is garnering considerable attention.
Zuckerberg, helming Meta, has made advances towards top talent at OpenAI and is reported to have considered outright acquisitions of nascent AI start-ups as part of his recruitment strategy.