Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on Meta AI hiring: ‘There's more important things than just money, one has to…'
CEO
Demis Hassabis
appeared on an episode of the Lex Fridman podcast recently. During the podcast, Demis talked about the
Meta AI hiring
spree that has hired employees from
OpenAI
, Apple, GitHub, Google and others. Hassabis said it makes sense that Meta is making these job offers. 'Meta right now are not at the frontier, maybe they'll manage to get back on there', Hassabis said, adding 'It's probably rational what they're doing from their perspective because they're behind and they need to do something.'
He further added that many people working in AI care more about the mission to 'steward that technology safely'. "There's more important things than just money," he said. "Of course, one has to pay people their market rates and all of these things, and that continues to go up."
Google DeepMind CEO: AI research was not always a well-paid profession
During the podcast, Demis Hassabis revealed that working in AI research wasn't always a high paying job. 'I remember when we were starting out back in 2010, I didn't even pay myself for a couple of years because there wasn't enough money. We couldn't raise any money,' he said.
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'These days, interns are being paid the amount that we raised as our first entire seed round,' he stated.
Demis Hassabis may succeed Sundar Pichai as Google CEO
Demis Hassabis is reportedly being seen by some Google employees as a potential successor to the current CEO Sundar Pichai. While there is no official word on any succession plan, a Business Insider report says Hassabis' swift rise in recent years has followed a pattern similar to that of Pichai's own journey to the top. 'His rise reminds me of Sundar's,' a longtime Google employee who has worked closely with Hassabis and Pichai told the publication. 'All of a sudden, you started hearing this name Sundar internally, and he kept having more and more responsibility, and all of a sudden, he was the CEO,' the employee added.
Continuing further, the employee stated 'Demis' rise has been similar. Now, all of a sudden, he's responsible for what is probably the most important team at Google right now.'
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