{"id":133841,"date":"2025-08-10T08:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T08:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/133841\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T08:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T08:02:11","slug":"sam-altman-says-the-ai-talent-war-is-a-bet-that-a-medium-sized-handful-of-people-will-make-superintelligence-breakthroughs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/133841\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Altman says the AI talent war is a bet that a &#8216;medium-sized handful of people&#8217; will make superintelligence breakthroughs"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong>Amid the cutthroat war for AI talent<\/strong>, tech giants are offering astronomical sums to lure a tiny pool of top engineers from rivals. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expects the market for these geniuses to remain intense, but estimated there are \u201cmany thousands of people\u201d capable of making key discoveries in superintelligence who could conceivably be found.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The amounts of money being offered to hire AI geniuses is mind-boggling, as tech giants like <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/facebook\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/facebook\/\" class=\"sc-19cc8fd2-0 iHosVH\" rel=\"noopener\">Meta<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/microsoft\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/microsoft\/\" class=\"sc-19cc8fd2-0 iHosVH\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/alphabet\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/company\/alphabet\/\" class=\"sc-19cc8fd2-0 iHosVH\" rel=\"noopener\">Google<\/a> and OpenAI fight over a tiny talent pool in their race to achieve the next breakthrough.<\/p>\n<p>And the cutthroat competition doesn\u2019t look like it will ease anytime soon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDefinitely this is the most intense talent market I have seen in my career,\u201d OpenAI CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2025\/08\/08\/openai-ceo-sam-altman-on-race-for-ai-talent-the-most-intense-talent-market-ive-seen-in-my-career.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2025\/08\/08\/openai-ceo-sam-altman-on-race-for-ai-talent-the-most-intense-talent-market-ive-seen-in-my-career.html\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2025\/08\/08\/openai-ceo-sam-altman-on-race-for-ai-talent-the-most-intense-talent-market-ive-seen-in-my-career.html\" class=\"sc-19cc8fd2-0 iHosVH\">Sam Altman told CNBC on Friday<\/a>. \u201cBut if you think about the economic value being created by these people and how much we\u2019re spending on compute, you know, maybe the market stays like this. I\u2019m not I\u2019m not totally sure what\u2019s gonna happen, but it is a crazy intense comp for a very small number of people right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Exactly how small is that group of people, and what do they know that others don\u2019t, CNBC\u2019s Andrew Sorkin asked. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe bet, the hope is they know how to discover the remaining ideas to get to superintelligence\u2014that there are going to be a handful of algorithmic ideas and, you know, medium-sized handful of people who can figure them out,\u201d Altman replied.<\/p>\n<p>That would help explain the astronomical amounts companies are willing to spend to poach AI talent, with one offer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/tech\/ai\/meta-zuckerberg-ai-recruiting-fail-e6107555?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAjlzRb27zMTwS_iXpq1_rW1z1uy3CxXTCepSWGy_42Cf4LaT2jyKqBmaYxGefg%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6897ca6a&amp;gaa_sig=YP3R49GAbFsCrJnmOHgQT5WgdMfvYbDdbGUmk-Q2OdNS2kbkVpJsSzvQ2Mmt2-n6ZpwASzUmP4Wz8IWHyG0ukw%3D%3D\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/tech\/ai\/meta-zuckerberg-ai-recruiting-fail-e6107555?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAjlzRb27zMTwS_iXpq1_rW1z1uy3CxXTCepSWGy_42Cf4LaT2jyKqBmaYxGefg%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6897ca6a&amp;gaa_sig=YP3R49GAbFsCrJnmOHgQT5WgdMfvYbDdbGUmk-Q2OdNS2kbkVpJsSzvQ2Mmt2-n6ZpwASzUmP4Wz8IWHyG0ukw%3D%3D\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/tech\/ai\/meta-zuckerberg-ai-recruiting-fail-e6107555?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAjlzRb27zMTwS_iXpq1_rW1z1uy3CxXTCepSWGy_42Cf4LaT2jyKqBmaYxGefg%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6897ca6a&amp;gaa_sig=YP3R49GAbFsCrJnmOHgQT5WgdMfvYbDdbGUmk-Q2OdNS2kbkVpJsSzvQ2Mmt2-n6ZpwASzUmP4Wz8IWHyG0ukw%3D%3D\" class=\"sc-19cc8fd2-0 iHosVH\">reportedly topping $1 billion<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2025\/06\/18\/metas-100-million-signing-bonuses-openai-staff-extreme-ai-talent-war\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/2025\/06\/18\/metas-100-million-signing-bonuses-openai-staff-extreme-ai-talent-war\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2025\/06\/18\/metas-100-million-signing-bonuses-openai-staff-extreme-ai-talent-war\/\" class=\"sc-19cc8fd2-0 iHosVH\">Altman said in June<\/a> that Meta had been making \u201cgiant offers to a lot of people on our team,\u201d some totaling \u201c$100 million signing bonuses and more than that [in] compensation per year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meta is also <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2025\/06\/13\/meta-scale-ai-alexandr-wang-superintelligence-team\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/2025\/06\/13\/meta-scale-ai-alexandr-wang-superintelligence-team\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/2025\/06\/13\/meta-scale-ai-alexandr-wang-superintelligence-team\/\" class=\"sc-19cc8fd2-0 iHosVH\">investing $14.3 billion in Scale<\/a> and hired the startup\u2019s CEO, Alexandr Wang, for a superintelligence team. <\/p>\n<p>While immense fortunes are being thrown at a handful of top engineers, Altman estimated the number of people smart enough to make superintelligence breakthroughs is actually much, much larger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI bet it\u2019s much bigger than people think, but you know some companies in the space have decided that they\u2019re going to go after a few shiny names,\u201d he told CNBC. \u201cI think there\u2019s probably many thousands of people that we could find and probably tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in the world that are capable of doing this kind of work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Introducing the 2025 Fortune Global 500<\/strong>, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in the world. <a href=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/ranking\/global500\/?&amp;itm_source=fortune&amp;itm_medium=article_tout&amp;itm_campaign=plea_text\" target=\"_self\" aria-label=\"Go to https:\/\/fortune.com\/ranking\/global500\/?&amp;itm_source=fortune&amp;itm_medium=article_tout&amp;itm_campaign=plea_text\" class=\"sc-19cc8fd2-0 iHosVH\" rel=\"noopener\">Explore this year&#8217;s list.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid the cutthroat war for AI talent, tech giants are offering astronomical sums to lure a tiny pool&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,17342,305,923,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-133841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-compensation","10":"tag-openai","11":"tag-sam-altman","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115003427579093844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}