Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on Meta AI hiring: ‘There’s more important things than just money, one has to…’

Google DeepMind 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.”