Tesla CEO Elon Musk (left) and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (right).
Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images; Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Elon Musk says he is increasing salaries for employees of Tesla’s AI engineering team.
The raise, Musk said, was due to OpenAI “aggressively recruiting Tesla engineers.”
“The AI talent war is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen,” Musk says.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor.
Artificial intelligence engineers working at Tesla can thank Sam Altman and OpenAI for their raises.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday that his company will increase compensation packages for its AI engineering team employees. The raise, Musk said, was a response to OpenAI’s attempts to poach Tesla’s engineers.
“They have aggressively recruited Tesla engineers with massive salary offers and unfortunately have been successful in some cases,” Musk wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday about OpenAI’s hiring efforts.
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Musk responded to a report from The Information, which was released on the same day. According to the report, Tesla machine learning scientist Ethan Knight is joining Musk’s AI company xAI. “Ethan wanted to move to OpenAI, so it was either xAI or them,” Musk wrote on X.
OpenAI representatives did not immediately respond to a Business Insider request for comment made outside regular business hours.
Competition for AI talent has intensified, particularly among technology companies fighting for dominance in the field. Aside from the outrageous salaries they offer, some Big Tech leaders have adopted a personal touch when it comes to wooing engineers.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly written personal emails to AI researchers at Google’s DeepMind, like The Information reported. In fact, Zuckerberg’s Meta even offered applicants jobs without conducting an interview, the paper reports.
Tesla CEO speaks of the craziest talent war
It wasn’t just Zuckerberg who had to make personal contacts. Google co-founder Sergey Brin had to personally call an employee who was considering leaving Google for OpenAI. According to The Information’s report, Brin made several promises to persuade the employee to stay, including an offer of a higher salary.
Elon Musk wrote: “The AI talent war is the craziest talent war I’ve ever seen.”
Read the original article Business Insider.