Paul Stenhouse: Meta poaches OpenAI talent, Cloudflare wants to help content creators cash in on AI crawlers

Open AI’s talent is being poached for eye-watering numbers 

Being paid $100 million to join a team sounds like something from the NFL or NBA, but it’s happening in Silicon Valley too. OpenAI’s talent is being poached by other tech giants, with Meta reportedly offered signing bonuses that large to steal talent and offering salaries in the millions. 

 

Could website and content owners cash in on AI?  

Cloudflare wants to help. When newspapers, magazines, and other content creators started putting their content online it was largely free, and even if it wasn’t, they still allowed Google to crawl it since having your website be discovered was worth it. That math shifted over the years, and now with AI those same content creators are debating if they should do something different this time around.   

Cloudflare —a content delivery network— has a new feature aimed to help websites if they want to start charging for AI bots and agents to scrape their sites and use their service. They’re offering an auction system or a flat fee, and Cloudflare will be the broker for the transaction.    

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from news talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Twenty two to eleven on news talks EDB. Open Ai
is the company behind chat GPT and now their top
talent is being poached by some of the other big
tech companies four crazy amounts of money. Our textbook paulstine
House is waiting for his phone to light up. He's
just got us on Saturday mornings one hundred million bucks.
Are you serious? This for a scon bonus for a

(00:35):
computer technician.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
So this is what Sam Oltman, the CEO of open ai,
has said. People are being poached for right and so
they must. It must be like employees that are in
his top ranks have come to and said, buddy, yeah,
I've got this offer, what can you do for me?
And I don't know, he's probably just said see ya,
or he's reluctantly said.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
If you work from home every second Thursday, yeah right,
right in summer.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
But that's just a staggering number, isn't it. I mean,
these are the types of numbers you typically here for
you know, any of our stars or your like big
Hollywood A listers, and these are like nerdy folks working
out okay, working out the future of AI. I guess
so maybe they do need to be paid this sort
of money like these big like these other big names
we know about. But it certainly has been ruffling feathers.

(01:26):
There was every week Meta does a big like all
hands meeting, and this came up in there all hands meeting,
and they kind of addressed it and kind of couched it,
and they were sort of saying, well, it wasn't a
one hundred million dollars signing bonus. It was structured maybe
slightly differently. So maybe they're earning one hundred million dollars
and being paid twenty five million dollars a year. But

(01:47):
even then I wouldn't say no to that.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Can I ask this though? So our individuals and the
expertise that individuals bring, are they so valuable in the space?
Are there people who are so unique with what they
bring to AI development that they can possibly justify this underspending?
You know, like it is one person worth one hundred
million dollars versus another five people four five million dollars each,

(02:13):
you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (02:14):
I would only suggest that quite possibly, I think there's
a real shortage of people who have experienced in this
area and what we're seeing probably unlike other technologies that
have come about, a lot of these AI folks have
kind of been dabbling with some of the stuff in
a research capacity. You know, a lot of them have

(02:35):
probably been around academic or academic adjacent institutions. I mean
Open AI had a whole nonprofit kind of part to it,
and then chat GPT's part of their kind of commercial
arm And so these I think were folks who had
kind of, yeah, really dedicated themselves to some of this work,
and now they're obviously seeing the fruits of their labor.

(02:57):
And I don't think that there are that many who
would be at that caliber, but certainly those who those
who are kind of like leading the charge and have
and writing the papers and being deep into this research. Yeah,
commanding serious dollars. I mean, this is the I just
have to remember, this is the hottest technology. And I
know we talk about a lot of things, and over

(03:17):
the years, you and I've talked about things, and I've
seen things come and seen things go. God, look, don't
even get me started on the three D TVs and
things like that. But this is actually but this is different, right,
This feels like a real step change. And these these
big companies like look at Google, right, their whole livelihood
has been around data and search and connecting dots, and

(03:41):
now AIS come in and potentially up ending their entire business.
So would you take one hundred million dollar bet on
a guy a girl? Maybe if you.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Hold your company like Meta, you've gone a hundred million bucks, right,
Like that's the thing. Everything's relative, like one hundred million
dollars exactly to another to another company. But it does
set a very high standard when it comes to when
it comes to attracting talent. I think though, like the
if even only a ten percent of the hype for

(04:12):
AI at least in the next couple of years is warranted,
it's the kind of technology that has the potential to
upset the power balance between the big tech companies.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
So we've seen the lights of Apple and Google and
Meta dominate for the last you know, ten or twenty years,
and all of a sudden that could be about to
change and change super quickly, which is what's kind of interesting.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Yeah, unless they do something drastic.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Unless there's been a million dollars on talent, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Exactly on the track. I think and I think that
they're desperate. I think some of these companies, like you know,
open Aie was a nothing and it's become the company,
like chet GPT has become the word, has become the
Google of search. You know what Google is to search,
they are to AI And would you pay for that?
Look at your trillion, multi trillion dollar companies and you're like, okay, rounding.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Area, Yeah maybe maybe we will. Yeah, all right, Paul. Look,
if you if you need a reference, we certainly don't
want to lose you on Saturday morning. You need a referee,
if you're looking for you know, we're always here, So
I appreciate your time. As always our Textbert Paul Stenhouse.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio