Comment by meekaaku
7 months ago
why the negativity? no one bats an eye when ronaldo/messi or steph curry or other top athletes get insane salaries.
These AI researchers will probably have far more impact on society (good or bad I dont know) than the athletes, and the people who pay them (ie zuck et al) certainly thinks its worth paying them this much because they provide value.
I'm going with envy. Athletics is a completely different skill from software, and one that is looked down on by posters here, judging by the frequent use of "sportsball". "Sportsball" players make huge salaries? Whatever, not my thing, that's for normies. But when software researchers make 1000x my salary? Now it's more personal. Surely they are not 1000x as good as me. It seems unlikely that this guy is 1000x as skilled as the average senior developer, so there's some perceived unfairness, too.
But I counsel a different perspective: it's quite remunerative to be selling tulips when there's a mania on!
It may be envy, but I’m still not sure a direct comparison makes much sense, given how much of a different creature engineering LLMs is from what most devs are doing.
I think negative feelings are coming from more of a “why are they getting paid so much to build a machine that’s going to wreck everything” sort of angle, which I find understandable.
> Surely they are not 1000x as good as me. It seems unlikely that this guy is 1000x as skilled as the average senior developer
Will never understand the logic. They is literally better than an average senior dev, if he has been offered 250m package.
My personal negativity stems from Meta in particular having a negative net impact on society. And no small one either. Everything Zuckerberg touches turns to poison (basically King Midas in reverse). And all that money, all that progress, is directed towards the detriment of everyone but a few.
In contrast, a skilled football player lands somewhere between neutral and positive, as at the very least they entertain millions of people. And I'm saying that as someone who finds football painfully dull.
They do bat an eyelid, many leagues even introduce salary caps in order to quell the negative side effects of insane salaries in sports.
Salary caps are more about keeping smaller clubs competitive. Is it really the case here? I think if this guy's company was acquired for $1B and he made $250M from the sale, people wouldn't be surprised at all.
No you're right, capitalism would not do the same thing as a sports club because the sports club has the incentive to be fair.
Though we give ourselves a pass in the name of capitalism, we could also prioritise fairness in our societies.
ok maybe bat an eyelid,
but I dont see news articles about athletes in such negativity, citing their young age etc.
You must not follow sports very close. Every time a young supports signs his first big deal, people freak out and compare it to the last superstar's deal. "Young players getting too much money before they earned it" is a trope at this point.
Sports teams pay Ronaldo, Messi, and Curry because they win games and that puts fans in seats and attracts sponsors that pay those teams money and turn a profit.
When someone had a successful business model that offsets the incredible costs let me know, but it is all hypothetical.
I think the reason for the negativity in this forum (and other threads I've seen over the past few months) is because people are engaged with AI and it seems are deep down not happy with its direction even if they are forced to adapt. That negativity spreads I think to people winning in this which is common in human nature. At least that's the impression I'm getting here and other places. The most commented articles on HN these days are AI (e.g. OpenAI model, some blogger writing about Claude Code gets 500+ comments, etc) which shows a very high level of emotional engagement and have the typical offensive and defensive attitude between people that benefit or lose from this. Also general old school software tech articles are drowned out in comparison; AI is taking all the oxygen out of the room.
My anecdotal observation talking to people: Most tech cycles I've seen have hype/excitement but this is the first one I've been in at least that I've seen a large amount of fear/despair. From loss of jobs, automating all the "good stuff", enriching only the privileged, etc etc people are worried. As loss aversion animals fear is usually more effective for engagement especially if it means a loss of what was before - people are engaged but I suspect negative towards the whole AI thing in general even if they won't say it on the record. Fear also creates a singular focus; when you are threatened/anxious its harder for people to engage with other topics and makes you see AI trend as something you would want to see fail. That paints AI researchers as not just negative; but almost changing their own profession/world for the worse which doesn't elicit a positive response from people.
And for the others, even if they don't have this engagement, the fact that this is drowning out other things can be annoying to some tech workers as well. Other tech talks, articles, research, etc is just silent in comparison.
YMMV; this is just my current anecdotal observations in my limited circle but I suspect others are seeing the same.
Anyone on earth can completely and totally ignore football and it will have zero consequences for their life.
The money here (in the AI realm) is coming a handful of oligarchs who are transparently trying to buy control of the future.
The difference between the two scenarios is... kinda obvious don't you think?
Ronaldo competes in a sport that has 250 million players (mostly for leisure purposes) worldwide, who often practice daily since childhood, and still comes out on top.
Are there 250 million AI specialists and the ones hired by Meta still come out on top?
Huh the pool being so small is exactly why they’re fought over. Theres tiering in research through papers and products built. Even if the tiering is wrong, if you can monopolize the talent you strike a blow to competitors.
I bet there are more professional footballers than AI researchers hence AI researchers will tend to get paid more.
Also much more people are affected by whatever AI is being developed/deployed than worldwide football viewers.
Top 5 football leagues have about 1.5billion monthly viewers. Top 5 AI companies (google, openai, meta etc) have far more monthly active users.
Crab mentality, the closer proximity to your profession / place in society the more resentment/envy. This is a win for some of us in tech, it's just not us, so we cannot allow it! Article even mentions the age of "24" as if someone of that age is inherently undeserving.