Meta Poaches Two More Apple AI Executives

[duffman9000]

Good for Facebook i guess?

These people can’t even put together a half decent functional assistant that is any more advanced than what we had a decade ago.

Suppose Facebook can’t afford the big dogs from the likes of Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, etc. that’s where the real talent is.

also this just shows that Apple still isn’t taking AI seriously…but then again these people obviously aren’t up to the job of putting out a useful AI product.

It’s actually embarrassing how far behind Apple are when it come’s to AI. It might actually be Tim’s biggest blunder in his time at Apple (even more so than his ski goggles). We’re already seeing Apple slip and start to go downhill. There is only so much the iPhone 17 can do for them.

Apple AI is terrible and if the people responsible for it are leaving… good?

 

[Billy_Bob]

A brain drain from a shallow pond.

What will Tim Cook fill it back up with?

Emoji designers, of course!

 

[jamezr]

After poaching one of Apple's top artificial intelligence executives with a $200 million pay package to lure him away from the company, Meta has now hired two of his subordinates, Bloomberg reports.

wait....Apple has AI executives and engineers? I thought they just wanted people to use ChatGPT...who knew!

incase it wasn't obvious.....that was sarcasm....

 

[chris1958]

No one even uses Meta AI! Not even the grandparents on FaceBook!

Is this just a lame joke?

Meta Llama-models are quite popular in the AI-community, especially because they are Open Source. On the contrary Apple has up to now nothing to show, what could be considered up to par.

 

[switz]

When the sidewall of a tire blows out, there is no way to repair it. Apple's AI tire just had a blowout.

 

[AHDuke99]

I sold off my Apple stock this week after owning it for almost 20 years. I just don't see a vision anymore besides making small updates to existing products. Apple is still living off Steve Jobs' products and really hasn't released anything blockbuster since he died. People like to hate on AI, but it's the future and Apple is lightyears behind other tech giants.

 

[transpo1]

All this spending on a potentially catastrophic bubble burst before too long. Hope those poached executives enjoy the fallout from their spiffy new yachts.

WSJ says AI bubble burst could be worse than Dotcom Crash

Those AI execs are smart enough to recognize that the bubble will eventually burst— why not milk it while they can?

 

[TwoBytes]

Apple is not competing with the talent. The talent can get paid more, feel more valued elsewhere, work for less years, retire early, and live life. It makes sense for the employee.
Doesn't make sense for Apple not to match the cash.

 

[East India Company]

I can’t wait to see in 6 months:
“Meta lays off 90% of their AI team”

With a $200 million entry bonus, they could lay me off any moment they want..
If only I was an AI engineer

 

[Mousse]

The AI launch was likely 80% ready by the start of the year. They would have benefitted from launching it and collecting users data for learning, similar to how ChatGPT launches their models and tweaks them every couple of weeks. But Tim Cook is too scared of the stock market reacting negatively to an imperfect launch, which is atypical of Apple.

Did you miss the Apple Intelligence launch? Or the fiasco that followed? Or the ongoing ridicule of Apple's AI efforts since?

 

[LonerATO]

Sounds like a great culture over at Meta. On this week's Hardfork podcast Casey and Kevin even mentioned that this Super AI group is going to build a lot of distrust among Meta's other Ai engineers over these pay packages.

 

[ginkobiloba]

During the dot-com bubble of the 2000s, investors were throwing money at everyone who could code, even if they didn’t have a solid idea that actually solved a real problem or created value. Money was being thrown everywhere in the hope that something would stick, and to make sure no opportunity was missed at any cost. The reality, however, was that new technology by itself doesn’t create value. Innovations and solutions do. Technology merely enables the development of new innovations and solutions. That’s why I personally feel that this AI boom is similar to the dot-com bubble. It’s an exciting new technology everyone wants to jump into, but very few truly know what’s worth doing with it. In that sense, Apple might actually be smart for not panicking about it.

This is a great comment, I completely agree with it. I’m not seeing either what REAL problems are being solved by these recent developments of AI, and it’s probably a wise move from Apple to wait until things get clearer.

 

[smelly feet]

Every job I ever had in tech required me to sign a non-compete agreement whereby I couldn't work for a competing company for x years. Are those agreements no longer a thing? or are they only for minions not 'executives'? And how in the world could any single worker be worth $200 million? Are they really getting that much money or are there performance and longevity metrics involved? Or maybe they are being paid in crypto?

 

[darngooddesign]

Every job I ever had in tech required me to sign a non-compete agreement whereby I couldn't work for a competing company for x years. Are those agreements no longer a thing? or are they only for minions not 'executives'? And how in the world could any single worker be worth $200 million? Are they really getting that much money or are there performance and longevity metrics involved? Or maybe they are being paid in crypto?

Workers aren't worth 200 Million; however, delaying your competition from having the best AI talent for as long as possible is worth 200 million. Several hundred million is a drop in the bucket to Meta's long-term AI goals.

 

[Techwatcher]

Good for Facebook i guess?

These people can’t even put together a half decent functional assistant that is any more advanced than what we had a decade ago.

Suppose Facebook can’t afford the big dogs from the likes of Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, etc. that’s where the real talent is.

also this just shows that Apple still isn’t taking AI seriously…but then again these people obviously aren’t up to the job of putting out a useful AI product.

It’s actually embarrassing how far behind Apple are when it come’s to AI. It might actually be Tim’s biggest blunder in his time at Apple (even more so than his ski goggles). We’re already seeing Apple slip and start to go downhill. There is only so much the iPhone 17 can do for them.

You don’t give $200,000,000 offers to Apple AI Engineers if they weren’t good. They’re good—the executive leadership were the ones causing the problems.

 

[wigby]

Where’s the 5W Charger people to defend this and say they’re satisfied with the current level of Siri capabilities?

I charge my phone once a day overnight and I only use Siri for timers and weather forecasts. Do I wish Siri was better or that my phone charged faster? Sure but it doesn't stop me from planning to buy the next new iPhone released. I probably represent 75% of Apple customers.

 

[vantelimus]

Meta offers huge pay and the opportunity to invent groundbreaking AI with Yann LeCun, the godfather of deep learning. Apple offers the opportunity to productize models downloadable from huggingface to make novel emojis. Where do you think a computer scientist would prefer to work?

 

[wilhoitm]

Meta offers huge pay and the opportunity to invent groundbreaking AI with Yann LeCun, the godfather of deep learning. Apple offers the opportunity to productize models downloadable from huggingface to make novel emojis. Where do you think a computer scientist would prefer to work?

Apple does it own AI Research and Development and it's AI is more prevalent and productized that Facebooks AI! Apple is just very secretive about it like they have always been about everything! Don't get it twisted!

Research

Explore advancements in state of the art machine learning research in speech and natural language, privacy, computer vision, health, and more.

machinelearning.apple.com

 

[darngooddesign]

Meta offers huge pay and the opportunity to invent groundbreaking AI with Yann LeCun, the godfather of deep learning. Apple offers the opportunity to productize models downloadable from huggingface to make novel emojis. Where do you think a computer scientist would prefer to work?

Wait... you don't think Meta's end goal is productizing their AI work?

 

[koruki]

they tried forcine people to use MetaAI in whatsapp and its the most useless thing ever, I can't even get to read my own chat to give information or context

 

[vantelimus]

Wait... you don't think Meta's end goal is productizing their AI work?

Of course. And they are already doing it. But, Meta is betting big on AI and research. Apple is playing catch up and has, so far, had a very limited vision for how their AI will be used.