🤫 Whisper #25: Meta Superintelligence. Scale AI. Human Data.
Things seem irrational in AI land with $100M job offers, $14B investments, and CEO grabbing. Is it a bubble? What does all of this mean?
👋 Hey, it’s 📣 Coach Erika! Welcome to a ✨ paid subscriber edition ✨ of The Career Whispers. I tackle reader questions about tech careers: how to get one, how to navigate them, and how to grow and thrive in your role.
Some personal news:
I took a new role in January, working on frontier AI in Google DeepMind. Some of my writing will likely shift toward AI tools and roles, which I suspect will be interesting to most of you. I am still getting clarity on what I can/will write about, but hopefully this post gives you a taste of what’s top of mind for me, which is: AI models, AI careers, and life+careers in a post-AGI world.
Hey, friend! If you by some miracle are not yet subscribed, here, let me help you with that.
↓ Let’s dive in to what’s top of mind: Superintelligence and Human Data (ScaleAI)
Q: What is happening with Meta Superintelligence and ScaleAI? I heard there are $100M job offers flying around that people are crazy enough to actually turn down. What is superintelligence anyway? How do I get one of those offers?
Blockbuster “investments.” Zuck collecting AI CEOs. $10M to $100M job offers that people are apparently insane enough to turn down. Tech news is wild this week.
Lots of you have reached out to ask me what is this insanity, and below are Coach Erika’s loose thoughts:
Mark Z is feeling mega FOMO after the flop that was the Llama 4 model launch.
Nobody wants to work at Meta, but everyone loves 💸 MONEY 💸 — and with their mega offers, AI researcher compensation now rivals Saudi Prince annual yacht allowances.
Mark Z is collecting AI CEOs to staff his superintelligence play — lots of big egos, big paychecks, and big responsibilities — this is going to be interesting 👀🍿
Meta “bought” ScaleAI without “buying” ScaleAI. At a time when pretty much everything about American corporate regulation is a free-for-all, so they will probably get by with this odd deal. But ScaleAI’s customer’s aren’t buying it, and contracts are being pulled (and placed elsewhere…blue sky opportunity for human data vendors).
SurgeAI, ScaleAI’s top competitor in the human data space, is probably about to fundraise. What happens with their fundraise will hint at the future of human in the loop data suppliers.
It’s a fabulous time to be a chip maker, an AI researcher, and a human data supplier.
The full breakdown is for paid subscribers only, and it includes my predictions for what is likely to happen next in the ScaleAI/human data world, and what’s coming for AI compensation and careers: