Skip to Content
Uncategorized

AI experts’ salaries are topping $1 million—even at nonprofits

April 20, 2018

In the AI world, you don’t need to be working for a giant for-profit corporation to rake in the dough.

Off the charts: The New York Times took a look at nonprofit OpenAI’s tax filing and found some eye-popping figures. A top researcher got over $1.9 million in 2016, and one expert, Ian Goodfellow, was paid more than $800,000 for only a partial year’s work.

Pay up: If you want to attract top AI talent, the lesson is simple: set aside the lion’s share of your budget for wages. In its first year, OpenAI spent a total of $11 million, and over $7 million of that went to salaries and benefits.

In demand: There’s a shortage of skilled AI experts, and it’s driving salaries into the stratosphere. Top tech companies increasingly see AI as integral to succeeding, and they’ll try anything, including some zany recruiting efforts, to try to lure in the very best minds.

This story first appeared in our future of work newsletter, Clocking In. Sign up here!

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Scientists are finding signals of long covid in blood. They could lead to new treatments.

Faults in a certain part of the immune system might be at the root of some long covid cases, new research suggests.

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.