Nilay Patel

Sometimes they're worried that AI is going to imperil humanity, destroy all jobs, and plunge the world into chaos.

They're really saying these things.

They're publishing these notes on X in blog posts, or in the case of one former OpenAI safety researcher, by writing a full New York Times op-ed.

I've been dying to really dig in and try to unpack what's going on with all these talent loops in AI.

So my guest today is Verge senior AI reporter Hayden Field, who's been covering the revolving door of the AI industry really closely, and also the broader culture that's motivating the AI workers to jump ship and the companies that are ruthlessly trying to hire them.

Those motivations vary.

Sure, all these people are paid extravagant salaries.

But as you'll hear Hayden say, a more stronger motivating force is ideology and mission.

The people working on AI by and large believe that what they're doing is going to radically change the world, and they're not really in desperate need of more money.

So that really changes the incentive structures that might push people to leave, say, OpenAI for Anthropic, or to quit Elon Musk's XAI now that it's been acquired by SpaceX.

At the same time, the incentives of the AI companies themselves are going from raising money to making money.

Reporting suggests that OpenAI and maybe even Anthropic could go public this year, and doing so would create a historic amount of wealth.

It would also put new kinds of pressure on these companies to be more transparent about how they spend money and to be much more accountable for returning on the huge investments that they've raised so far.

There's a lot in this conversation.

The AI industry right now is full of drama.

There's big characters, bitter rivalries, lots of money, and really, really long blog posts about the end of the world.

Okay, here's Verge Senior AI Reporter Hayden Field.

Here we go.

I wanted to check in on the state of the tech labor market and how big of a distorting effect AI is having on it.

Not from the automation perspective, but rather how the behavior of the AI labs and the people who work there is having a major impact on everything around them.