Ex-OpenAI Board Member Says Companies Will Poach Meta’s New AI Hires

Helen Toner, a former OpenAI board member, said Meta could start seeing other companies trying to poach back their newly brought in AI talent.

Toner, who left OpenAI’s board in November 2023, said in an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday that Meta will need to show they are “moving fast enough” in the field to retain their new AI hires.

Toner added that Meta “will be getting attempts to poach them back to other companies starting on day one.”

Meta has been stepping up its AI recruitment efforts amid a wider industry search for AI talent.

Last month, Meta said it had made a $15 billion investment in data-labeling firm ScaleAI. ScaleAI’s founder and CEO, Alexandr Wang will also be joining Meta as its Chief AI Officer as part of the investment.

Wang will also co-lead Meta Superintelligence Labs with Nat Friedman, the former CEO of Github. The rest of Meta’s new team comprises former researchers from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Toner, however, told Bloomberg that “it’ll be difficult” for Meta to achieve success with its new AI hires.

“There’s a lot of organizational politics at play,” she continued.

Toner said the challenge Meta faced was not just about procuring resources but also managing egos.

“That takes a lot of willingness to stare down powerful people inside your company, who maybe don’t want to lose and tell them that you actually don’t want them to do what they want,” Toner said.

“The question will be, in part, can Mark Zuckerberg, if this is his big personal project, is that enough to change their organizational dynamics,” she added.

Toner isn’t the only one who has criticized Meta’s recruitment efforts.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said he found it “crazy” that Meta offered his employees $100 million signing bonuses to leave.

“The strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp and that being the reason you tell someone to join, like really the degree to which they’re focusing on that and not the work and not the mission, I don’t think that’s going to set up a great culture,” Altman said in an episode of the “Uncapped with Jack Altman” podcast that aired last month.

Toner had previously voted to fire Altman as OpenAI’s CEO in November 2023. At the time, OpenAI’s board said Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications” with them but did not provide further details. Altman eventually returned as CEO just days later.

Toner said in her interview with Bloomberg on Thursday that she has not “actually interacted” with Altman since his brief ouster from OpenAI.

“I’m sure at some point soon we will wind up at the same event. The AI world is pretty small, and I’m sure that we will both be happy to shake each other’s hand, but don’t have another chance yet so far,” Toner said.

Representatives for Toner and Meta did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.