Google has laid off 12,000 workers over the past two years, including 200 this May. Microsoft has fired more than 16,000 workers, with another 9,000 shown the door this month. Amazon, Intel, Cisco, X, Meta are all on the downsizing bandwagon, as a bloodbath engulfs the tech industry.
On the other hand, they are also offering eye-watering packages to select AI hires.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella started the trend when the company shelled out $650 million to acquire Inflection AI, with an intention to acquihire ex-DeepMind founder Mustafa Suleyman and his team.
Google one-upped it by reportedly doling out $2.7 billion for a licensing deal with Character.ai that also brought on board star AI engineer Noam Shazeer.
But it is Meta which is breaking the bank and the news cycles by offering truly hairraising amounts for a new “superintelligence team”. It is dangling $100 million bonuses to star AI researchers to abandon their companies and move to Meta, and a few have expectedly taken the bait.But even this is small change compared with the $14.3 billion it forked over to Scale AI to buy a 49% stake and get founder Alexandr Wang into its fold. It even went after AI superstar Ilya Sutskever, an OpenAI cofounder, with an eye-popping offer of $32 billion for him and his team to join the party.As Sean Parker told Mark Zuckerberg in the movie The Social Network , “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”
So, what is happening here? Why are mere biological humans being paid so much in the age of AI?
Well, I have often written about being human in the age of AI, and that it is our human skills that will differentiate us and make us survive and thrive.
HUMANS AS LUXURY GOOD
As AI becomes more powerful, we will have to rediscover and resuscitate our core humanity and human values of curiosity, creativity, imagination, passion and language. Human beings with a surfeit of these skills will be the valuable ones, humans who have become machine-like automatons will be turfed out.
Platform economics guru Sangeet Paul Choudary puts it much better when he says that in the age of AI, humans will become a “luxury good”.
He gives the example of a good wine selling for $80 in stores, but for $400 at a restaurant, because it is accompanied by the expert sommelier spinning a story about the vineyard where it was lovingly produced, and the “sixth-generation family continuing a tradition”.
“So, the diners are not paying for the wine,” he says, “they are actually buying the sommelier; his vibe, his wit, his ability to make them feel like connoisseurs.”
He adds, “In a world where knowledge is cheap, curiosity, curation and judgment— signalled well—become insanely valuable.” Thus, the sommelier is the luxury goods in a time when the product, wine, is getting commoditised. This describes exactly where jobs are headed.
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban recently said something profound: “Within the next three years, there will be so much AI, in particular AI video, people won’t know if what they see or hear is real.
Which will lead to an explosion of f2f (face-to-face) engagement, events and jobs. Those that were in the office will be in the field.”
So, we will perhaps have AI Authenticity Auditors, who will verify whether media presented at events is genuine or AIfabricated, or a Trust Broker
Concierge, who coordinates introductions between attendees, vets speakers and ensures the human credibility of every participant, or Disinformation Response Managers who are crisis-aversion experts on standby at events to debunk AI-driven deepfakes in real time and manage any fallout.
Or, even an On-field AI Explainer, who is a tech evangelist travelling to customer sites or conferences to demo AI ethics, safety measures and “how it works” seminars—live and unscripted. Come to think of it, this is what I do!
STORYTELLERS & SENSE-MAKERS
It is the beginnings of these that we are seeing with the $100 million humans that Meta is going after. Wang, for instance, is not really a crack AI researcher, he does not even have great technical skills, but he is a consummate networker and knows everyone in Silicon Valley and can attract great talent.
Sutskever, while being a great AI researcher, is now known more for his philosophical exhortations around AI safety, with a messianic following of AI engineers and investors.
Shazeer is known for his creative approach to making the transformer algorithm real.
Each of these humans has the technical chops, but they are distinguished by their extremely human values and skills. These human skills are the differentiators. As Choudary proclaims: “Value begins to shift from knowledge to curiosity, curation and judgment.”
In the end, it is not AI that will make us irrelevant, it is our refusal to be human that will. As algorithms crunch numbers and generate content at blinding speed, the real scarcity lies in insight, empathy, originality and trust.
It is this scarcity that will create value for those who amplify their irreplaceable human edge. If AI is the engine, humans are the storytellers, the stewards, the sense-makers.
(The author is the founder of AI&Beyond. Views expressed are personal)