OpenAI's Research Chief On The Soup Wars, Poker And The Next Models - EP 46 Mark Chen

**Ashlee Vance** (0:00)
On the recruitment wars, I mean, there's got a lot of attention, literally, and it looked like Metta was quite aggressive. What exactly does this tit for tat look like? What stage are we at?

**Mark Chen** (0:13)
Yeah, I mean, there is a pool of talent, right? And everyone kind of knows who they are.
And I think many companies have realized that one of the key ingredients, not the only important ingredient, but one of the key ingredients to building a great AI lab is to get the best talent. And I think not a surprise that Metta has been aggressively employing the strategy. You know, we haven't sat back idly. And I actually want to tell the story from OpenAI's point of view. I think a lot has been made in the media of, oh, you know, there's this unidirectional flow of talent over to Metta. But the way that I've seen it is, you know, from Metta, they've gone after a lot of people quite unsuccessfully. So just to give you context, right, within my staff, within my direct reports before they hired anyone from OpenAI, I think they went after half of my direct reports and they all declined. And of course, you know, if they have something like $10 billion of capital per year to deploy towards talent, they're going to get someone. So I actually feel like we've been fairly good about protecting our top talent. And you know, it's been kind of interesting and fun to see it escalate over time. You know, some interesting stories here are Zuck actually went and hand delivered soup to people that he was trying to recruit from us.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:41)
Like a dress, just to show how far he would go.

**Mark Chen** (1:45)
Yeah, I think he hand cooked the soup. And you know, it was shocking to me at the time, but you know, over time, I've kind of updated these things can be effective in their own way. Right. And you know, I've also delivered soup to people that we've been recruiting from Metta.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:01)
You're doing a soup counting.

**Mark Chen** (2:03)
I've thought of, you know, if I had an offsite, the next offsite for my staff, I'm going to take them to a cooking class.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:08)
Okay.

**Mark Chen** (2:08)
And yeah, I mean, it's just been, yeah, but I do think, you know, there's something I've learned about recruiting. And did you cook your soup?

**Ashlee Vance** (2:19)
It's better if you get like Michelin star soup, you know what I mean?

**Mark Chen** (2:23)
Yeah, no, no, no. I think Dejo is very, very good and probably better than any soup I could cook. But yeah, I do think there is something I've learned about, you know, just how to go aggressively after top talent. And I think the thing I've been actually very inspired by is that, you know, at OpenAI, even among people who have left for META, I haven't heard anyone say AGI is going to be developed at META first. Everyone is very confident in the research program at OpenAI. And one thing that I have made very clear to my staff, to the whole research org is we don't counter dollar for dollar with META. And the multiples that below what META is offering, that people are very happy to stay at OpenAI, gives me so much conviction that people really believe in the upside and believe that we're going to do it.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:21)
And Alex, Alex Wang, he used to be one of the math.

**Mark Chen** (3:26)
Yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:26)
I'm sure you guys hung out.

**Mark Chen** (3:28)
Yeah. I mean, I have hung out with Alex a handful of times, but we don't too much anymore.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:33)
Yeah.

**Mark Chen** (3:34)
I mean, yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:35)
Why did soup become the thing? It was just.

**Mark Chen** (3:38)
I don't know. There's been soup, there's been flowers, there's been anything you can think of under the sun. But I don't know. I think life's an adventure. I play into the meme. Yeah.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:48)
Is there any poker strategy to employ? Like if you're thinking.

**Mark Chen** (3:54)
Well, again, I think it really goes back to what I've said about the media narrative. The game is not to retain every single person in the org. It's to trust in this pipeline that we have for developing talent. And to understand who the key people we need to keep are and to keep those. And I think we've done a phenomenal job at that.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:30)
We have a special treat today. I'm excited. Mark Chen is here from OpenAI. He's the chief research officer. He's somebody I've gotten to know over the last couple of years. Thank you so much for coming.