I'll sell my soul for about $600K/yr. Can't say I'm at the top of the AI game but I did graduate with a "concentration in AI" if that counts for anything.

That is "normal"/low-end IC6 pay at a tech company, the ML researchers involved here are pulling well into the millions.

your comment is close to dead, when you talk public open facts.

shows that the demographic here is alienated when it came to their own compensation market value.

People here love to pretend 100k is an outstanding overpay

It's definitely alien to me. How do these people get paid so much?

* Uber-geniuses that are better than the rest of us pleb software engineers

* Harder workers than the rest of us

* Rich parents -> expensive school -> elite network -> amazing pay

* Just lucky

By being very good. Mostly the Uber-geniuses thing, but I wouldn't call them geniuses. You do have a bit of the harder working but it's quite minor and of course sometime you benefit from being in the right place at the right time (luck). I'd say elite network is probably the least important conditional on you having a decent network that you can get at any top 20 school if you put in the effort (be involved in tech societies etc.)

Most companies don't pay that, step 1 is identifying the companies that do and focusing your efforts on them exclusively. This will depend on where you live, or on your remote opportunities.

Step 2 is gaining the skills they are looking for. Appropriate language/framework/skill/experience they optimize for.

Step 3 is to prepare for their interview process, which is often quite involved. But they pay well, so when they say jump, you jump.

I'm not saying you'll find $600k as a normal pay, that's quite out of touch unless you're in Silicon Valley (and even then). But you'll find (much) higher than market salary.

> I'll sell my soul for about $600K/yr.

If you're willing to sell your soul, you should at least put a better price on it.

Many sells their soul for $60k/yr, souls aren't that expensive.

Your soul is worth whatever you value it at.

Isn't his narrative that he is basically the only person in the world who has already done this?

No, Sutskever and colleagues did it. Sam sold it. Which is a lot, but is not doing it.

this being bait and switched actual scientists implementing the thing under the guise of non-profit?

"I'll pay you lots of money to build the best AI" is a pretty good narrative.