[namblooc]

I was never involved in doing ML myself, even through my CS studies. However, from the outside it looks... not that complicated? How do they justify these salaries? Where do they see it coming back to them in terms of revenue?

[psb217]

Most of the people pursued in these "AI talent wars" are folks deeply involved in training or developing infrastructure for training LLMs at whatever level is currently state-of-the-art. Due to the resources required for projects that can provide this sort of experience, the pool of folks with this experience is limited to those with significant clout in orgs with money to burn on LLM projects. These people are expensive to hire, and can kind of run through a loop of jumping from company to company in an upward compensation spiral.

Ie, the skills aren't particularly complicated in principle, but the conditions needed to acquire them aren't widely available, so the pool of people with the skills is limited.

[amy_petrik]

it's a bit like rocket engines, training a big fat LLM is super duper expensive like a rocket and all else being equal, you'd like to get it right the first try. someone who has built a lot of rocket engines knows all the gotchas and where to look out for traps and gremlins, same for someone who has built a lot of giga sized LLMs

[impossiblefork]

It both is and isn't. But finding genuinely new things that actually work better is very difficult.