AI workers are putting in 100-hour weeks in tech arms race

Josh Batson no longer has time for social media.

- Bradley Olson & Meghan Bobrowsky

Microsoft, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Apple and OpenAl executives see their work as critical to a seminal moment in history.
REUTERS

The AI researcher's only comparable dopamine hit these days is on Anthropic's Slack workplace-messaging channels, where he explores chatter about colleagues' theories and experiments on large language models and architecture.

Batson is among a group of core artificial-intelligence researchers and executives who are facing a relentless grind, racing to keep pace with a seemingly endless cycle of disruption in pursuit of systems with superhuman intelligence.

Inside Silicon Valley's biggest AI labs, top researchers and executives are regularly working 80 to 100 hours a week. Several top researchers compared the circumstances to war.

"We're basically trying to speedrun 20 years of scientific progress in two years," said Batson, a research scientist at Anthropic. Extraordinary advances in AI systems are happening "every few months," he said. "It's the most interesting scientific question in the world right now."

Executives and researchers at Microsoft , Anthropic, Alphabet's Google, Meta Platforms , Apple and OpenAI have said they see their work as critical to a seminal moment in history as they duel with rivals and seek new ways to bring AI to the masses.

Some of them are now millionaires many times over, but several said they haven't had time to spend their new fortunes.

The competition for AI talent kicked into high gear when Mark Zuckerberg began poaching top AI workers from rivals, offering multimillion-dollar pay packages . That showed how the work of a relatively small cluster of researchers and executives was one of the world's most precious resources. Now companies and the workers themselves are seeking to wring as much work as possible from these individuals each and every day.