24/10/2025
A group of core artificial-intelligence researchers and executives are facing a relentless grind, racing to keep pace with a seemingly endless cycle of disruption in pursuit of systems with superhuman intelligence. 🔗 https://on.wsj.com/3WhdaeH
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 Josh 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.