In Silicon Valley’s white-hot race for artificial intelligence supremacy, mind-boggling pay packages are part of the industry’s recruitment push. At OpenAI, however, the company’s residency program is tackling attracting and keeping top talent by looking outside of the industry altogether.
The six-month, full-time paid program offers aspiring AI researchers from adjacent fields like physics or neuroscience a pathway into the AI industry, rather than recruiting individuals already deeply invested in AI research and work. According to Jackie Hehir, OpenAI’s research residency program manager, residents aren’t those seeking Ph.Ds in machine learning or AI, nor are they employees of other AI labs. Instead, she said in a program info session, “they’re really passionate about the space.”
