From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrow-F.

This is the Daily.

The race to dominate artificial intelligence has become an all-out talent war,

with tech companies offering pay packages of a quarter billion dollars

and poaching their competitors' best employees.

Today, my colleague Mike Isaac on how we got here and why all the hype is raising fears

that AI could become the next big bubble.

It's Monday, August 25th. Mike, we are here with you because in the last few weeks and months, we've started to see something truly extraordinary happen in the world you cover, which is Silicon Valley.

I'm talking about these enormous pay packages, $250 million being handed out left and right to AI talent.

And I think at a really basic level, for a lot of us, this has been a moment where we looked up and said, wait, what's going on here?

And so I want you to help me understand, why is this happening?

Well, just to reassure you, people here think it's pretty crazy, too. So you're not alone.

But I do think it's really a singular moment in Silicon Valley right now where all of the leaders of these big tech companies see artificial intelligence as the next big thing

coming around the corner. And so they've kicked off what I see is kind of an arms race

where they're reshaping their companies to figure out how to build the next great AI product.

But they've realized that they don't have the type of talent they need.

They don't have the type of organizational structures they need.

And their solution, for a lot of them, at least,

has been to just throw enormous amounts of money at the problem.

And what kicked off this AI arms race?

Because it did not seem like it was happening in this really obvious way until pretty recently.

So if I had to pick a moment...

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