Everywhere you look in the world of AI, knives are coming out.

Take the recent bickering between Elon Musk and Yann LeCun on X, where Musk’s rivals in the AI race seemingly can’t stop feeding him more training data. This particular spat started with LeCun, Meta’s top AI researcher, criticizing Musk for spewing “crazy-ass conspiracy theories” and pointing out that anyone who joins his OpenAI competitor, xAI, will have to take orders from an erratic megalomaniac.

LeCun was responding to Musk’s touting of xAI’s record-breaking, $6 billion funding round, news that Musk shared with the call for more researchers to apply for open roles. While I have no doubt that LeCun has a personal distaste for Musk, their exchange is emblematic of a broader trend that’s playing out: as the stakes in the AI race get higher and the fight for talent grows fiercer, the drama is heating up.