Meta appoints former Google DeepMind director Robert Fergus as head of AI Research lab
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Facebook parent Meta has informed its staff that the company has appointed former
Google DeepMind
director
Robert Fergus
to lead its
artificial intelligence research
lab. According to a report by Bloomberg, Fergus will head the Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab at Meta. Fergus co-founded the Facebook AI Research lab (FAIR) along with Yann LeCun in 2014.
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The unit takes care of AI research at the company. The
FAIR lab
creates models of advanced robotics, generate audio and further push boundaries of AI capabilities.
As per Fergus LinkedIn profile, he was associated with Google DeepMind as a research director for five years. Before joining Google, Fergus was working with Meta as a research scientist.
As per the report, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox informed the Meta employees that Fergus has joined FAIR labs and has succeeded
Joelle Pineau
, who announced departure plans last month.
'We're working towards building human-level experiences that transform the way we interact with technology and are dedicated to leading and advancing AI research,' Fergus said in a post on LinkedIn.
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Undo
According to a report from Fortune, FAIR led research on the company's early AI models, including Llama 1 and Llama 2. However, the report states that many researchers have departed FAIR for other startups, companies, and even Meta's newer GenAI group, which spearheaded the development of Llama 4.
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