Latest news with #MetaSuperintelligenceLabs
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Mark Zuckerberg overhauled Meta's entire AI org in a risky, multi-billion dollar bet on ‘superintelligence'
Mark Zuckerberg is stacking the deck in the AI race, betting that unlimited capital, top talent, and raw computing power will ensure victory. If the winning hand Zuckerberg is chasing—AI 'superintelligence'— is still very much a vague and theoretical concept, the Meta CEO's remarkable series of moves unveiled Monday instantly changed the reality for everyone else in the game, particularly the pioneering AI startups without Meta's resources. Zuckerberg announced a major revamp of its AI operations on Monday, putting the company's collection of AI businesses and projects under the umbrella of a newly created organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs, or MSL, and appointing Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of data-labeling startup Scale AI, as Meta's first ever Chief AI Officer. 'As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight,' Zuckerberg wrote in an internal memo obtained by Fortune. 'I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way.' He added that the details he would share were about building towards a company vision of 'personal superintelligence for everyone.' The new superintelligence lab, Zuckerberg wrote, 'includes all of our foundations, product, and FAIR teams, as well as a new lab focused on developing the next generation of our models.' He also confirmed that former GitHub CEO and investor Nat Friedman has also joined Meta to partner with Wang to lead MSL, heading Meta's work on AI products and applied research. 'Nat has served on our Meta Advisory Group for the last year, so he already has a good sense of our roadmap and what we need to do,' Zuckerberg wrote. Fortune reported last week that Friedman is also connected with Wang and Scale – he is a longtime and active Scale investor and co-hosted the secretive Scale AI Security Summit in Utah in November 2023. Meta has embarked on an extraordinary hiring spree in recent weeks, bringing Wang on board as part of a $14.3 billion deal with Scale, and recruiting top researchers from OpenAI with rumored $100 million compensation offers. In Zuckerberg's internal memo on Monday, he named eleven top researchers who had joined Meta from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. For OpenAI, which kicked off the generative AI craze with the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Meta's aggressive hiring spree represents a critical threat. OpenAI's chief research officer Mark Chen described the situation as feeling like someone 'breaking into our home,' calling the talent loss 'theft.' OpenAI said it had begun recalibrating compensation and crafting 'creative' retention packages to stay competitive. While OpenAI has a longstanding partnership with Microsoft, which has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, the relationship between the two companies has reportedly grown strained over the past year. As Meta increasingly seeks to move into OpenAI's territory however, the Sam Altman led startup may need to find allies with deep pockets. OpenAI recently began using AI chips made by Google, according to media reports, signaling a growing bond between the two companies, even though Google's Gemini LLMs compete directly with OpenAI. With an internet advertising business that generates more than $40 billion every quarter, Meta can afford to bankroll a no-holds-barred AI batter even it doesn't immediately deliver a profit. Still, Meta's latest moves carry plenty of risks. In making Wang chief AI officer, Meta has chosen someone who is not a computer scientist to lead all of its AI efforts—a choice that may not go over well with Meta's deep bench of AI scientists and PhDs, many of whom have already decamped. Zuckerberg noted in his memo that he and Wang had worked together for several years and said 'I consider him to be the most impressive founder of his generation.' There is also no agreed-upon formal definition of 'superintelligence,' though it is typically refers to an intelligence that vastly surpasses human capabilities in virtually all domains, including scientific creativity, general wisdom, and social skills—exceeding human cognition across the board. Superintelligence is generally perceived as going beyond artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which, though also vague, typically refers to an AI system with human-level intelligence across a wide range of work-related tasks. That is, it can reason, plan, solve problems, understand language, and learn in a generalizable way, much like a human. Zuckerberg claimed that Meta is 'uniquely positioned to deliver superintelligence to the world,' pointing to its efforts to build out data centers supporting more computing power than smaller labs – it is currently spending tens of billions on data centers and is raising more. The Financial Times reported last week that Meta is seeking $29 billion from private capital firms for its all-in push to build AI data centers. Of course, Microsoft and Google are also spending tens of billions of dollars in cap ex to build out their AI infrastructure. And OpenAI has said it intends to invest $500 billion with partners including Softbank in the coming years to build out its Stargate network of AI datacenters. If the race to Superintelligence is a test of wills and capital, Zuckerberg seems to be betting that he can outlast the competition. This story was originally featured on
CTV News
a day ago
- Business
- CTV News
Meta deepens AI push with ‘Superintelligence' lab, Reuters source says
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta, makes a point during an appearance at SIGGRAPH 2024, the premier conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, Monday, July 29, 2024, in the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski) Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reorganized the company's artificial intelligence efforts under a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, according to a source on Monday. The division will be headed by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data labeling startup Scale AI. He will be the chief AI officer of the new initiative at the social media giant, the source said. The high-stakes push follows senior staff departures and a poor reception for Meta's latest open-source Llama 4 model, challenges that have allowed rivals including Google, OpenAI and China's DeepSeek to seize momentum in the AI race. Zuckerberg hopes the new lab will fast-track work on artificial general intelligence - machines that can outthink humans - and help create new cash flows from the Meta AI app, image-to-video ad tools and smart glasses. Over the past month, Zuckerberg personally led an aggressive talent raid, floating offers for startups including OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever's Safe Superintelligence (SSI) and courting prospects directly on WhatsApp with million-dollar pay packages. Earlier this month, the Facebook and Instagram parent invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI. Apart from Wang and some Scale AI staff, the new division will reportedly include SSI's co-founder and CEO, Daniel Gross. Former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman will co-lead the Superintelligence Labs with Wang and head the company's work on AI products and applied research, according to the source. Zuckerberg has also brought on 11 new hires in the AI field, including researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, the source said. The new appointments include former DeepMind researchers Jack Rae and Pei Sun; several OpenAI alumni such as Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, Shengjia Zhao and Hongyu Ren; as well as Anthropic's Joel Pobar, who previously spent more than a decade at Meta, according to the source. Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Meta had offered his employees bonuses of $100 million to recruit them. But some analysts worry that Meta's AGI bet could be another moonshot to yield near-term returns. Its other big bet, the Reality Labs unit, has burned through more than $60 billion since 2020, with little to show beyond the Ray-Ban smart glasses and Quest headsets. Together, big tech companies are expected to spend $320 billion on AI this year. In 2024, Microsoft spent $650 million to scoop up most of Inflection AI's staff, including co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, while Amazon poached key talent from Adept. Yet the finish line for AGI remains elusive: Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, has said current methods will not be enough to reach the holy grail of the technology, while SoftBank's Masayoshi Son pegs the breakthrough within a decade. (Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
