Shengjia Zhao, a co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will be the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs, according to a statement released by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on 25 July. The $14 billion investment in Scale AI is the centrepiece of Zuckerberg’s multibillion-dollar hiring spree in artificial intelligence in recent weeks.
Zuckerberg revealed a brand-new company in June dubbed Meta Superintelligence Labs, which is composed of leading AI developers and researchers. Although the June message included Zhao’s name among other new staffers, Zuckerberg said that Zhao co-founded the lab and “has been our lead scientist from day one.”
Shengjia Zhao’s Role and Vision at Superintelligence Lab
Zhao will collaborate closely with Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who is serving as Meta’s chief artificial intelligence officer, and Zuckerberg. In a social media post, Zuckerberg stated, “Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs, including a new scaling paradigm, and distinguished himself as a leader in the field.” “I’m excited to collaborate closely with him to further his scientific vision.”
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According to Zuckerberg’s June memo, Zhao co-founded ChatGPT and contributed to the development of OpenAI’s GPT-4, micro models, 4.1, and O3. He also served as OpenAI’s lead for synthetic data.
Employees at Meta Superintelligence Labs will work on foundation models, including the Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research programs and the open-source Llama family of AI models and products. Earlier this month, Zuckerberg announced that the social media business would invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” in AI compute infrastructure. “The upcoming years will be extremely exciting!” On July 25, Zuckerberg wrote.
According to the Threads article, Zhao is a co-founder of the lab, which runs independently of FAIR, Meta’s well-established AI research section headed by Yann LeCun, a pioneer in deep learning. According to Zuckerberg, Meta wants to develop “full general intelligence” and make its work publicly available. The AI community has expressed both support and scepticism for this approach.
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In addition to hiring about seven to eight researchers, including well-known figures like Xiaohua Zhai, Trapit Bansal, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Lucas Beyer, Meta has been constantly working on enhancing its Superintelligence Labs with significant financial support and leadership appointments.
A potential strategic change for OpenAI is also indicated by the recent break, as the company abandons its rapid-fire product release methodology in favour of concentrating more on long-term AGI development.
In the face of escalating competition and internal restructuring, the internal memo referred to the decision to suspend operations as a “reset”.
The competition for AI expertise is becoming a defining issue for the major players in the industry as Meta expands its own superintelligence lab and offers previously unthinkable compensation packages.
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