Meta Platforms has been building its artificial intelligence (AI) division by continuing to each top researchers from rival OpenAI. According to the recent update, the company has employed four new AI scientists, Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren. These researchers have reportedly accepted offers to join Meta’s AI division, although their specific roles have not been publicly disclosed.
This new hiring spree comes just on the heels of the poaching of three additional, prominent researchers from OpenAI’s office in Zurich. A few days ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai were leaving OpenAI to work for Meta. All three have strong expertise in computer vision and deep learning. Media outlets contacted Meta and OpenAI for comment on the matter, but they both declined to comment.
Meta Platforms accelerates AI superintelligence plans
The new hires represent a major push by Zuckerberg to put his company on the map in the race to develop AI systems that reason, learn, and make decisions at or beyond the level of human ability. The quest for artificial general intelligence (AGI) is one of Meta’s most critical long-term missions, according to Zuckerberg, who has called for a concerted, open-source effort to build this technology.
Meta’s approach is different from that of OpenAI, which has taken a more closed model. OpenAI has partnered with Microsoft and closely controls how its models, including GPT-4, are used. Still, Meta has been releasing more of its research and models to the open-source community. This has drawn researchers interested in transparency and scientific freedom, a potential reason top talent is moving.
The new hires are expected to work on Meta’s next-gen AI models, namely its Llama series and more general AGI projects, which belong to Meta’s AI research group, FAIR (Facebook AI Research). The group is developing a powerful multimodal system to understand and generate text, images, audio, and video at human-level quality.
Industry experts say the race for top AI talent has entered a fierce new phase. With AGI seen as the ultimate prize in tech, companies are pulling out all the stops to attract the brightest minds. They’re offering huge salaries, top-tier equipment, full support teams, and unlimited access to data and testing tools—plus the freedom to explore bold, unconventional ideas in the pursuit of building the intelligent machines of tomorrow.
With its huge resources and fresh strategic impetus, Meta is suddenly a compelling place to go. Meanwhile, OpenAI has been scrutinized for its structure, especially since a dramatic late 2023 board shake-up that saw CEO Sam Altman briefly ousted and later reinstated. Some insiders say the turmoil may have affected morale and retention, even as the organization persists in rolling out technical achievements.