Restructuring again: Meta pauses recruitment of AI experts

The development of the Superintelligence department at Meta continues. Apparently, this also means that the team first has to find its feet and organize itself. A hiring freeze is apparently in place for the time being and no internal positions may be changed, according to the Wall Street Journal.

According to a Meta spokesperson, the aim is to "create a solid structure for our new superintelligence efforts after hiring employees and conducting annual budgeting and planning exercises." The Group has invested billions in the team. There were reportedly high bonuses and other incentives when AI experts joined Meta. At the head of Meta Superintelligence Labs is Alexandr Wang, previously CEO of Scale AI, in which Meta acquired a 49 percent stake for 14.3 billion US dollars.

Meta: four teams for AI

The department is now to be restructured again. The Wall Street Journal reports on four teams: one is to focus specifically on the noble goal of developing a superintelligence, another has the task of developing products, one team is to provide the necessary infrastructure and the fourth team has a scientific focus. The latter team is likely to be the Paris-based FAIR team – Fundamental AI Research, which also includes AI expert and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun.

For the infrastructure team, building a gigantic computing center is certainly the main task. According to Mark Zuckerberg, superintelligence is the ability of a computer system to be better than humans at most cognitive tasks. While Silicon Valley is primarily aiming for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the research team at Meta is aiming for AMI – Advanced Machine Intelligence. According to the WSJ, at least three employees from the previous AGI team have left Meta.

The reason for the hiring freeze is said to be investors' concern that too much expenditure could have a negative impact on shareholder value.

(emw)