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Meta made a lot of waves in the AI space recently when CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally went on a hiring spree to poach top talent from OpenAI, Google, and Apple through job offers worth millions of dollars. Although investor pressure presumably forced the company to put a hold on further AI hiring a few days ago, it seems like Meta is struggling to even retain the new employees in its Superintelligence Lab team.
According to Ars Technica, ChatGPT"s co-creator Shengjia Zhao threatened to leave Meta days after joining the company and even signed formal paperwork before he was given the title of "Chief AI Scientist" and decided to stay. Similarly, machine learning scientist Ethan Knight left the firm weeks after joining, while ex-OpenAI researcher Avi Verma completed his onboarding, but was a no-show on his actual first day. Rishabh Agarwal, who joined in April, found Zuckerberg"s vision compelling but "felt the pull to take on a different kind of risk" and subsequently resigned.
It"s not just the newbies leaving either. Apparently, half a dozen veterans, including GenAI members Chaya Nayak and Loredana Crisan, who share almost two decades of experience, have announced their exodus too.
To the outside world, this seems like utter chaos but Meta was quick to downplay these resignations, making some rather snarky comments:
We appreciate that there’s outsized interest in seemingly every minute detail of our AI efforts, no matter how inconsequential or mundane, but we’re just focused on doing the work to deliver personal superintelligence.
Some attrition is normal for any organization of this size. Most of these employees had been with the company for years, and we wish them the best.
For those unaware, Zuckerberg"s quest to achieve "personal superintelligence" led him to build the Meta Superintelligence Lab which consists of four teams. One is the aptly named "TBD Lab" focusing specifically on achieving superintelligence through the new hires, the second develops AI products, the third works on infrastructure, and the fourth experiments with longer-term initiatives. Meta"s AI efforts are being spearheaded by Zhao, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Alexandr Wang, and former GitHub chief Nat Friedman.
Many veteran employees are reportedly not pleased with the presence of new hires as it creates internal politics and unhealthy competition. Meta"s other chief AI scientist Yann LeCun now reports to Wang, while Ahmad Al-Dahle is not leading any teams now despite being the driving force behind Llama and other GenAI efforts. Interestingly, Wang bypasses Chief Product Officer Chris Cox in the chain of command and directly reports to Zuckerberg.
There have also been reports that Zuckerberg and Wang are clashing over the timelines for achieving superintelligence, but Meta has dismissed these claims as being "manufactured tension without basis in fact that’s clearly being pushed by dramatic, navel-gazing busybodies". It remains to be seen if Meta will actually achieve superintelligence at some point, but Zuckerberg"s house of cards is definitely trembling for now.