The company is dismantling the division it built two months ago, and is looking to downsize after a remarkably expensive hiring spree.
Meta is splitting its AI division Meta Superintelligence Labs less than two months after the company announced its formation in June.
The group will be split into four smaller groups, according to a New York Times report. One group will focus on AI research, another one on infrastructure and hardware projects, one on AI products, and another one on building out AI superintelligence, a hypothetical AI system that could outperform human intelligence on any and all scales.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.
Superintelligence is Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s holy grail, but the timeline on that could take years, maybe decades, and some experts are skeptical that AI can even reach superintelligence to begin with.
Along with the restructuring, Meta is also looking at downsizing its AI division completely, although no final decision has been made on that. That may not be too surprising given the multi-billion dollar hiring spree summer Meta has been having, which is likely to cause some shareholders concern when the company next releases spending.
The tech giant has poached top talent from OpenAI, Apple, and more the past few months, tempting the engineers with multi-year deals worth millions of dollars. On the company’s latest earnings call, Meta CFO Susan Li said the company’s skyrocketing capital expenditure spend would be driven first by AI investments and then by employee compensation.
Although capex hikes should make investors queasy, the stock soared, because Meta showed huge wins for its ad revenue business, attributing it to AI, and promised even more payoffs in the future thanks to the superintelligence lab.
