Meta launches AI lab to pursue superintelligence with Scale AI founder

The new lab, set to include Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, is part of a reorganization of Meta's artificial intelligence efforts under Mark Zuckerberg

By Cade Metz and Mike Isaac 

Meta is preparing to unveil a new artificial intelligence research lab dedicated to pursuing “superintelligence,” a hypothetical A.I. system that exceeds the powers of the human brain, as the tech giant jockeys to stay competitive in the technology race, according to four people with the knowledge of the company’s plans.

 

Meta has tapped Alexandr Wang, 28, the founder and chief executive of the A.I. start-up Scale AI, to join the new lab, the people said, and has been in talks to invest billions of dollars in his company as part of a deal that would also bring other Scale AI employees to the company. Meta has offered seven- to nine-figure compensation packages to dozens of researchers from leading A.I. companies such as OpenAI and Google, with some agreeing to join, according to the people.

 

The new lab is part of a larger reorganization of Meta’s A.I. efforts, the people said. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has recently grappled with internal management struggles over the technology, as well as employee churn and several product releases that fell flat, two of the people said.

 

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has invested billions of dollars into turning his company into an A.I. powerhouse. Since OpenAI released the ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, the tech industry has raced to build increasingly powerful A.I. Mr. Zuckerberg has pushed his company to incorporate A.I. across its products, including in its smart glasses and a recently released app, Meta AI.

 

Staying in the race is crucial for Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, with the technology likely to be the future for the industry. The giants have pumped money into start-ups and their own A.I. labs. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, while Amazon has plowed $8 billion into the A.I. start-up Anthropic.

 

The behemoths have also spent billions to hire employees from high-profile start-ups and license their technology. Last year, Google agreed to pay $3 billion to license technology and hire technologists and executives from Character.AI, a start-up that builds chatbots for personal conversations.

 

In February, Mr. Zuckerberg, 41, called A.I. “potentially one of the most important innovations in history.” He added, “This year is going to set the course for the future.”

 

Meta and Scale AI declined to comment.

 

Superintelligence is regarded by leading researchers to be a futuristic goal of A.I. development. OpenAI, Google and others have said their immediate aim is to build “artificial general intelligence,” or A.G.I., shorthand for a machine that can do anything the human brain can do, which is an ambition with no clear path to success. Superintelligence, if it can be developed, would go beyond A.G.I. in its power.

 

Meta has invested in A.I. for more than a decade. Mr. Zuckerberg created the company’s first dedicated A.I. lab in 2013, after losing out to Google in trying to acquire a seminal start-up called DeepMind. DeepMind is now the core of Google’s A.I. efforts.