No less than three synthetic intelligence researchers have resigned from Meta’s new superintelligence lab, simply two months after CEO Mark Zuckerberg first introduced the initiative. Two of the staffers have returned to OpenAI, the place they each beforehand labored, after lower than one-month stints at Meta, WIRED has confirmed.
Avi Verma was beforehand a researcher at OpenAI. Ethan Knight labored on the ChatGPT maker earlier in his profession however joined Meta from Elon Musk’s xAI. A 3rd researcher, Rishabh Agarwal, introduced publicly on Monday he was leaving Meta’s lab as properly. He joined the tech big in April to work on generative AI tasks earlier than switching to a task at Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), in response to his LinkedIn profile. Whereas the explanations for Agarwal’s departure aren’t identified, he’s primarily based in Canada and Meta’s AI groups are predominantly primarily based in Menlo Park, California.
“It was a tricky resolution to not proceed with the brand new Superintelligence TBD lab, particularly given the expertise and compute density,” Agarwal wrote on X, referring to the workforce at MSL that’s particularly pursuing frontier AI analysis. “However after 7.5 years throughout Google Mind, DeepMind, and Meta, I felt the pull to tackle a distinct form of danger.” It’s unclear the place he could also be going subsequent. Agarwal didn’t reply to a request for remark from WIRED.
“Throughout an intense recruiting course of, some individuals will resolve to remain of their present job relatively than beginning a brand new one,” mentioned Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold. “That is regular,”
Meta can be dropping one other chief who has labored on the tech big for almost a decade. Chaya Nayak, the director of generative AI product administration at Meta, is becoming a member of OpenAI to work on particular initiatives, in response to two sources with direct information of the rent.
Verma and Knight didn’t reply to a request for remark from WIRED. Nayak declined to remark in time for publication.
The departures are the strongest public sign but that Meta Superintelligence Labs may very well be off to a rocky begin. Zuckerberg lured individuals to affix the lab with nine-figure pay packages related extra typically with skilled sports activities stars than tech staff, hoping the inflow of expertise would enable the social networking big to quickly meet up with its rivals within the race towards so-called synthetic common intelligence.
However Meta executives have reportedly struggled to fight bureaucratic and recruitment points associated to its AI initiatives. Meta has repeatedly reorganized its AI groups in current months, most just lately splitting workers into 4 teams, per The Wall Avenue Journal.
In July, Zuckerberg introduced that one other former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao, who performed a key function within the creation of ChatGPT, would turn into the chief scientist of MSL. The announcement got here after Zhao tried to return to OpenAI—even going so far as to signal employment paperwork—in response to a number of sources with direct information of the occasions.
“Shengjia co-founded MSL and has been our scientific lead since day one,” Arnold mentioned in a press release to WIRED. “We formalized his function as soon as our recruiting had ramped and the workforce had taken form.”
