Mark Zuckerberg’s superintelligence gamble: Can billions and bold hires save Meta’s AI ambitions?

Mark Zuckerberg has decided he wants to claw back lost ground in the AI race, and he’s willing to spend heavily to do it.

The Meta CEO is reportedly hiring staff personally for a new superintelligence lab within the company, offering massive salaries to attract top talent. Meta has also announced the acquisition of Scale AI, with founder Alexandr Wang joining the superintelligence team. “I’m not surprised with the choice of Alex Wang—he is friends with Zuckerberg,” says a former Meta employee, granted anonymity due to restrictions from their current employer. Wang’s political leanings may help deflect regulatory scrutiny, the former staffer adds, and “he also has a track record of executing whereas the new Meta AI leads have messed up Llama big time.”

The real challenge may be finding people to join them. AI talent is in high demand, with leading labs offering millions to top engineers. Meta, with its vast resources, is reportedly offering up to nine-figure compensation packages.

“Meta has been trying to pull in top-tier talent from other labs for a while now, like the big ‘open source AGI’ announcement on Zuck’s Instagram,” says another industry source who requested anonymity. “I guess they felt they needed to mix it up for whatever reason.” But Meta’s reputation could be a hurdle. “What you have to understand about Meta is that it’s very Game of Thrones-like, with people constantly fighting over power and influence,” says the former employee. Bloat and excessive middle management remain problems. “That’s a major reason why their products are crap and now it’s affecting their AI research too,” the former employee adds. (Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

According to the anonymous industry source, one potential draw for candidates is Meta’s vast supply of GPUs. “Meta has an absolutely massive stockpile of GPUs it doesn’t seem to be using particularly well, so possibly they think that could turn some heads,” they say. Still, the company’s AI output has often trailed competitors. “The hope would probably be that the new org completely clears house.”

Ray Wang, a Washington-based semiconductor and technology analyst, agrees hiring could be tough, especially given Meta’s recent stumbles in large language model development. Still, he sees reasons some might sign on. “Meta still possesses deep hardware and software resources, platforms with tens of millions of users, and forthcoming AI-enabled products, which together should offer researchers and engineers a compelling environment for developing future cutting-edge models and implementing them in the company’s products and platforms at scale,” Wang says.

The money is likely to be the biggest motivator. “The main pull is probably compensation—though it’s possible some people could feel like they are ‘getting in on the ground floor’ of a new org despite Meta being a giant,” says the industry source.

But for potential hires, a lingering concern may be Zuckerberg’s direct involvement in the new lab. “I’m also not surprised Zuckerberg is deeply involved,” says the former Meta staffer. “He’s always done that when things he cares about go badly. Or he feels he can make them better by getting involved. Sadly, he has a poor track record: Rooms, e-commerce, metaverse—all flops.”

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