Three or more Artificial intelligence researchers have left Meta new superintelligence labJust two months after Mark Zuckerberg, CEO first announced Initiative. WIRED confirms that after less than 1 month at Meta, two staff members have returned to OpenAI where they previously worked.
Avi Verma previously worked at OpenAI as a research scientist. Ethan Knight was a ChatGPT developer in the past, but moved to Meta after Elon Musk’s xAI. Rishabh agarwal, a third researcher at Meta, also announced his departure publicly Monday. According to his LinkedIn page, he joined the company in April for generative AI work before moving to Meta Superintelligence Labs. Agarwal is not sure of the reason for his departure, but he lives in Canada, while Meta’s AI team is mostly based out in Menlo Park.
“It was a tough decision not to continue with the new Superintelligence TBD lab, especially given the talent and compute density,” Agarwal writes on X and refers to MSL’s team that is specifically pursuing AI frontier research. “But after 7.5 years across Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta, I felt the pull to take on a different kind of risk.” Uncertainty surrounds his next move. Agarwal didn’t respond to WIRED when they asked for a comment.
“During an intense recruiting process, some people will decide to stay in their current job rather than starting a new one,” Dave Arnold is the spokesperson for Meta. “That’s normal,”
Meta has also lost another senior leader, who worked for the company for almost a decade. Chaya Nyak, director of Meta’s generative AI Product Management, will join OpenAI as a Special Initiatives Manager, say two people with knowledge of this hire.
Verma & Knight didn’t respond to WIRED when they asked for a comment. Nayak refused to make a comment before publication.
These departures send the clearest public message yet that Meta Superintelligence Labs may be in for a rough start. Zuckerberg lured people The lab is a nine-figure investment pay packages The social media giant hopes that the talent influx will allow it to quickly catch up with competitors in its race towards so-called artificial intelligence.
Meta executives, however, have struggled with bureaucratic problems and issues with recruiting for its AI projects. Meta has reorganized AI teams several times in the last few months. The most recent was dividing employees into four different groups. per The Wall Street Journal.
Zuckerberg announced in July 2014 that Shengjia Zhang, another former OpenAI research scientist who had played an important role in ChatGPT’s creation, was to become chief scientist at MSL. The announcement came after Zhao tried to return to OpenAI—even going as far as to sign employment paperwork—according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the events.
“Shengjia co-founded MSL and has been our scientific lead since day one,” Arnold told WIRED in a press release. “We formalized his role once our recruiting had ramped and the team had taken shape.”
