Meta has appointed Shengjia Zhao as the Chief Scientist of its newly established Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), according to an announcement by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zhao, a former resea…
Meta has appointed Shengjia Zhao as the Chief Scientist of its newly established Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), according to an announcement by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zhao, a former researcher at OpenAI, played a key role in several of OpenAI's groundbreaking advancements, including ChatGPT, GPT-4, and the AI reasoning model o1.
This appointment formalizes Zhao's leadership within MSL, where he has been a lead scientist from the beginning. The move is seen as a strategic one, as Zhao will be responsible for setting the research agenda for MSL, complementing the leadership of Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, who leads the unit.
The addition of Zhao to the leadership team is particularly significant given Wang's non-research background. Meta has been actively recruiting top AI talent, including researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and other prominent AI organizations, to bolster MSL. Zuckerberg highlighted Zhao's contributions, particularly his work on a "new scaling paradigm," likely referring to his involvement in OpenAI's o1 reasoning model.
This suggests that AI reasoning models will be a primary focus for MSL. Meta is heavily investing in the success of MSL, with Zuckerberg actively recruiting researchers and offering substantial compensation packages. The company is also significantly increasing its cloud computing infrastructure.
By 2026, MSL researchers will have access to Meta's 1-gigawatt cloud computing cluster, Prometheus, which is expected to provide the necessary resources for training complex AI models. This investment in infrastructure and talent positions Meta to compete with industry leaders like OpenAI and Google in the field of AI.
With Zhao's appointment, Meta now has two chief AI scientists, including Yann LeCun, who leads the FAIR lab focused on long-term AI research. The collaboration and distinctions between Meta's AI units, FAIR and MSL, remain to be seen. However, the company has a formidable AI leadership team, signaling its commitment to advancing AI research and development.