Meta names Shengjia Zhao as chief scientist of AI superintelligence unit

Core Insights - Meta has appointed Shengjia Zhao, a former OpenAI researcher, as the Chief Scientist of its new AI unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) [1][2] - Zhao is recognized for his contributions to significant AI breakthroughs, including ChatGPT and GPT-4, and will set the research agenda for MSL [2][4] - Meta is actively recruiting top talent from leading AI organizations to strengthen its research capabilities [5][6] Leadership and Structure - Zhao co-founded MSL and has been leading its scientific efforts since inception, now formalizing his leadership role [2][3] - Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI, leads MSL, while Zhao's expertise complements Wang's unconventional background in AI [3][10] - Meta's AI leadership now includes two chief scientists, Zhao and Yann LeCun, indicating a robust team to compete with industry leaders like OpenAI and Google [10] Research Focus - MSL will prioritize AI reasoning models, an area where Meta currently lacks a competitive offering [4] - Zhao's work on OpenAI's reasoning model, o1, is expected to influence MSL's research direction [4] Recruitment and Investment - Meta has been aggressive in recruiting, offering substantial compensation packages to attract top researchers, including "exploding offers" that have tight deadlines [6] - The company is enhancing its cloud computing infrastructure, with plans to utilize a one gigawatt cloud computing cluster, Prometheus, by 2026, to support extensive AI model training [8][9]