Aside from Meta’s new focus on building artificial general intelligence, the biggest news inside the company this week is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to move its AI research team, FAIR, to sit in its product organization.
Going forward, Joelle Pineau, the VP who leads FAIR, and Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist, will report to Meta’s chief product officer, Chris Cox. They previously reported to CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, who leads the Reality Labs division.
“With this change, we elevate the importance of AI research as an essential ingredient to the long-term success of the company and our products,” Cox wrote in an internal note to employees on Wednesday that I obtained. “Alongside the major infrastructure investments Mark mentioned today, moving FAIR and GenAI closer together will mean a more coherent AI research portfolio and roadmap — with Llama becoming the primary launch vehicle for progress towards AGI, plus a streamlined development process for new technologies or novel AI research that navigate the legal, policy, and brand landscape consistently in an increasingly scrutinized space.”