More than 4 top AI "veterans" have resigned! Meta London Division "fallen" | Metaverse stocks sold off?

Recently, people familiar with the matter and LinkedIn analysis broke the news that in the past few months, at least four top scientists "veterans" in the AI department of Meta (formerly Facebook) have resigned. Among these members are scientists who have published dozens of academic papers in world-renowned journals and achieved multiple breakthroughs that have made Meta stronger and stronger for Facebook and Instagram.

Over 4 AI "veterans" resigned, Meta London branch "fallen"

According to CNBC, artificial intelligence entrepreneur Karl Hermann, a former employee of Meta's rival DeepMind Labs, revealed that "the true number of Meta AI departures may be closer to six", while he also added that the company's London branch has artificial intelligence. The number of departures from Smart Labs is staggering - "Meta's London office just 'fallen' and they lost most of their (top) researchers in a six-week period".

In response to this news, Yann LeCun, Meta’s chief artificial intelligence scientist, responded by email in an interview with the media that “people’s interests are constantly changing and moving forward.” In 2013, Yann LeCun was in a meeting with founder Mark Zuckerberg. After dinner, Mark Zuckerberg co-founded the artificial intelligence lab at Meta (then called Facebook).

Neil Lawrence, a professor of machine learning at the University of Cambridge, commented that he was not surprised by the incident - "Mark Zuckerberg is now in a tailspin... They haven't made a proper investment in London in the first place."

As we all know, with the popularity of the concept of "metaverse" in recent years, many big technology companies have deployed related fields one after another. In October last year, Mark Zuckerberg also followed up with a high-profile, ambitious external announcement of Facebook's move to the metaverse and rebranding as "Meta".

However, this year, Facebook parent company Meta suddenly left some of its top AI scientists.

Why Meta's top talent is leaving: Metaverse stocks sold off?

According to reports, recent departures include research scientist Ahmad Beirami (who joined Google after leaving Meta in January), and Edward Grefenstette, a research scientist who led Meta's work on artificial intelligence branch "reinforcement learning" (just left the company in February). , Heinrich Kuttler, research engineering manager at Meta AI (who left in recent weeks and has now joined Influction AI, founded by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman), and Meta's 5 who left in December Year-old research scientist Douwe Kiela (now head of research at AI startup Hugging Face).

In addition, it is reported that other Meta AI employees are already on their way to leave, or are expected to leave in the next few weeks (required anonymity due to the sensitivity of this issue).

There is a lot of speculation and discussion about the reasons for these top AI talents to leave. According to industry sources, this may be caused by Mark Zuckerberg's announcement that the company will turn to metaverse development.

According to the source, "some people jumped to another big lab because they felt it would better advance their career or research agenda." "Maybe it's because other teams have better compensation or hiring potential," "Others just want to start a business or get involved in a smaller company. And for some, it may be related to the Metaverse stock sell-off, but I don't think That must be the main reason."

At present, information shows that most of the top talents Meta "left" went to rival companies such as DeepMind.

For example, going a little further, in August last year, Marc'Aurelio Ranzato, the research scientist manager of the Meta AI department, joined DeepMind after leaving; Rob Fergus, the co-founder of the Meta AI Lab, left in 2020, joined DeepMind and established DeepMi new division.

Of course, it's worth noting that some people from DeepMind and other AI labs have also joined Meta over the past few years.

The idea of AI changing the world remains firm

People have always believed in the idea of AI changing the world, and global tech giants have been investing heavily in this field over the past few years. Although the turnover of giants is not surprising, it is indeed a little surprising that Meta AI has changed so much in the past two years.

I still remember when Facebook announced its name change to Meta, which was overwhelmingly "spit out" by netizens, but Mark Zuckerberg was bound to win. But today, with the constant loss of top talent, the ambition of "Xiao Zha" to turn to the metaverse seems to have been frustrated a lot.

But no matter what, the concept of AI changing the world is still the focus of technology giants. "Xiao Zha" may really need to make some strategic adjustments to the company's development in the future, what do you think? What do you think about this incident? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to interact.