Meta's New AI Superstars Are Chafing Against the Rest of the Company

Meta's newly recruited AI "superstars" have developed an us-versus-them mentality against the company's longtime executive leadership, creating internal friction over whether the team should focus on catching up to rivals like OpenAI and Google or improving Meta's core advertising and social media businesses. Alexandr Wang, the 28-year-old entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg hired in June to be chief AI officer, leads a team called TBD Lab from a siloed space next to Zuckerberg's office. In meetings this fall, Wang privately told people he disagreed with chief product officer Chris Cox and chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, according to the New York Times.

Cox and Bosworth wanted Wang's team to use Instagram and Facebook data to train Meta's new foundational AI model for improving feeds and advertising. Wang pushed back, arguing the goal should be catching up to rival models before focusing on products. TBD Lab researchers view many Meta executives as interested only in the social media business, while the lab's ambition is to create "godlike A.I. superintelligence." Bosworth was recently asked to slash $2 billion from Reality Labs' proposed budget for next year to fund Wang's team -- a claim Meta disputes.

All of the above?

[timeOday]

It surprises me is that there is much real tension between basic research and application development two exists in Meta. For any normal company, sure. But this is a company that spent over $70 billion dollars on VR that nobody ever wanted. And they can't fund both AI research and, separately, application development?

Re:All of the above?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I assume that at least some of the tension here is that facebook hired these guys to be the hotshot golden boys of sucking less at AI; so it isn't just an it's-only-money thing. I don't know whether or not this belief is accurate; but Zuck and friends certainly hunted down and paid for the various new AI hires as though they were capable of things that in-house or more readily available alternatives are not, so the battle over where their attention will be focused is presumably being waged on the assumption that having someone else do what they aren't doing isn't really a substitute.

What I would be curious to know is why the 'build god-machine' goal isn't being treated as the obvious winner just because you can have the god machine make facebook more addictive and better at serving ads. Do they think that the AI guys are drinking the kool-aide and the only thing they'll actually be able to deliver is incremental improvements; so they want those churned directly into products? Some degree of confidence that they will eventually manage it; but fear of missing out on some sort of short term advantage means that they don't care about what is achievable in 5-10 years? Genuinely zero interest in anything except making social media more of a hellscape; so they simply don't care?

Re:

[whoever57]

I assume that at least some of the tension here is that facebook hired these guys to be the hotshot golden boys of sucking less at AI; so it isn't just an it's-only-money thing

Maybe it's about salaries: the golden boys are being paid much more than their perhaps equally-qualified colleagues?

Re:All of the above?

[zmollusc]

If it is like every other company, the golden boys are being paid ten times as much to fail to do something as their equally-qualified colleagues who were asked to do the something and explained that the something is impossible to do.

Re:

[martin-boundary]

You may be right but I live in hope that the golden boys will actually do the impossible and kick Fuck to the curb, so that the company can finally attempt the long road back from clusterfuck.

Re:

[monkeyxpress]

What I would be curious to know is why the 'build god-machine' goal isn't being treated as the obvious winner just because you can have the god machine make facebook more addictive and better at serving ads.

You can't bet a company on ideas like that. There is absolutely zero assurance that we can even build an intelligent machine using classical computing techniques, and even less assurance that any of the basic AI techniques we are using can achieve it. It would actually be remarkable if we happened to stumble upon the design of an intelligent machine, given we have so little idea how our brains actual achieve this, and it would be ludicrously serendipitous if we were also able to stumble upon a super intelli

Re:

[Whateverthisis]

I read it as not being about funding, it's about what to work on first. If you focus on an application sure that enhances revenue projections, but you might fall behind someone else who sprints ahead with research. They have the money to do both as you say, it's a question of prioritization.

But let's talk about the elephant in the room here, that's not talked about in the article: Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg went all in on metaverse to mediocre results, and now jumped on the LLM/AI bandwagon after people h

Re:

[larryjoe]

It surprises me is that there is much real tension between basic research and application development two exists in Meta. For any normal company, sure.

In a normal company, research is considered to be a cost center. It's always cut before engineering, and engineering concerns get priority.

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

Of course there's tension. Fecebook corporate wants to use it to make even more money and get even more people hooked, the new hires want to use it to show they've got bigger AI dicks than everyone else. Can you guess who's going to win that one?

Remember folks, it's all meritocracy

[jacks smirking reven]

Sure Zuckerberg blew many billions on the Metaverse, sure he's got any number of embarrassing statements and misspeaks and PR nightmare scenarios, sure as we can tell here he's sowed chaos in the ranks just under him showing a pretty poor lack of executive leadership skills, one of the things a superstar CEO is supposed to be doing is making sure all your teams are aligned with each others goals and set clear direction.

But sure, he should stay and forever be the CEO of the company. Is he the best qualified at the jobs of an executive? That doesn't matter! He's got the most money and the most shares so therefore he is de-facto qualified otherwise why would he have those things? Free markets baby! Cream rises to the top.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Cream rises to the top.

That's not the only fatty thing that floats....

Wrong superstars

[OrangeTide]

If you're heading a company's AI division, ask yourself this:
Where does my paycheck come from? How did the company make revenue in previous quarters in order to pay me in this quarter?

The Family Of Apps (FoA) division of Meta, specifically digital advertising, are the actual superstars that keep the lights on there. And have made other projects like Reality Labs (RL) possible, supporting them until they could finally earn revenue as well.

Re:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At least in the current climate (and quite possibly indefinitely; depending on how prudent their investments are and whether they have any uncontrollably expensive hobby) there's not really any reason for the 'AI' guys to take such a servile attitude.

If you actually need the job, or are invested in the company's mission for some reason, it's a good idea to care at least slightly about how your paycheck doesn't bounce; but that's not really the position these guys are in. Exceptionally in-demand skillset

Re:

[HiThere]

If you're hired specifically to develop a good AI, then you *should* push back against folks that want you do act in ways that would cause you to create an inferior one.

OTOH, for Meta to fail at this is devoutly to be wished for. I'd prefer almost anyone else.

the lab's ambition is to create "godlike A.I."

[whitroth]

Say *what*? There's NO INTELLIGENCE in the chatbots. They really are no more than typeahead writ large, and the discussions I've seen say that the training data is running down.

This is inane. Why is he being paid insane amounts of money for, what, a 50mpg carburator (older /.'s will recognize that)?

The backlash will be epic

[Wokan]

The level of anti-intellectualism has been rising very noticeably of late. People are already sick of being made to feel dumb by other people. What makes anyone think they'll accept being made to feel dumb by a machine?

Re: The backlash will be epic

[OrangeTide]

What if the machine says it in a nice way?

One hellscape is better than the other

[mattr]

On the one hand, Meta made openllama right? So maybe these guys will do some similar things. On the other hand, maybe the world is safer if they focus on ads and we can just trade up on potential hellscapes.

Us vs them

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

More like old vs new terribleness.

Problem with "Superstars"

[nealric]

The problem with hiring a team of nothing but Superstars is they all think *they* are the ones who should be running the show. They can't *all* run the show, which means a team of superstars is likely to become a circular firing squad as they all play game of thrones.

Should be immediately shut down

[Radagast]

If "the lab's ambition is to create "godlike A.I. superintelligence."", shareholders should demand it's shut down immediately before it sucks up another 70 billion dollars with nothing to show for it. They might as well say "this lab's goal is to make everything we touch into gold".

Re:

[Growlley]

with 70 billion - they could probally gold plate everything they touched at least,

Training on facebook data?

[sir_smashalot_3rd]

That is going to be an utterly stupid boomer A.I.

Boomer A.I.

[Latent Heat]

You just won the thread, if not the Internet.