Meta poaches top AI talent from OpenAI and DeepMind as Zuckerberg escalates AI push

The minds that brought you the conversational magic of ChatGPT and the multimodal power of Google’s Gemini now have a new home: Meta.

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Ina stunning talent exodus, captured in a single tweet by Meta’s new Al chief, Alexandr Wang, the architects of the current Al revolution have been poached from OpenAl, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic.Mr. Alexandr’s tweet is not merely a hiring announcement; it is a declaration of intent. By announcing his role as Chief Al Officer at Meta alongside Nat Friedman and a veritable “who's who” of top-tier Al researchers, Mr. Alexandr and Meta were signaling a seismic shift in the technology landscape. I'm excited to be the Chief Al Officer of @Meta, working alongside @natfriedman, and thrilled to be accompanied by an incredible group of people joining on the same day.This mass talent acquisition from rivals like OpenAl, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s most audacious move yet to dominate the next technological frontier. It represents a calculated effort to bolster Meta’s Al venture by poaching the very minds that built its competitors’ greatest successes.

However, this aggressive pivot towards superintelligence cannot be viewed in a vacuum. It is haunted by the ghosts of Meta’s past — from the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the Instagram teen mental health crisis — forcing a critical examination of whether Zuckerberg has evolved from a disruptive force into a responsible steward for the age of Al.Why Meta’s Al talent acquisition signals a new eraThe list of new hires is a strategic masterstroke — it's not just about adding headcount; it's about acquiring institutional knowledge and simultaneously weakening the competition.According to reports, Mr. Zuckerberg has personally handled these Al hires. And he has carefully picked top talent from all his rivals.From OpenAl, Meta has poached the creators behind GPT-40's groundbreaking voice and multimodal capabilities and foundational model builder. Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of ChatGPT and GPT-4, is now part of Meta. This is a significant loss to Sam Altman's Al company.