Meta is creating a new AI lab to pursue “super intelligence”

Meta is preparing to unveil a new AI research lab dedicated to pursuing “super intelligence,” a fictional AI system that surpasses the power of the human brain, in order to stay competitive in technology races, according to four people with knowledge of the company's planning.

Meta is in discussions to bring Alexandr Wang, 28, the founder and CEO of AI Startup Scale AI, into the new lab and invest billions of dollars in his company as part of a deal that will bring other scale AI employees to the company. Meta offers 7-9 digit compensation packages to dozens of researchers from major AI companies such as Openai and Google, with some agreeing to participate.

People said the new lab is part of a larger restructuring of Meta's AI efforts. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has recently worked on internal control struggles against technology, employee terminations and several product releases that have become flat.

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has invested billions of dollars to turn the company into an AI powerhouse. Since Openai released ChatGpt Chatbot in 2022, the tech industry has competed to build AI that has become more powerful to incorporate AI into its entire product, such as smart glasses and the recently released app Meta AI.

Staying in the race is extremely important for Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, and this technology could be the future for the industry. The Giants have sent money to startups and their own AI labs. Microsoft invested more than $13 billion in Openai, while Amazon cultivated $8 billion in AI startup humanity.

The Giants also spent billions of dollars hiring employees from well-known startups and licensed technology. Last year, Google agreed to pay $3 billion for licensing technology and to hire technicians and executives from Characher.ai, a startup that builds chatbots for personal conversations.