Meta is making headlines with eye-opening offers as he competes to build “personal super intelligence” with the aim of trying to poach researchers from rival AI labs.
The effort goes beyond the Silicon Valley's war of talent, ranking some of the AI researchers who took part in the meta prior to its super-intelligence push, according to current and former meta employees who demanded anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The complaints are particularly serious in the Generation AI Teams within the Meta, known as genai. The group worked for the Llama 4, an AI model that received a lukewarm water reception when it was released earlier this year.
“There are really good researchers in Meta. The treatment of researchers that weren't part of the superintelligence was standard,” reads a now-deleted X post from Rohan Anil, who worked on Llama 4 for Meta. “It feels like a huge social experiment.”
Anil left Meta and joined AI Startup Humanity in June, just before Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled this new, more intense phase of AI Talent Wars. Anil declined to comment.
“People want to work with the best in the industry, access industry-leading levels of computing, develop something close together, so they're involved in meta,” a Meta spokesman told Business Insider. “People pushing through certain stories usually have impure motives.”
Meta has the highest retention rate on Magnificent 7, growing its engineering team 2-3 times Faster According to a report from VC Firm SignalFire, it's losing them. Meta has poached a number of major AI researchers, mainly from Openai, from other rivals, including ChatGpt's Coccorator Shengjia Zhao.
It feels like a failure
Among Meta's existing AI staff, the new Superintelligence team is causing Rifts, according to current and former employees who spoke to BI.
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As Zuckerberg says he failed Genai employees, he says he will bring in 10-50 times the compensation, as Zuckerberg tells Genai employees.
Some AI employees are considering leaving to join the rival lab, while others are considering allowing them to negotiate a Meta Super Intelligence Lab or MSL spot.
Meta told BI that he would not counter offers to employees who are threatening to leave, but he has not done so in the past.
Fair or unfair?
Tension revolves around access to computing resources and the reputation of being associated with an elite team at MSL's center, the researchers added.
MSL currently oversees the entire Genai team that was reorganized in May, but MSL maintains a core unit of star researchers called the “TBD Lab,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
Other AI labs have seen the opportunity from this internal meta tension. Elon Musk's Xai hired more than 12 meta-students and has been around as recently as in the past few weeks, but Microsoft is also trying to poach the talent of meta-AI.
Meta's longtime AI lab, which remains under MSL, is more directly affected by tension, and remains largely independent, according to employees.
Chief Scientist at the Fair Yann Lecun advises Zuckerberg, speaking at conferences, and leads his own small team of around 10 researchers to build what he believes is key to artificial general information, a model called I-Jepa.
Departure and Experiment
On August 6th, Meta's renowned research scientist Lawrence van der Marten announced he would be joining humanity. His LinkedIn indicates that he left Meta in June before the official creation of MSL. Van der Maaten did not respond to requests for comment.
In response to X's movement, Erik Meijer, senior engineering director at Meta until 2024, wrote, “Every action has a response and an unintended side effect of creating an SI team.”
When BI contacted Meijer for comments, he responded by sending a YouTube clip of an experiment in which two monkeys performed the same task but received different rewards. If there is a very tasty snack, throw it back into the handler and shake the cage angrily.
Speaking to BI, Meta AI insiders were not necessarily skeptical of Zuckerberg's Superintelligence Push, saying the recruitment campaign was meaningful from a CEO's perspective.
One Genai team said that after the launch of ChatGpt, it simply grew faster and became more difficult to manage. Another suggested that if Zuckerberg wanted to start a new job, it could be a good thing if people left the company.
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