Mark Zukerberg now wants to jump on the gen-AI bandwagon

Meta is shaking things up in its AI squads as it jumps on the bandwagon with other companies gunning for artificial general intelligence (AGI). Mark Zuckerberg, who’s been diving deep into the company’s AI research, mentioned that this shift is aimed at “speeding up” their research and, down the road, leveling up the metaverse game.

At the moment, Meta’s got two AI squads in the game: the Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) team, kicking it off in 2013, and another crew dedicated to crafting generative AI experiences for app users. According to Zuckerberg, they’re planning to buddy these two up and bring them “closer together” as they aim to grow both squads.

Meta’s big boss didn’t spill the beans on the exact number of new folks joining the AI crew, but it’s worth noting this expansion move. Especially when you consider that the company has

In a video dropped on Threads, Zuckerberg spilled the beans, saying these tweaks are all about “support our long-term goals of building general intelligence, open sourcing it responsibly, and making it available and useful to everyone in all of our daily lives.”

This switcheroo is just Zuckerberg’s latest move to make Meta shine as a top dog in the AI game, especially with the buzz around loads of other generative AI companies and projects crowding the scene.

Cooking up AGI, the kind of AI that often gets likened to human-level smarts, has become a major obsession for many players in the game, like Elon Musk’s x.ai, OpenAI, and Google. Now, Zuckerberg’s steering Meta’s massive resources right into the heart of that mission.

Zuckerberg made it crystal clear: he’s not ditching the metaverse anytime soon. In fact, he’s convinced that AI strides will give it a major boost. “The two major parts of our vision — AI and the metaverse — are connected,” he wrote.

Zuckerberg has been on the hype train for connecting Meta’s AI gig to the metaverse, and he went all out during last year’s Connect event talking up generative AI. It’s not exactly a new playbook for him, but it’s a bit of a gamble. Right now, not many folks fully get what Zuckerberg’s metaverse is about, and it’s not exactly winning popularity points. Still, Zuckerberg seems to be banking on a change of tune as the company beefs up its smart glasses and the AI packed into them.