Meta is putting OpenAI’s ChatGPT co-creator in charge of its AI push.
Mark Zuckerberg announced Shengjia Zhao will be the chief scientist at Meta Superintelligence Labs. Zhao helped build ChatGPT and GPT-4 at OpenAI and led synthetic data efforts there.
The lab launched in June with a roster of top AI talent. Zhao was named a co-founder and lead scientist back then, but Zuckerberg confirmed his official role on Sept. 27, 2024. 
Zhao will work closely with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, ex-Scale AI CEO and Meta’s chief AI officer. This comes amid Meta’s blitz on AI, including a $14 billion Scale AI investment and a promise to drop "hundreds of billions" on AI compute infrastructure.
Meta Superintelligence Labs focuses on foundational models like Llama, product innovations, and core AI research.
Zuckerberg shared Zhao’s impact on AI in a Threads post:
"Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field," Zuckerberg wrote.
"I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision."
The AI race at Meta just got a lot more serious.
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