Meta hires ChatGPT's creator for its artificial general intelligence push
Meta just hired Shengjia Zhao—one of the minds behind ChatGPT and GPT-4—as chief scientist and co-founder of its brand-new Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).
Zhao will work with Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang to boost Meta's Llama AI models and push toward artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Meta is going after top talent in the AI space
Zhao's arrival signals Meta is doubling down on open-source AI.
Mark Zuckerberg highlighted Zhao's role in shaping the future of Llama and AGI at Meta.
The company has already spent billions on AI, including buying Scale AI for $14 billion, and is pulling in top talent from rivals like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and Apple.
Zhao's educational background and work at OpenAI
Zhao studied at Tsinghua University, Rice University, and Stanford (where he earned his PhD).
He worked at OpenAI from June 2022 to July 2024 on projects like GPT-4 and synthetic data—and picked up awards such as the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship along the way.
He speaks both English and Mandarin.
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