Meta Freezes AI Hiring as Fears Spread

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is freezing all hiring in its artificial intelligence division.

As theWall Street Journalreports, the company characterized the hiring freeze as "basic organizational planning," coinciding with a broader restructuring of its AI division's leadership.

It's a notable admission that comes as Zuckerberg has been desperately trying to retain key talent.mind-boggling financial offers, reportedly reaching $1 billion — withseriously mixed results— that highlight its frantic attempts to catch up in the AI race.

Analysts, however, have balked at the CEO's costly attempts to poach workers from competing AI firms, according to theWSJ, raising concerns that compensating them with huge stock grants could undermine shareholder returns.

The AI industry as a whole is facing a critical juncture, with growing concerns contributing to amassive tech sell-offroiling the stock market this week. Shares of AI tech stalwarts, including Nvidia and Palantir,have plummeted— raising concerns that the hype had driven their valuations too high for the shaky realities of their current technology.

As part of the company's restructuring, Meta's so-called Superintelligence Labs will now house four different divisions. One department, dubbed AGI Foundations, which worked on the company's latest Llama large language models, was dissolved. A disastrous April release of its "Behemoth" AI model.drew widespread criticismandaccusations of manipulating benchmarksto make it look more capable than it really is.

At least three members of the AGI Foundations team announced they were leaving Meta, theWSJreports.

Until the hiring freeze, Meta added over 50 new employees for its AI efforts, including 20 researchers and engineers from OpenAI, and at least 13 from Google.

But whether the company - and the AI industry as a whole - will ultimately justify the hiring spree remains to be seen. Firms are still spending tens of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure buildouts that broadly eclipse actual revenue.

For his part, Zuckerberg remains adamant that his new team will deliver,claimingthat "automating all valuable work" will put "power in people's hands to direct it towards what they value in their own lives."

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