In an ironic twist, Meta, once heralded as the vanguard of the Metaverse, is now fervently chasing the elusive dream of artificial general intelligence (AGI). With CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the helm, the company is diverting its focus and finances from virtual realms to the realm of AGI, which remains a theoretical concept in the tech world.
In a Facebook post from yesterday, the company’s CEO said:
“Some updates on our AI efforts. Our long term vision is to build general intelligence, open source it responsibly, and make it widely available so everyone can benefit. We’re bringing our two major AI research efforts (FAIR and GenAI) closer together to support this. We’re currently training our next-gen model Llama 3, and we’re building massive compute infrastructure to support our future roadmap, including 350k H100s by the end of this year — and overall almost 600k H100s equivalents of compute if you include other GPUs. Also really excited about our progress building new AI-centric computing devices like Ray Ban Meta smart glasses. Lots more to come soon.”
— Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook post, January 18, 2024
Zuckerberg recently announced a strategic shift in Meta’s operations, making a point of its renewed focus on artificial intelligence (AI). Meta is consolidating its AI-related projects, FAIR and GenAI, which are dedicated to fundamental research and consumer AI product development, respectively. This move signals Zuckerberg’s commitment to advancing AI, potentially to achieve human-level capabilities, a concept often referred to as “artificial general intelligence.”
During an interview with The Verge, Zuckerberg highlighted the unprecedented competitive landscape in recruiting top AI talent. This competition underlines the necessity for Meta to invest significantly in resources that can support these scientists. To facilitate this, Meta is ramping up its infrastructure, including investing in a substantial number of H100 computer chips, essential components in AI data centers. As of 2022, NVIDIA’s introduction of these chips has positioned them as a cornerstone of AI computational power. Reports from The Verge in December noted that Meta, alongside Microsoft, is one of NVIDIA’s largest customers for the H100 chips.
Zuckerberg’s strategic pivot to AI, particularly his investment in massive data centers and state-of-the-art computing resources, is a clear indication of Meta’s ambition to outpace its rivals in the tech industry. By bringing together its research and product development arms in AI, Meta is positioning itself at the forefront of the race to achieve a breakthrough in artificial general intelligence.
Featured image: Credit: Facebook
