Yann LeCun Addresses Role Following Meta’s Appointment of New Chief Scientist

The more the merrier at Meta.

The AI talent wars took another turn on Friday when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Shengjia Zhao, co-creator of ChatGPT and the former lead scientist at OpenAI, is now the chief scientist at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs.

“In this role, Shengjia will set the research agenda and scientific direction for our new lab working directly with me and Alex,” a statement shared to Zuckerberg’s Threads account said. “Shengjia co-founded the new lab and has been our lead scientist from day one.”

The statement said Meta chose to formalize Zhao’s leadership position because recruiting is “going well” and the team “is coming together.”

While the announcement elicited congratulatory remarks from some AI enthusiasts online, and more discussion about Meta’s ongoing poaching spree, others asked: What about Yann LeCun?

LeCun became a prominent figure in the AI industry after joining Meta, then Facebook, in 2013. He serves as the chief AI scientist for Meta’s Fundamental AI Research, formerly known as Facebook AI Research. On LinkedIn, LeCun acknowledged the questions and clarified his role at Meta.

“My role as Chief Scientist for FAIR has always been focused on long-term AI research and building the next AI paradigms,” LeCun wrote on Friday. “My role and FAIR’s mission are unchanged.”

Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the Scale AI founder who joined Meta in June as its chief AI officer, confirmed that LeCun’s role is unchanged on their respective social media accounts.

What’s the difference between Meta’s FAIR and its Superintelligence Labs?

Although both FAIR and the Superintelligence Labs deal with AI, they’re slightly different.

Meta created FAIR over a decade ago to research and advance AI technology, which resulted in the 2023 release of its open-source large language model, Llama. LeCun is now largely focused on developing a new kind of model, known as a world model, that could one day replace large language models.

The Superintelligence Labs, meanwhile, is the umbrella department housing Meta’s FAIR, foundations, and products teams, Zuckerberg said in an internal memo in June. Zuckerberg said the Superintelligence Labs would focus on developing “personal superintelligence for everyone.” Bloomberg reported that LeCun would report to Wang.

Wang praised Zhao in an X post on Friday.

“Shengjia is a brilliant scientist who most recently pioneered a new scaling paradigm in his research,” Wang said in an X post on Friday. “He will lead our scientific direction for our team.”

LeCun said he’s looking forward to working with Zhao “to accelerate the integration of new research into our most advanced models.”