Meta’s Head of AI leaves amid even larger Metaverse focus


Facebook parent company Meta is not backing down from its Metaverse focus. While the shift in priority is already annoying countless employees, it’s also pushing some away, including Meta’s Head of AI.

Meta’s Head of AI leaves Metaverse company

Alongside an exodus of employees, including the company’s top AI researchers, Meta’s Head of AI Jerome Pesenti is leaving the company as The Metaverse focus increases exponentially. While no reason was given, Pesenti’s leave might be due to massive smile employee restructuring.

As the company’s Head of AI for four years, Pesenti’s departure is a huge blow. However, it’s to be expected. Pesenti’s leave comes amid the majority of the AI team being pushed onto Metaverse development at Reality Labs.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth announced the restructuring in a blog post claiming that the company will now “leverage the newest AI technology at scale”. This means that AI research will now be even more integral to Meta’s Metaverse plans.

“More centralized approaches run into their limits when the last mile proves to be too far for downstream teams to close the gap,” Bosworth announced. “With this new team structure, we are excited to push the boundaries of what AI can do and use it to create new features and products for billions of people.”

Read More: New Facebook AI is highly racist, biased and toxic, says Meta researchers

Why is Meta’s AI team being pushed into the Metaverse?

Meta believes that its artificial intelligence team is integral to making The Metaverse work. Whether that’s through content moderation or content creation is unknown.

AI is already important for VR and AR technology. For example, AR requires AI to calculate complex mathematics in order to accurately project virtual content into real space.

Meta’s Metaverse proposes a complex mixed reality world, a seamless integration of virtual and augmented reality and real life. It’s an almost impossible task and one that will require complex AI algorithms to work, but will it pay off?

Currently, the company’s Metaverse projects has an absolutely colossal workforce of over 17,000 employees. With billions lost every quarter, will Meta ever be able to make back what it’s lost? 

For more articles like this, take a look at our Metaverse and News page.