Mark Zuckerberg’s AI Plans Take A Hit As Meta Fires 600 Employees, Here Is why

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soon as we think the tech giants are done with the layoffs, one of them pops up with a few more. In a recent development, Meta has again removed around 600 positions out of several thousand roles from its Superintelligence Labs AI Unit. According to a report shared by Axios, these layoffs will hamper the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) unit, AI infrastructure units, product-related AI, and the newly developed TDB lab. Reuters has been unable to independently verify the report, as no one from Meta has immediately responded to comment.

Meta Lays Off More People, Now From The AI Unit

Meta went through a solid restructuring in June as it poached some of the best talent from tech giants like Apple, OpenAI, and more. In that period, Meta was spending money on a considerable scale, giving out millions of dollars in bonuses along with developing several massive AI data centers for Superintelligence. And the layoffs have come as a shock for all those who have been working day and night on the development of new projects. One user who goes by Yuchen Jin posted, 'Meta laid off 600 people from its Superintelligence Lab today.Many FAIR researchers, including FAIR Research Scientist Director Yuandong Tian, were affected. I think Yann Lecun will leave soon.Maybe I should raise $2B and start a new frontier lab with these folks.'Another research scientist from Meta named Xianjun Yang posted, 'I was laid off by Meta today. As a Research Scientist, my work was just cited by the legendary @johnschulman2 and Nicholas Carlini yesterday.I’m actively looking for new opportunities — please reach out if you have any openings!'And that's not limited to only two people, as you can find a dozen of people showing their emotions on X.At the time of writing this piece, Meta has not given any official statement regarding the current layoff spree. However, expectations are that the tech giant will soon have to say something related to the grounds on which these layoffs have been conducted.