AI researchers, assemble!

Frustrated by Meta's progress in the AI arms race, Mark Zuckerberg is personally recruiting AI experts for a "superintelligence group," according to Bloomberg.

The report said Zuckerberg wants to assemble a supergroup with around 50 members, with the goal of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) and beyond. Though definitions vary, AGI generally refers to artificial intelligence that equals human intelligence. Superintelligence is the term for AI that's smarter than humans, though this remains mostly hypothetical.

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Zuckerberg has reportedly gone into "founder mode," taking a hands-on approach to compete with AI rivals like Google and OpenAI. The Meta CEO was reportedly disappointed by the response to its latest model, Llama 4, which failed to outperform other frontier models on LMArena, the leaderboard where it's currently topped by Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI's o4 models. Then there was the whole mini scandal where Meta was caught gaming the leaderboard by submitting a version of Llama 4 that wasn't available to the public, according to The Verge.

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According to Bloomberg, Zuckerberg has reportedly created a WhatsApp group with senior Meta leadership called "Recruiting Party" to brainstorm top talent and woo AI researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs to join the Meta supergroup. The report says Zuckerberg has been hosting lunches and dinners to personally recruit members. According to a separate report from theNew York Times, Meta is offering compensation packages of seven to nine figures. The Timesalso said Scale AI CEO Alexendr Wang is joining the group.

The superintelligence lab would try to improve Llama performance and develop new AI tools and features that can eventually be integrated into the Meta AI chatbot on Meta platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Meta has also rebooted its AI glasses efforts and is reportedly planning to include facial recognition technology and position the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses as a smarter virtual assistant.

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Google is also working on AI-powered XR glasses, and OpenAI is similarly exploring an omnipresent AI companion with a device developed in partnership with Jony Ive's startup io.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

Topics Artificial Intelligence Meta