Meta AI

Meta AI is an artificial intelligence laboratory that belongs to Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly known as Facebook, Inc.) Meta AI intends to develop various forms of artificial intelligence, improving augmented and artificial reality technologies. Meta AI is an academic research laboratory focused on generating knowledge for the AI community. This is in contrast to Facebook's Applied Machine Learning (AML) team, which focuses on practical applications of its products. History Meta AI started as Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) with locations in the Menlo Park, California, headquarters, London, United Kingdom, and a new laboratory in Manhattan. FAIR was officially announced in September, 2013. FAIR was directed by New York University's Yann LeCun, a deep learning Professor and Turing Award winner. Working with NYU's Center for Data Science, FAIR's initial goal was to research data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence and to "understand intelligence, to discover its fundamental principles, and to make machines significantly more intelligent". Research at FAIR pioneered the technology that led to face recognition, tagging in photographs, and personalized feed recommendation. Vladimir Vapnik, a pioneer in statistical learning, joined FAIR in 2014, he is the co-inventor of the support-vector machine, and one of the developers of the Vapnik–Chervonenkis theory. FAIR opened a research center in Paris, France in 2015, and subsequently launched smaller satellite research labs in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Tel Aviv, Montreal and London. In 2016, FAIR partnered with Google, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft in creating the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, an organization with a focus on open licensed research, supporting ethical and efficient research practices, and discussing fairness, inclusivity, and transparency. In 2018, Jérôme Pesenti, former CTO of IBM's big data group, assumed the role of president of FAIR, while LeCun stepped down to serve as chief AI scientist. In 2018, FAIR was placed 25th in the AI Research Rankings 2019, which ranked the top global organizations leading AI research. FAIR quickly rose to eighth position in 2019, and maintained eighth position in the 2020 rank. FAIR had approximately 200 staff in 2018, and had the goal to double that number by 2020.