Meta Appoints Tsinghua Alumnus Zhao Shengjia, Core Member of GPT-4, as Chief Scientist of the Superintelligence Lab}
Meta has announced Zhao Shengjia, a Tsinghua alumnus and key GPT-4 researcher, as the chief scientist of its new Superintelligence Lab, aiming to lead AI innovation and long-term AI development.
About a month ago, Meta announced the establishment of the “Meta Superintelligence Labs” (MSL), which includes all fundamental research, product teams, and the newly formed lab dedicated to developing the next-generation models.
Following mediocre performance of the Llama 4 model, Meta has increased its talent investment, recruiting top-tier researchers with high salaries and through deals with startups, aiming to revive Llama and build a long-term general intelligence vision.
Today’s protagonist, Zhao Shengjia, was part of the elite team of 11 top talents recruited from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and other leading institutions. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his appointment as the Chief Scientist of the Superintelligence Lab on Friday, accelerating AI development.
Zuckerberg stated that Shengjia will work directly with him and Alexandr Wang to set research agendas and scientific directions for the new lab. Wang also celebrated Zhao’s appointment on social media, highlighting his innovative research approach that may define Meta’s future AI research trajectory.
Regarding Zhao Shengjia himself, TechXplore previously covered his profile.
According to his LinkedIn, he joined OpenAI in June 2022. He graduated from Tsinghua University for his undergraduate studies and earned a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. He received the ICLR 2022 Outstanding Paper Award.
During his time at OpenAI, he contributed to major projects like ChatGPT, GPT-4, 4.1, and O3. He was also the head of the synthetic data team, making him a core researcher behind GPT-4.
In just three years after graduation, he has built an impressive resume. Now, Meta has officially appointed him to a leadership role.
Following this appointment, Yann LeCun was once again in the spotlight. Similar to past discussions about whether “Turing Award winner and deep learning pioneer Yann LeCun reports to 97-born Alexandr Wang,” this highlights the ongoing debate about research hierarchies at Meta.
For readers interested in Meta’s research system, a previous TechXplore report provides more details.
This time, Zuckerberg clarified on Threads that: “LeCun’s position remains unchanged. He is still the Chief Scientist at FAIR!”
With two heavyweight researchers leading Meta’s efforts and top talent recruited at high costs, the question remains whether MSL and FAIR can realize Zuckerberg’s grand vision.