Bloomberg reports that the lead AI researcher for Apple’s robotics, Jian Zhang, has left Apple to join Meta. 3 more researchers are also planning to leave the AI team of Foundation Models to join Anthropic and OpenAI.
It’s estimated that about a dozen experts in AI at the very least have left the company to join OpenAI, Meta, or a different company since the start of the year. Massive pay packages have been offered to engineers by Meta that competing companies cannot match. This resulted in Meta nabbing the lead of the Foundational Models team of Apple, Ruoming Pang, by offering $200 million.
Apple is in a crisis of confidence regarding the future of AI in the company and is thinking of a third-party solution to help power the AI capabilities of Siri. They are reportedly in talks with Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI. The company’s faltering has created tension in its team for LLMs.
