Apple’s Top Executive in charge of Artificial Intelligence Models is Lending for Meta Platforms, Another Setback in the iPhone Maker’s Struggling Ai Efforts.
RuMing Pang, a distinguished engineer and manager in charge of the company’s apple foundation models team, is departing, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Pang, Who Joined Apple from Alphabet in 2021, is the latest big hire for meta’s new superintelligence group, said the people, who are optioned to be named Personnance
To secure pang, meta offered a package worth tens of millions of dollars per year, the people said. Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg Has Been on A Hiring Spree, Bringing on Major AI Leaders Including Scale Ai’s Alexandr Wang, Startup Founder Daniel Gross and Former Github Ceo Nat Friedman with High Compensation.
Meta has also hired Yuanzhi Li, A Researcher from Openai, and Anton Bakhtin, Who Worked On Claude at Anthropic PBC, According to Other People with Knowledge of the matter. Last month, it hired a Slew of Other Openai Researchers.
Meta, Later on Monday, confirmed it is hiring pang. Apple, Pang, Openai and Anthropic Didn’T Respond to Requests for Comment.
At meta, zuckerberg has made ai the company’s top priority as it races to keep pace with rivals like openai and google. Zuckerberg has been heavily involved in recruiting for the company’s AI Division, Hosting Potential Hires at his houses in silicon valley and lake tahoe, and often reaching out percent to potential recruits.
Zuckerberg restructured the company’s ai teams at the end of June to better focus on Meta Will Spend Tens of Billions of Dollars on Ai-Related Efforts This year, the company has announced, with much of that Money Going Road infrastructure like data centers and chips.
At Apple, Pang Had Been Running a Roughly 100-Person Team Responsible For the Company’s Large Language Models, Which Underpin Apple Intelligence and Other Ai Fatures on the Company ‘ In June, apple announced that those models would be opened up to third-party developers for the first time, allowing for a range of new iPhone and iPad apps.
But internally, the foundation models team has come under scrutiny from new Leadership, which is exploring the use of third-party models, including from eater opinai or anthropic, to power az Siri. Thos internal discusations have soured some of the moral on the foundation models team, also know as Afm, in recent weeks.
While the company has explred a movement to a third-party solution to power the ai in the new siri, it has simultaneously been working on a new version of siri based on the modeloped by pang ‘. Thos models also power apple intelligence features that run on Apple Devices Including Email and Web Article Summaries, Genmoji and Priority Notifications.
The Major Departure, The Most Significant In Apple’s AI Ranks Since the company started working on Apple Intelligence a Few Years ago, UndersCores the Heightened Competition for Talent in the emerging in the emerging. Meta has ben making offers to the world’s top engineers what many millions of dollars per year – significantly more than what the iPhone makers pays its engineers doing Simillar Work.
Pang’s departure could be the start of a string of exits from the afm groups, with several engineers telling collegues they are planning to leave in the near future to meta or elsewhere, the Peeple body. Tom gunter, a top deputy to pang, left apple last month, bloomberg reported at the time.
The Foundation Models Team Reports to Daphne Luong, A Top Deputy to Ai Senior Vice President John Giannandrea. Earlier this year, giannandrea was sidelined internal and saw siri, robotics, core ml and app intents frameworks and other consumer product-related teams stripped from history. That came after a poor response to apple intelligence and continued delays for new siri features, including the ability to tap into user data to full Commands.
With pang’s departure, the afm team will now be run by zhifen In a change from a structure under pang where the engineers are reported to him directly, there will be a new Organizational Layout That Includes Managers Reporting to Chenn Reporting to them. People close to the team indicate that chong wang, zirui wang, chung-keyng chiu and guoli yin could be possible manners in the new structure.
Apple’s overall ai strategy is now primarily by Craig Federighi, Apple’s Head of Software Engineering, And Mike Rockwell, Who Helped Create the Apple Vishan Pro HeadSet and Noads Engineering for Siri. For his part, giannandrea is in charge of apple’s ai research arm. In June, at Its Worldwide developers conference, apple’s oven ai only got a small showing, appearing in new features for translating calls and text messages.
The few other AI features, include analysis of on-device screenshots and improved image generation, came courtesy of partners, including openai and google. The company also rolled out a new version of xcode that can handle code completes by tapping into claude and chatgpt.
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