Shake-up at Facebook highlights tension in race for AI in the kinds of technologies

FACEBOOK’S hiring of French artificial-intelligence trailblazer Yann LeCun in 2013 to start its AI Research lab signalled that the social-media giant was serious about competing in the kinds of technologies revolutionising the Web. Its highly visible brand of AI helped turn the flood of pictures, pokes and personal data into one of the world’s most popular websites.

But criticism over election-meddling ads, “fake news” and the social network’s impact on mental health - problems that Facebook is looking to artificial intelligence to help solve - has sparked questions over whether Facebook is keeping up with its rivals in the aggressively competitive world of AI development and research.

This week, Facebook shook up its AI management, shifting LeCun to a more limited role in AI strategy, direction and external “evangelism.” To manage the technology’s growth, Facebook hired Jérôme Pesenti, who previously led IBM’s AI platform Watson, to hold the new position of vice president of AI.

The change in leadership highlights the rapid advancement of AI at Facebook - and how far it still needs to go.

“They are a significant player in AI today, where they totally weren’t five years ago,” said Pedro Domingos, a University of Washington professor, AI researcher and author of “The Master Algorithm.” “Having said that, they are still a minion in the terms of Google or Microsoft.”

He said Facebook’s team of roughly 100 AI researchers was a small fraction of the team at Google or Microsoft and far more limited in its scope. “This is the Red Queen hypothesis,” he said, referring to a concept in evolution. “It’s not how fast you’re running but, in a relative sense, how fast you’re running compared to everyone else.”

Facebook this week said it would double the size of its AI lab in Paris. In all, the company currently employs more than 100 AI researchers in the United States, Montreal, Tel Aviv and Paris.

LeCun’s new role reflects the increasing sophistication of Facebook’s research and product arms, company spokesman Ari Entin said.

“The reality is that AI is more important than ever to Facebook,” Entin said. “Our teams are growing. We’re continuing to publish and open- source more than ever before, and deploying AI across Facebook at a really high level.”

LeCun referred questions to the company, which did not make LeCun or Pesenti available for comment. He wrote on Facebook that his role would focus “on scientific leadership, strategy and external communication, with less emphasis on operational management.”

AI has long been the bedrock for the key features Facebook needs to gain new users and keep people engaged, such as facial recognition systems in photo tagging and the algorithms that decide where posts land on users’ News Feed. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg personally recruited LeCun, a New York University professor known for his breakthroughs in deep learning. —WP-Bloomberg