Facebook Plans To Double Size Of AI Research Unit By 2020

Yann Lecun is the scientist leading Facebook's AI efforts. Facebook is on course to double the size of the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) division in the next two years, according to the company's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun. FAIR currently has approximately 180-200 staff, but the division is expected to grow to around 400 people by 2020 as Facebook continues to put AI at the heart of its platforms. "I don't know everybody's name anymore and I don't recognise everybody either," LeCun admitted in an interview at Facebook's New York office. Asked whether FAIR is likely to double in size in the next couple of years, LeCun said: "Yes, probably. Members of FAIR carry out fundamental research in the field of AI. Some of their breakthroughs are applied to Facebook's platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp) by an applied machine learning (AML) team and other engineers, but the majority of their research is purely academic. So far they've developed algorithms that can analyse MRI scans and play games like "Starcraft," among other things. But competition for AI talent is intense. Facebook and Google are locked in a battle to hire the smartest minds in the field, while others like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are also trying to poach the best PhD students and other academics, leading to brain drain concerns. Facebook is hiring many of these people through FAIR, while Google, or Alphabet, as Google's parent company is known, is hiring through DeepMind, and Google Brain to some extent. DeepMind's team has swelled from less than 100 to over 700 since it was acquired by Google in 2014 for £400 million. Asked why FAIR hasn't grown at the same rate as some other AI labs, Rob Fergus, head of FAIR in New York, said: "It's a market supply.