Meta To Purchase $15 Billion Dollar Stake in Scale AI

What Happened?

Meta plans to purchase a $15 billion dollar stake in Scale AI, which will give Meta control of 49% of that company. Once completed, the deal will be the largest acquisition by Meta since the purchase of WhatsApp in 2014.

According to the Associated Press, the deal could be announced as soon as Wednesday and will give Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang a high-level position at Meta leading an effort to develop superintelligence. The acquisition of Scale AI by Meta follows the announcement by Meta to develop a new AI lab.

Why it Matters

Meta is the latest of the tech heavyweights to make substantial investments in creating newer and more capable artificial intelligence programs. According to its company website, Scale AI has ‘pioneered in the data labeling industry by combining AI-based techniques with human-in-the-loop, delivering labeled data at unprecedented quality, scalability, and efficiency.’

In addition to the acquisition of Scale AI, Bloomberg reported that Mark Zuckerberg aims to hire around 50 people for the new team, including a new head of AI research, almost all of whom he’s recruiting personally.

Superintelligence is a term that can be taken to mean either an AI that is more capable than humans at every task, or artificial general intelligence, which basically means an AI that is sentient. Why would Meta want to create either one? The potential applications are vast, because such an AI could be integrated into Meta’s current platforms and would allow the company to offer a wide range of services to over a billion users worldwide.

An artificial general intelligence, or superintelligence, could be used to create a new generation of chatbots, AI powered applications for augmented reality glasses, or to drive new breakthroughs in scientific research. For example, an AI could conduct scientific research at a much greater speed than humans and work around the clock indefinitely, which could lead to a host of new discoveries and inventions.

While the potential benefits are enormous, so are the obstacles. Creating an AI that can achieve sentience or surpass human capabilities is still the stuff of science fiction. In order for Meta’s investment in Scale AI to deliver a superintelligence, the team being assembled would have to solve technical problems which have so far eluded every other tech company in the world. 

For example, Microsoft has invested ten billion dollars in AI, but has yet to achieve anything like superintelligence.

How it Affects You

If Meta’s gamble fails, then the company will have lost a fifteen billion dollar bet. But if it succeeds, even partially, the potential payoffs could be worth many times that much. An AI that can operate cars, diagnose illnesses, argue legal cases and perform nearly any task a human can could change the way our entire economy operates.