Facebook has hired Jerome Pesenti to lead its AI research (FAIR) division, Quartz reports. FAIR now has 130 employees but the aim is to further scale the unit out. Pensenti succeeds Yann LeCun, who will be moving to a more research-type function, as chief AI scientist, Facbook told TechCrunch.
LeCun told Quartz that there was a need for someone to oversee all the AI at Facebook, across research, development, and have a connection with product, especially in view of the growing importance of AI and the systems getting built around deep learning.
Facebook has been investing in AI. The company announced the opening of a FAIR lab in Montreal in September and said recently it would be doubling the size of its Paris AI research team to 100 by 2022.
Pesenti joined IBM to lead the development of its Watson platform after the startup he co-founded, Vivisimo, was acquired by the company in 2012. He went on to later become the CEO of BenevolentTech. As VP of AI, Pesenti will report directly to CTO Mike Schroepfer.
