Meta has chosen Robert Fergus to lead its Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab, according to Bloomberg.
Fergus had been working at Google DeepMind as a research director for roughly five years, per his LinkedIn. Prior to Google, he worked as a researcher scientist at Meta.
Meta’s FAIR, which has been around since 2013, has faced challenges in recent years, according to a report from Fortune. FAIR led research on the company’s early AI models, including Llama 1 and Llama 2. However, researchers have reportedly departed the unit en masse for other startups, companies, and even Meta’s newer GenAI group, which led the development of Llama 4.
Meta’s previous VP of AI Research, Joelle Pineau, announced in April she’d be leaving the company for a new opportunity.
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OpenAI is introducing a new data residency program in Asia, the company announced Thursday, following the rollout of its data residency program in Europe in February.
The new program, which is available for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Edu, and the OpenAI API, aims to help Asia-based organizations meet local data sovereignty requirements while using the AI company’s products. Eligible API customers and new ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu subscribers can choose to have their data stored at rest in supported countries: Japan, India, Singapore, and South Korea.
“For the API platform and ChatGPT business products, data remains confidential, secure, and entirely owned by you,” wrote OpenAI in a blog post. “Data residency further enhances data control for organizations.”
The debut of the Asia data residency program comes as OpenAI looks to accelerate its expansion abroad. This week, the company announced OpenAI for Countries, an initiative OpenAI says will enable it to build out the infrastructure needed to better serve international clientele.
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OpenAI has met with officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to discuss the agency’s use of AI to speed up drug evaluations, Wired reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, OpenAI and the FDA have discussed a project called cderGPT, which seems to be an AI tool for the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE). The CDE regulates over-the-counter and prescription drugs in the U.S. Associates from Elon Musk’s DOGE have reportedly been part of the talks as well.
It’s not uncommon for drug development processes to take more than a decade to complete. OpenAI’s work with the FDA aims to accelerate a small portion of that timeline, toward the end, per Wired. AI has long been touted as a potential accelerant that could be used throughout drug development, making some notoriously slow steps more efficient. That said, there are unanswered questions around how to control for the unreliability of AI models.
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OpenAI is launching a program, OpenAI for Countries, that the company says will enable it to build out the local infrastructure needed to better serve international AI customers.
As a part of the new program, OpenAI will partner with governments to assist with efforts like building out data center capacity and customizing OpenAI’s products, including ChatGPT, for specific languages and local needs.
Funding for the program will come from OpenAI as well as from governments in each country, according to the startup. The goal is to pursue 10 international projects to start, but OpenAI hasn’t said where they’ll be located yet.
OpenAI said that it hopes to “spread democratic AI.” That essentially means it wants to convince other countries to use Western AI models — OpenAI in particular — instead of Chinese competitors.
According to Bloomberg, OpenAI for Countries is meant to complement the company’s AI data center push, Project Stargate, which is reportedly set to expand beyond the U.S. OpenAI for Countries may lean on Stargate infrastructure, for example, or perhaps even funding from Stargate investors.
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