The WSJ reported yesterday that Meta has restructured and instituted a hiring freeze at its AI division, calling an end to Mark Zuckerberg’s personally-overseen, multibillion-dollar hiring spree.

The NYT then followed up with news that Meta might even be looking to scale back the size of its “superintelligence” unit, and using other people’s AI models (which is kinda embarrassing when you’ve already spent the GDP of a small country on your own efforts to build a machine god):

Some A.I. executives are expected to leave, the people said. Meta is also looking at downsizing the A.I. division overall — which could include eliminating roles or moving employees to other parts of the company — because it has grown to thousands of people in recent years, the people said. Discussions remain fluid and no final decisions have been made on the downsizing, they said.

In what would be a shift from Meta’s using only its own technology to power its A.I. products, the company is also actively exploring using third-party artificial intelligence models to do so, the people said. That could include building on other “open-source” A.I. models, which are freely available, or licensing “closed-source” models from other companies.

This does kinda make sense. A big, bloated division of “thousands” probably isn’t optimal for an entrepreneurial endeavour. After chucking money at some superstar signings, it would be understandable if Zuckerberg afterwards pushed some benchwarmers and third reserve goalies towards the exit. And why not use someone else’s models, where it makes sense, to free up resources?