Zuckerberg Bought AI Startup For Charity Group, Plans To Make It Free

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan recently acquired the artificial intelligence startup called Meta for their charity group, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The couple also has plans to make it free in the future so that scientists could have access to the technology produced by the company without having to pay.

Meta is an AI startup that largely focuses on developing machine data analytics for sifting through mountains of medical research papers, Fortune reports. The implications of such a technology for boosting the ability of medical professionals to get data on the latest findings is staggering, which is exactly why the Zuckerberg and Chan decided to get the startup.

This isn’t the only company that’s betting on the ability of AIs to significantly reduce the amount of time to process and presents information to researchers either. IBM and Watson are also invested in the field because they believe, as does the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative that advanced machine analytics is where the future of research is at.

In a blog post that Meta’s CEO Sam Molyneux wrote about the development, he noted how becoming part of the charity organization will significantly boost their interaction and options for contact with medical professionals than when it was just a startup. Considering what the company was trying to achieve in the first place, this is exactly in line with what it was going for.

“Through open solicitations, convenings, joint projects and grants, we will embrace the ideas and efforts of researchers in the diverse fields that Meta intersects with – including machine learning, network science, ontologies, science metrics, and data visualization,” the post reads.

After several months of refining the technology, the organization also plans on making it freely accessible to researchers, TechCrunch reports. Meta’s prospects basically revolve around removing some of the biggest obstacles in scientific advancements, which are money and digesting an insurmountable amount of data.