Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the future of AI in an interview published on Thursday, saying he strongly believes there isn't “just one AI.” Touting the value of open source in putting AI tools in the hands of many, Zuckerberg took a bit of a dig at the efforts of an unnamed competitor that he believes is far from open, adding that it seems like they think they're “creating god.”
“I don't think AI technology should be monopolized or one company should use it to build its core product,” Zuckerberg said in a new YouTube interview with Kayne Sutter (@Kallaway).
“I find it pretty tiresome when people in tech talk about building the 'one true AI,'” he continued. “It's like they think they're creating a god or something, but that's not what we're doing,” he said. “I don't see that happening.”
“I know when you're in the AI lab, it's tempting to feel like what you're doing is super important – like, 'We're building a single version of truth for the future,' but if you think about it realistically, things don't work that way,” Zuckerberg explained. “There's not one app on people's phones. There's not one creator that people want all of their content from. There's not one business that people want to buy everything from.”
During the conversation, Zuckerberg said different AIs need to be created to reflect people's different interests. The company also announced early testing in the U.S. on Thursday of its AI Studio software, which lets creators and others create AI avatars that can contact people through Instagram's messaging system. The AIs can answer questions from followers and have fun chatting with people, but will be labeled as “AI” to avoid confusion.
Speaking about companies building closed AI platforms, Meta's CEO said he doesn't think this is the way to create the best experience for people.
“You want as many people as possible to be unleashed to try different things,” he continued. “So that's what culture is about. Not one group dictating everything for people.”
His comments feel a bit like sour grapes, coming on the heels of reports that Meta was rebuffed for trying to negotiate with Apple to integrate its AI into its operating system, rather than just working with OpenAI at launch. According to Bloomberg, Apple decided not to move forward with formal talks with Meta, believing its privacy protections were not strong enough.
If the deal doesn't go through, Meta would lose access to potentially billions of iPhone users around the world. But Meta's Plan B seems to be to build technology beyond smartphones.
In the interview, Zuckerberg pointed to progress on Ray-Ban's Meta smart glasses, for example, saying that their path will one day merge with the current development of fully holographic displays, but that in the short term the former will likely be more popular, he said.
“With the cameras, microphones, speakers and multimodal AI capabilities, I think you can create a great experience even without a display on these glasses,” he noted. Plus, the lack of a display keeps costs down: By comparison, Meta's smart glasses cost about $300, while the Meta Quest Pro costs $1,000.
Zuckerberg said there will be three different products along the way: smart glasses with no display, heads-up displays, and full holographic displays. Eventually, instead of a neural interface that connects to the brain, he said people will wear wristbands that pick up signals from the brain that communicate with their hands. This will allow them to communicate with the neural interface with very little movement of their hands. Eventually, they may even be able to type.
But Zuckerberg cautioned that these types of typing and AI experiences may not replace smartphones anytime soon: “I don't think in the history of technology a new platform will make people completely stop using the old one. They just use it less,” he said.
For example, we now use our smartphones to do tasks that we would have done on a computer 10 to 15 years ago.
“I think that's going to happen with glasses,” Zuckerberg said. “It's not like people are going to stop having their phones. They're just going to have their phones in their pocket and they're only going to take them out when they really need them. But I think more and more people are going to say, 'With my glasses, I can take this photo. I can ask an AI this question or I can send someone a message. It's just so much easier with my glasses.'”
“Ten years from now, cell phones will still be around, but they will be used more intentionally, rather than just reflexively reaching out and grabbing whatever tech thing you want to do,” he said.