Speaking about what he sees for the future of AI, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview published on Thursday that he strongly believes there will never be “just one AI.” Touting the value of open source to put AI tools in the hands of more people, Zuckerberg took a moment to disparage the efforts of unnamed competitors who he sees as less than open, adding that they seem to believe they are “creating God.”
“I don’t believe that AI technology is something that should be stored away… and that one company gets to use it to build any one centralized product you build,” Zuckerberg said in a new statement. YouTube interview with Ken Sutter (@Calaway).
“I find it very annoying when people in the tech industry talk about building ‘one true AI,’” he continued. “It sounds like they think they’re creating a god or something… It’s just — that’s not what we’re doing,” he said. “I don’t think that’s what’s happening.”
“I get why, if you’re in an AI lab… you want to feel like what you’re doing is really important, right? … It’s like we’re building the only real thing for the future. But I think, realistically, that’s not the way.” That’s how things work, right? “It’s not like there’s one app that people use on their phones,” Zuckerberg explained. There is no single creator whose content people want to have all of. “There’s not one company that people want to buy everything from.”
In the conversation, Zuckerberg said there should be lots of different AI systems being built to reflect people’s different interests. The company also announced early tests Thursday of its AI Studio program in the US that will let creators and others build AI avatars that can reach out to people through Instagram’s messaging system. The AIs will be able to answer their followers’ questions and chat with people in a fun way, but they will be labeled “AI” so as not to cause confusion.
Referring to companies building closed AI platforms, the Meta CEO said he doesn’t think that’s the way to create the best experiences for people.
“You want to unleash and… unleash as many people as possible to try different things,” he continued. “I mean, that’s the culture, right? It’s not like one group of people can dictate everything to people.”
His comments seem spiteful and envious, coming shortly after reports emerged that Meta had tried to negotiate with Apple to integrate its AI into Apple’s operating systems, rather than just working with OpenAI at launch. But it was shot down. According to Bloomberg, Apple decided not to move forward with formal discussions with Meta because it did not believe its privacy practices were robust enough.
If no deal is reached, Meta will lose access to billions of iPhone users around the world. But Meta’s plan B appears to be to build technology that expands beyond smartphones.
In the interview, Zuckerberg touched on the company’s progress with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, for example, saying that their trajectory will one day converge with the work being done now on full-frame displays. However, he said the former will have more traction in the near term.
“I actually think you can create a great experience with cameras, microphones, speakers, and the ability to do multimedia AI, even before you have any kind of display on these glasses,” he noted. In addition, the lack of a screen reduces costs. The Meta smart glasses are around $300, and the Meta Quest Pro glasses are $1,000 for comparison.
Zuckerberg said there will be three different products before convergence: screenless smart glasses, head-up displays, and full 3D displays. Ultimately, he said, instead of neural interfaces connected to their brains, people might one day wear a bracelet that picks up signals from their brains that communicate with their hands. That would allow them to communicate with the neural interface simply by moving their hands. Eventually, it might even allow people to type.
Zuckerberg cautioned that these kinds of AI inputs and experiences might not replace smartphones right away. “I don’t think, in the history of technology, a new platform — it usually doesn’t make people completely stop using the old thing. It’s just that you use it less,” he said.
For example, people now use smartphones to do things that they might have done on their computers 10 to 15 years ago.
“I think that’s going to happen with Glasses, too,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s not like we’re going to stop having a phone. It’s just that it’s going to stay in your pocket, and you’re going to pull it out when you really need to do things with it. But increasingly, I think people are going to start saying, ‘Hey, I can take this picture with my Glasses. I can ask this question to the AI, or I can send a message to someone — it’s a lot easier with Glasses.’”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if 10 years from now, we’ll probably still have phones, but they’ll probably be more intentional with use rather than just reflexively reaching out and grabbing them for whatever technological thing you want,” he said.