- Mark Zuckerberg uttered the F-word during a conversation on Monday while discussing closed vs. open source AI.
- The Meta CEO uttered the expletive during a conversation with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
- Zuckerberg’s comments came just days after Meta announced its new open source AI model, Llama 3.1.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unleashed a furious tirade while discussing open source AI with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during a live conversation on Monday.
The two tech leaders discussed the future of artificial intelligence and virtual worlds at SIGGRAPH 2024, an industry conference on computer graphics and interactive technologies.
Zuckerberg believes that one day every company will have its own AI, just like companies have their own social media profiles. Huang praised the idea, calling Llama 2 “probably the biggest thing that’s happened in AI in the last year.”
Zuckerberg spoke passionately about the open source AI approach, saying his preference for an open model was “selfish” and that he was driven by a desire to ensure Meta could build the technology it needed to deliver social experiences.
“There were so many things that I was trying to build that the platform providers were like, ‘No, you can’t build that,’ and in a way it was like, ‘No, let’s not do that,'” Zuckerberg said Monday. “We’re going to be building it from the inside out for the next generation.”
“That takes our broadcast away,” Huang said, jokingly responding to Zuckerberg’s F-word.
“Um, sorry,” Zuckerberg laughed, “that was fine for about 20 minutes, but then when you talk about closed platforms, I get pissed.”
The CEO’s comments come just days after Meta announced Llama 3.1, its largest AI model, which will be open-sourced, allowing users to access, modify, and distribute the source code.
“I’m hopeful that in the next generation of computing, the open ecosystem will win and get back to leading the way,” Zuckerberg said on stage on Monday.
Shortly after releasing Llama 3.1 last week, Zuckerberg released a manifesto explaining why he believes open source is “the way forward” for AI.
In contrast to companies that have taken a closed-source approach, specifically OpenAI, Zack said open source is rapidly closing the gap, pointing to the lower production costs and higher performance metrics that open source AI offers.
Several industry leaders, including Zuckerberg’s nemesis Elon Musk, praised Meta for open-sourcing Llama 3.1.
Grammarly CEO Rahul Roy Chowdhury argued in December that open-sourcing AI models would reduce the time and resources needed to create new applications and increase transparency and safety.
“There’s always open and closed. I’m not a big fan of this,” Zuckerberg said Monday. “Not everything we do is open. But in general, there’s a lot of value in having software, especially, if it’s open.”
