Mark Zuckerberg took aim at Anthropic and OpenAI in an interview with New York Times on Tuesday. The CEO of Meta did not call out Anthropic and OpenAI by name, but said that if leading research labs wanted to develop AI technology in a tightly controlled manner, it would be akin to "abandoning our values" in American tech development and stifling innovation. The comments from Zuckerberg escalate a debate over how AI software should be created that has divided Silicon Valley.
"So much of the discourse from a lot of the other labs that are developing this is overwhelmingly filled with doom," Zuckerberg said in the interview. "There needs to be a voice or several voices that are bringing realism to this debate." Zuckerberg repeatedly argued that more people, rather than fewer, should have access to AI technology.
Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called out the dangers of alignment risk, an issue with programming artificial intelligence in a way that is safe toward humans. "I think a lot of people have this notion that if you build some kind of singular AI you can, through some idealized form of alignment, make sure it is benevolent to humanity," Zuckerberg said. "I'm personally skeptical of that path."
He instead called for personalized superintelligence for everyone, which meant configuring AI bots to suit people's needs and desires. He argued that a central benevolent AI superpower was untenable because people had different views and value systems. "I think it is literally impossible to have a single benevolent superintelligence that is simultaneously aligned with everyone at once," Zuckerberg said.
In previous statements, according to The New York Times, OpenAI said it supported open-source software and worked with the White House on safe ways to support AI development. In a blog post on Monday, Amodei said Anthropic focused on keeping powerful chips out of authoritarian hands, stopping industrial-scale distillation, and requiring safety testing of all sufficiently capable models.
Tech executives including Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia and Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, traveled to Washington this week to make their case to the Trump administration. On Friday, Huang penned an open letter supporting open software development.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that the AI debate was contentious and noted that talks with different parties had been productive. "I don't know if the goal is to have everyone agree on everything," he said. "Almost by definition, if you believe what I do, you don't need to convince everyone of everything."
He said democratization of tech tools tended to eventually win out. "I believe the general arc of the industry has been toward more openness and putting the power of tech into more people's hands, not fewer," he said. (ANI)
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Asianet Newsable English staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
