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Lex Fridman · 2023-06-08

Mark Zuckerberg: Future of AI at Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp | Lex Fridman Podcast #383

Mark Zuckerberg lays out Meta's open-source AI vision, defends a future of many personalized AIs, and unveils the $499 Quest 3.

Mark Zuckerberg: Future of AI at Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp | Lex Fridman Podcast #383
The guest

Mark Zuckerberg: Co-founder and CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, services used by billions. A jiu-jitsu competitor and one of the leading figures shaping AI and virtual/mixed reality.

What this episode covers

In his second appearance, Zuckerberg discusses Meta's approach to AI, centered on open-sourcing models like Llama and a contrarian belief that the future holds many specialized AIs rather than one singular super-intelligence. The conversation covers content moderation, government pressure, misinformation, and the difficulty of drawing lines between harm and free expression. He details Meta's layoffs and a renewed focus on lean, engineering-driven teams, then pivots to the newly announced Quest 3 mixed-reality headset and a comparison with Apple's Vision Pro. The episode closes on existential AI risk, the distinction between intelligence and autonomy, mortality, physical training, and faith.

The guest's own work

ProductBy the guest

Meta Quest 3

Meta

“you'll get some more details in the fall maybe release in the... it's coming this fall... it's priced at $4.99”— Mark Zuckerberg
ProductBy the guest

Meta Quest 2

Meta

“if you like Quest 2 I think that this is just going to be it's like all the content that you might have played in Quest 2 is just going to get sharper”— Mark Zuckerberg
ProductBy the guest

Meta Quest Pro

Meta

“we started with Quest Pro last year it was $1,500 and now we've lowered the price to a thousand”— Mark Zuckerberg

Also referenced (named, not recommended)

ProductReferenced

Apple Vision Pro

Apple

“Apple just announced a mixed reality headset called Vision Pro for $3,500 available in early 2024 what do you think about this headset”— Lex Fridman
ProductReferenced

Replika

Luka, Inc.

“there's services today like replica where you know people are doing things like that and built relationships with it”— Mark Zuckerberg
MediaReferenced

Dungeons & Dragons

Wizards of the Coast

“we're playing Dungeons and Dragons or some board game and we just have a virtual version of the board in front of us”— Mark Zuckerberg
BookReferenced

Genesis (Book of Genesis, the Bible)

Various

“one of the most basic lessons is right at the beginning of Genesis right it's like God creates the Earth and creates people”— Mark Zuckerberg

Big reveals from this episode

  • Reveals he competed in his first jiu-jitsu tournament in disguise, registering under his first and middle name (Mark Elliot) wearing a hat, sunglasses, and COVID mask.
  • Confirms the first Llama model 'leaked' after a limited research release and says companies have generally respected the no-commercial-use terms.
  • Stakes out his core contrarian thesis: unlike OpenAI and Google's 'One Singular AI,' he believes people will want many different AIs for different roles.
  • Criticizes the pandemic 'establishment' for waffling on facts and asking for things to be censored that later turned out to be debatable or true.
  • Confirms a text-based Twitter competitor (code-named P92) is in the works, exploring a federated approach tied to Instagram identity.
  • Praises Elon Musk's leaner, more technical restructuring of Twitter and says it influenced his own org changes.
  • Announces Quest 3 at $499, launching fall 2023, with high-resolution mixed reality as the headline new capability.
  • When asked if building AGI could make him the most powerful man in the world and corrupt him, he argues open-sourcing is the safeguard against power imbalance.

Worth remembering

  • Meta runs roughly 18 different categories of systems to detect violating content like terrorism, child exploitation, and incitement to violence.
  • Zuckerberg says he now writes about 80-90% of his code AI-generated first, then edits.
  • Meta's translation work expanded text/speech tools from ~100 languages to more than 1,000, and the model can identify over 4,000 spoken languages.
  • Cites demographic studies showing the average person has fewer close friends today than 15 years ago.
  • Meta has sold tens of millions of Quest devices; he estimates Apple is building only about 1 million Vision Pro units.
  • Quest 3 is 40% thinner than Quest 2 with 2x the graphics processing power and 40% sharper screens.
  • At the start of the restructuring, Meta managers averaged about three reports; he wants to move closer to seven or eight to cut information latency.
  • He ran a sub-40-minute Murph Challenge (1 mile, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats, 1 mile) and notes a friend beat him by several minutes.
  • Offers a brain analogy: a super-intelligent system could be like the neocortex, a powerful tool serving a simpler decision-making 'old brain,' separating intelligence from autonomy.
  • Argues entities like companies and the stock market are already greater-than-human distributed intelligences without bodies or language.