Mark Zuckerberg: Future of AI at Meta, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp | Lex Fridman Podcast #383
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In this episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast, Mark Zuckerberg reflects on his recent experience competing in a Jiu-Jitsu tournament and how that discipline informs his approach to leadership at Meta. Despite being a public figure who registered under an alias for privacy during the event, Zuckerberg emphasizes that martial arts require absolute focus and teach humility through repeated failure. He draws parallels between getting "kicked in the face" on the mat and facing setbacks while running a company, noting that high-turnaround sports provide immediate feedback loops essential for growth, whereas business projects often have long cycles before results are visible. For Zuckerberg, the core lesson is accepting being a beginner again; he believes that willingness to be embarrassed and pushed through difficult situations is fundamental to learning and achieving expertise in any field, whether it involves research or building new technologies like AI. The conversation shifts to Meta's strategy regarding Artificial Intelligence, specifically focusing on their decision to open-source LLaMA, the company's 65 billion parameter language model. Zuckerberg explains that while there were initial concerns about releasing such powerful models commercially due to safety risks, they ultimately chose an academic release first to foster collaboration with top researchers and ensure broad access. He addresses the existential risk of superintelligence by arguing that current technology is unlikely to reach singularity without significant further breakthroughs, though he acknowledges the danger lies in amplifying existing harms like coordinated disinformation campaigns. To mitigate these risks, Meta employs fine-tuning and alignment training to prevent models from assisting users in committing crimes or creating harmful content, aiming to make it economically inefficient for bad actors rather than guaranteeing perfect detection of every threat. A significant portion of the discussion covers the complex challenges of AI moderation, misinformation, and government pressure regarding data access and censorship. Zuckerberg outlines Meta's principles which prioritize allowing free expression while strictly prohibiting categories universally agreed upon as harmful, such as child sexual exploitation or incitement to violence. He notes that determining what constitutes "harmful" misinformation is particularly difficult due to political polarization and the evolving nature of scientific consensus, leading Meta to introduce features like fact-checking flags that users can opt out of seeing if they prefer unfiltered content, provided no safety policies are violated. When facing pressure from governments or interest groups, Zuckerberg states that while he respects democratic values in different countries, Meta draws a hard line against requests for data access that could expose individuals to physical harm, often making architectural decisions years in advance—such as choosing where to place data centers—to avoid jurisdictions with poor human rights records. Looking toward the future of AI and humanity's collective intelligence, Zuckerberg offers an optimistic perspective on how distributed systems like stock markets already demonstrate organizational intelligence surpassing individual humans. He suggests that rather than fearing a singular superintelligent entity emerging soon, society should focus on building balanced structures where technology empowers individuals to communicate and debate more effectively, thereby increasing the overall collective wisdom of humanity. Regarding AI replicas of deceased people, he supports user autonomy in deciding whether their digital avatars are created but opposes third parties from making such representations without consent. The interview concludes with Zuckerberg discussing his faith, which inspires a philosophy centered on creation as a virtue—whether building functional tools or creating beauty—and the importance of physical activity and family traditions to maintain balance against the rapid changes driven by technology.
Read the full video transcript
the following is a conversation with
Mark Zuckerberg his second time in this
podcast he's the CEO of meta that owns
Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp all
services used by billions of people to
connect with each other we talk about
his vision for the future of meta and
the future of AI in our human world this
is Alex Freedman podcast and now dear
friends here's Mark
Zuckerberg so you competed in your first
e just turn
and me as a fellow Jiu-Jitsu
practitioner and competitor I think
that's really inspiring given all the
things you have going on so I gotta ask
what was that experience like oh it was
fun I know yeah I mean well look I'm I'm
a pretty competitive person yeah um
doing sports that basically require your
full attention I think is really
important to my like mental health and
and the way I just stay focused at doing
everything I'm doing it's like I decid
to to get into martial arts and it's um
it's awesome I got like a ton of my
friends into it we all train together um
we have like a mini Academy in my garage
um and I guess um one of my friends was
like hey we should go do a tournament I
like okay yeah let's do it I'm not gonna
shy away from a challenge like that so
yeah it was but it was it was awesome it
was it was just a lot of fun you weren't
scared there was no fear I don't know I
I was I was pretty sure that I'd that
I'd do okay I like the confidence um
well so for people who don't know
Jiu-Jitsu is a martial art where you're
trying to break your opponent's limbs or
choke them uh to sleep uh and do so with
Grace and uh elegance and efficiency and
all that kind of stuff it's a uh it's a
kind of art form I think that you can do
for your whole life and it's a basically
a game a sport of human chess you can
think of there's a lot of strategy
there's a lot of sort of interesting
human dynamics of using leverage and all
that kind of stuff and uh it's kind of
incredible what you could do you can you
could do things like a small opponent
could defeat a much larger opponent and
you get to understand like the way the
mechanics of the human body works
because of that but you certainly can't
be distracted no you it's it's 100%
Focus sport to to compete I I you know I
needed to get around the fact that I
didn't want it to be like this this big
thing so I basically just I I rolled up
with a hat and sunglasses and I was
wearing a CO mask and I registered under
my first and middle name so Mark Elliot
and um and it wasn't until I pulled all
that stuff off right before I got on the
map that I think people knew as me so it
was it was pretty lowkey but you're
still a public figure yeah I mean I
didn't want to lose right the thing
you're partially afraid of is not just
the losing but being almost like
embarrassed it's so raw the sport in
that like it's just you and another
human being there's a primal aspect
there oh yeah it's great for a lot of
people it can be terrifying especially
the first time you're doing the comp
competing and it wasn't for you I see
the look of excitement in your face it
was Fe I just think part of learning is
failing okay right so I mean the main
thing like people who who train
Jiu-Jitsu it's like you need to not have
pride because I mean all the stuff that
you were talking about before about you
know getting choked or getting you know
a joint lock it's
um you only get into a bad situation if
you're not willing to tap once you
you've already lost right and but
obviously when you're getting started
with something you're not going to be an
expert at it immediately so you you just
need to to be willing to go with that
but I think this is like
I I don't know I mean maybe I've just
been embarrassed enough times in my life
yeah I I I do think there's a thing
where like you know as people grow up
maybe they don't want to be embarrassed
or anything they've built their adult
identity and they they kind of have have
a sense of of who
they they are and and what they want to
project and I don't know I think maybe
to some
degree you know your ability to keep
doing interesting things is your
willingness to be embarrassed again and
go back to Step One and start as a
beginner and get your ass kicked and you
know look stupid doing things and you
know I think so many of the things that
we're doing whether it's whether it's
this I mean this is just like a kind of
a physical part of my life but um but at
running the company it's like we we just
take on new adventures and
um you know all the big things that
we're doing I think of his like 10 plus
year missions that we're on where you
know often early on you know people
doubt that we're going to be able to do
it and the initial work seems kind of
silly and our whole ethos says we don't
want to wait until something is perfect
to put it out there we want to get it
out quickly and get feedback on it and
so I don't know I mean there's probably
just something about how I approach
things in there but I I just kind of
think that the moment that you decide
that you're going to be too embarrassed
to try something new then you're not
going to learn anything anymore but uh
like I mentioned that fear that anxiety
could be there it could creep up every
once in a while do you do you feel that
in especially stressful moments sort of
outside of the jism at just in
work stressful moments big decision days
big decision moments how do you deal
with that fear how do you deal with that
anxiety the thing that stresses me out
the most is always is always the people
challenges you know I I kind of think
that um you know strategy questions you
know I tend to have enough conviction
around the values of what we're trying
to do and what I think matters and what
I want our company to stand for that
those don't really keep me up at night
that much I mean I I kind of you know
it's not that I I get everything right
of course I don't right I mean make we
make a lot of mistakes but um but I at
least have a pretty strong sense of
where I want us to go on that the the
thing in in in running a company for you
know almost 20 years now one of the
things that's been pretty clear is when
you have a team that's
cohesive you can get almost anything
done and you know you can you can run
through super hard
challenges um you can make hard
decisions and push really hard to to do
the best work even you know and kind of
optimize something super well but when
when there's that tension I mean that's
that's when when things get really tough
and you know when I talk to other
friends who run other companies and
things like that I think one of the
things that I actually spend a
disproportionate amount of time on in
running this company is just fostering a
pretty tight Core Group of of people who
are running the company uh with me and
that to me is is kind of the thing that
both makes it fun right having having
you know friends and people you've
worked with for a while and new people
and New Perspectives but like a pretty
tight group who can who you can go work
on some of these crazy things with um
but to me that's also the most stressful
thing is is when when there when there's
tension um you know that's that that
weighs on me I I think the you know just
it's it's it's maybe not surprising I
mean we're like a very people focused
company and it's the the people is the
the part of it that that um you know
weighs on me the most to make sure that
we get right but yeah that that that I'd
say across everything that we do is
probably the the big thing so when
there's tension in in that inner circle
of of close folks so when you trust
those folks to help you make difficult
decisions
about uh Facebook WhatsApp Instagram
the future of the company and the
metaverse or the AI uh how do you build
that close nck group of folks uh to make
those difficult decisions is there
people that you have to have critical
voices very different perspectives on
focusing on the past versus the future
all that kind of stuff yeah I mean I
think for one thing it's just spending a
lot of time with whatever the group is
that you want to be that Core
Group grappling with all of the biggest
challenges and that requires a fair
amount of openness and you know so I
mean a lot of how I I run the company is
you know it's like every Monday morning
we get our it's about the top 30 people
together and we and this is a group that
just worked together for a long period
of time and I mean people people rotate
in I mean new people join people leave
the company people go to other roles in
the company so it's it's not the the
same group over time but and we spend
you know a lot of times a couple of
hours a lot of the time it's you know it
can be somewhat unstructured we like
I'll come with maybe a few topics that I
that are top of mind for me but I'll
I'll ask other people to bring things
and people you know raise questions
whether it's okay there's an issue
happening in some country um with with
some policy issue there's like a new
technology that's developing here we're
having an issue with this partner um you
know there's a design trade-off and
WhatsApp between two things that that
end up um being values that we care
about deeply and we need to kind of
decide where we want to be on that I
just think over time when um you know by
working through a lot of issues with
people and and doing it openly people
develop an intuition for each other and
a bond in
camaraderie um and to me developing that
is is like a lot of the fun part of
running a company or doing anything
right I think it's like having having
people who are kind of along on the
journey that you're that you feel like
you're doing it with nothing is ever
just one person doing it are there
people that disagree often within that
group it's a fairly combative group okay
so combat is part of it so this is
making decisions on design
engineering uh policy everything
everything everything yeah I have to ask
just back to jiujitsu for a little bit
what's your favorite submission now that
you've been doing it what's uh H how do
you like to submit your opponent Mark
Zuckerberg I
mean well first of all um do you prefer
noi or G Jiu-Jitsu so G is this outfit
you wear that uh is maybe mimics
clothing so you can choke look like a
kimono it's like the traditional martial
arts or come on pajamas um
pajamas that you could choke people with
yes well it's got the lapels yes yeah um
so I I like jiujitsu I also really like
MMA and so I think nogei more closely
approximates MMA and I think my style is
um is maybe a little closer to an MMA
style so like a lot of Jiu-Jitsu players
are fine being on their back right and
obviously having a good guard is is is a
critical part of of of Jiu-Jitsu but but
in MMA you don't want to be on your back
right because even if you have control
you're just taking punches while you're
on your back so um so that's no good so
you like being on top my my style is I'm
I'm probably more pressure and um and
yeah and and i' I'd probably rather be
the top player but um but I'm also
smaller right I'm not I'm not like a a
heavyweight guy right so from that
perspective I think like you know it's
especially because you know if I'm doing
a competition I'll compete with people
who are my size but a lot of my friends
are bigger than me so um so back takes
probably pretty important right because
that's where you have the most leverage
Advantage right where where um you know
people you know their arms your arms are
very weak behind you right so um so
being able to get to the back and and
and take that pretty important but I
don't know I feel like the right
strategy is to not be too committed to
any single submission that said I don't
like hurting people so um so I always
think that chokes are are a somewhat
more humane way to go than than joint
locks yeah and it's more about control
it's less Dynamic so you're basically
like a khabib norov type of fighter so
so let's go yeah back take to a rear
naked choke I think is like the clean
the clean way to go straightforward
answer right there what advice would you
give to um to people looking to start
learning jiu-jitsu given how busy you
are given where you are in life that
you're able to do this you're able to
train you're able to compete and get uh
uh to learn something from this
interesting art I just think you have to
be willing to
um to just get beaten up a lot yeah I
mean it's but but I mean over time I
think that there's there's a flow to all
these things and there's um you know one
of
the one of I don't know my my
experiences that I think kind of
transcends you know running a company
and the different different activities
that I like doing are I I really believe
that like if you're going to accomplish
whatever anything a lot of it is just
being willing to push through right and
having the grit and determination to to
to push through difficult situations um
and I think for a lot of people that um
that ends up being sort of a differen
maker between the people you know who
who who kind of get the most done and
and not I mean there's all these
questions about like um you know how how
many days people want to work and things
like that I think almost all the people
who like start successful companies or
things like that are just are working
extremely hard but I think one of the
things that you learn both by know doing
this over time or you know very acutely
with things like Jiu-Jitsu or or surfing
is um you can't push through
everything
and I that
that's you you learn this stuff very
acutely run doing Sports compared to
running a company because running a
company the cycle times are so long
right it's like you start a project and
then you know it's like months later or
you know if you're You're Building
Hardware it could be years later before
you're actually getting feedback and
able to you know make the next set of
decisions for the next version of the
thing that you're doing whereas you one
of the things that I just think is
mentally so nice about these very high
turnaround conditioning Sports things
like that is you get feedback very
quickly right it's like okay like I I
don't counter something correctly you
get punched in the face right so not in
Jiu-Jitsu you don't you don't get
punched in Jiu-Jitsu but in MMA um there
are all these analogies between all
these things that I think actually hold
that are that are
like important life lessons right it's
like okay you're surfing a wave it's
like you know sometimes you're like you
can't go in the other direction on it
right it's like there are limits to kind
of what you know it's like foil you can
you can pump the foil and and push
pretty hard in a bunch of directions but
like yeah you you know at some level
like the momentum against you is is
strong enough you're that's not going to
work and and I do think that um that's
sort of a a humbling but also an
important lesson for I think people who
are running things or building things
it's like yeah you you um you know a lot
of the game is just being able to kind
of push and and and and work through
complicated things but you also need to
kind of have enough of an understanding
of like which things you you just can't
push through and where where um um the
Finesse is more important yeah what are
your Jiu-Jitsu life
lessons well I think you did
it you made it sound so simple and we so
eloquent that it's easy to miss but
basically being okay and accepting the
wisdom and the joy in the uh getting
your ass kicked in the full range of
what that means I think that's a big
gift of the being humbled somehow being
humbled especially physically opens your
mind to the the full process of learning
what it means to learn which is being
willing to suck at something I think jiu
just very repetitively efficiently
humbles you over and over and over and
over to where you can carry that lessons
to places where you you don't get
humbled as much whether it's research or
running a company or building stuff the
the cycle is longer and just so you can
just get humbled in as period of an hour
over and over and over and over
especially when you're a beginner you
have a little person just you know
somebody much smaller than you just kick
your ass uh
repeatedly uh definitively where there's
no argument oh yeah and then you you
literally tap because if you don't tap
you're going to die so this is an
agreement you could have killed me just
now but we're friends so we're going to
agree that you're not going to to and
that kind of humbling process it just
does something to your psyche to Your
Ego that puts it in its proper context
to realize that you know everything in
this life is like a journey from sucking
through a hard process of improving o
rigorously day after day after day after
day like any kind of success requires
hard work um yeah g just more than a lot
of sports I would say cuz I've done a
lot of them really teaches you that and
you made it sound so simple like I'm I'm
you know it's it's okay it's part of the
process you just get humble get your
just I've just failed and been
embarrassed so many times in my life
that like you know I'm I'm it's a core
competence at this point it's a core
competence well yes and there's a deep
truth to that being able to and you said
it in the very beginning which is that's
the thing that stops US especially as
you get older especially to develop
expertise in certain areas the not being
willing to be a beginner in a new area
yeah uh that because that's where the
growth happens is being willing to be a
beginner being willing to be embarrassed
saying something stupid doing something
stupid um a lot of us that get good at
one thing you want to show that off and
it
sucks uh being a beginner but it's it's
where growth happens yeah well speaking
of which let me ask you about AI it
seems like this year for the entirety of
the human civilization is an inter
interesting year for the development of
artificial intelligence a lot of
interesting stuff is happening So Meta
is a big part of that uh meta has
developed llama which is a 65 billion
parameter
model uh there's a lot of interesting
questions they can ask here one of which
has to do with open source but first can
you tell the story of developing of this
model and uh making the complicated
decision of how to release it
yeah sure I think you're right first of
all that in the last year there have
been a bunch of advances on scaling up
these large Transformer models so
there's the language equivalent of it
with large language models um there sort
of the image generation equivalent with
these large diffusion models um there's
a lot of fundamental research that's
gone into this and meta has taken the
approach of being quite open
an academic in in in our development um
of of AI part of this is we want to have
the best people in the world researching
this and um and a lot of the best people
want to know that they're going to be
able to share their work so that's part
of the deal that we that we have is that
you know we can get you know if if
you're one of the top AI researchers in
the world you can come here you can get
access to kind of industry scale um
infrastructure and and and part of our
ethos is that we we want to share what's
what's invented um broadly we do that
with a lot of the the different AI tools
that we create and llama is the language
model that that our research team made
and you know we we did a limited um a
limited open source release for it right
where which was intended for researchers
to be able to use it um but you know the
responsibility and and getting safety
right on these is um is very important
so we didn't think that for the first
one there there were a bunch of
questions around whether we should be
releasing this commercially so we kind
of punted on that for for V1 of of llama
and and just released it from research
now obviously by releasing it for
research um you know it's out there but
but companies know that that they're
that they're not supposed to kind of put
it into commercial releases and um you
know we're we're working on the
follow-up models for this and and
thinking through how how um what what
the the how exactly this should work for
for follow on now that we've had time to
to work on a lot more of the the safety
and um and the pieces around that but
but overall I mean this
is I I just kind of think
that that it would be good if there were
a lot of different folks who had the
ability to build state-of-the-art
technology here you know it's and not
just a small number of of big companies
but to train one of these AI models the
state-of-the-art models is um just takes
you know hundreds of millions of dollars
of infrastructure right so there are not
that many organizations in the world um
that can do that at the biggest scale
today and now it gets it gets more
efficient every day so um so I I I do
think that that will be available to
more folks over time but but I just
think like there's there's all this
Innovation out there that people can
create and um and and I I just think
that will also learn a lot by by seeing
what the whole community of students and
um and hackers and startups and and
different folks um build with this and
that's kind of that's kind of been how
we've approached this and it's also
we've done a lot of our infrastructure
and we took our whole data center design
and our server design and we we built
this open compute project where we just
made that public and um part of the
theory was like all right if we make it
so that more people can use the server
design then um then that'll enable more
Innovation it'll also make the server
design more efficient and that'll
that'll make our business more efficient
too so that's worked and we've we've
just done this with a lot of our our
infrastructure so for people who don't
know you did the limited release I think
in February of of this year of llama and
it got quote unquote
leaked meaning like it uh
escaped the uh the the limited release
aspect but it was you know that
something you probably anticipated given
that it's just released to research we
shared it with researchers right so it's
just trying to make sure that there's
like a slow release yeah uh but from
there I just would love to get your
comment on what happened next which is
like this is a very vibrant open source
community that just build stuff on top
of it there's uh llama CPP basically
stuff that makes it more efficient to
run on smaller computers yep um there's
combining with uh uh reinforcement
learning with human feedback so some of
the different interesting fine tuning
mechanisms there's then also like
fine-tuning and a gpt3 Generations
there's a lot of uh GPT for all alpaka
uh colossal AI all these kinds of models
you just kind of spring up like run on
top of like what do you think about that
no I think it's been really neat to see
I mean there's been folks who are
getting it to run on local devices right
so if you're an individual who just you
know wants to experiment you know with
this at home you probably don't have a
large budget to get access to like a L
amount of cloud computes so getting it
to run on your local laptop um you know
is is uh is pretty good right and pretty
relevant um and then there are things
like yeah llama
CPP um reimplemented it more efficiently
so you know now even when we run our own
versions of it um we can do it on way
less compute and it just way more
efficient save a lot of money um for
everyone who who uses this so that that
is is is good um I do think it's worth
calling out that
because this was a relatively early
release um llama isn't quite as on the
frontier as for example the biggest open
AI models or the biggest um Google
models right I mean you mentioned that
the largest llama model that we released
had 65 billion parameters and no one
knows you know I guess outside of open
AI um exactly what the specs are for um
for for gp4 but but I think the you know
my understanding is it's like 10 times
bigger um and I think Google's Palm
model is is also I think has about 10
times as many parameters now the Llama
models are very efficient so they they
perform well for for something that's
around 65 billion parameters so for me
that was also part of this because
there's this whole debate around you
know is it good for everyone in the
world to have access to um to the most
Frontier AI models and I I I think as
the IM models start approaching
something that's like a super human
intelligence I that's a bigger question
that we'll have to Grapple with but
right now I mean these are still you
know very basic tools they're um you
know they're they're powerful in the
sense that you know a lot of Open Source
software like databases or web servers
can enable a lot of pretty important
things um but I don't think anyone looks
at the the you know the current
generation of llama and thinks it's um
you know anywhere near a super
intelligence so I I think that a bunch
of those questions around like is it is
it good to to kind of get out there I I
think at this stage surely you you want
more researchers working on it for all
the reasons that um that open source
software has a lot of advantages and we
talked about efficiency before but
another one is just open source software
tends to be more secure because you have
more people looking at it openly and
scrutinizing it um and finding holes in
it um and that makes it more safe so I
think at this point it's more
I think it's generally agreed upon that
open source software is generally more
secure and safer um than things that are
kind of developed in a silo where people
try to get through security through
obscurity so I think that for the scale
of of of what we're seeing now with AI I
think we're more likely to get to you
know good alignment and good um
understanding of of of kind of what
needs to do to make this work well by
having it be open source and and that's
something that I think is is quite good
to have out there and and and happening
publicly at this point meta released a
lot of models as open source so uh the
mass multi lingual speech model theage
model that's I mean I'll ask you
questions about those but the point
is uh you've open sourced quite a lot
you've been spearheading the open source
movement where's uh that's really
positive inspiring to see from one angle
from the research angle of course
there's folks who are really terrified
about the existential threat of
artificial intelligence and those folks
will say that you you know um you have
to be careful about the open sourcing uh
step but what where do you see the
future of Open Source here uh as part of
meta the tension here is do you want to
release the magic sauce that's one
tension and the other one is uh do you
want to put a powerful tool in the hands
of uh Bad actors even though it probably
has a huge amount of positive impact
also
yeah I mean again I think for the stage
that we're at in the development of AI I
don't think anyone looks at the current
state of things and thinks that this is
super intelligence um and you know the
models that we're talking
about the Llama models here are you know
generally an order of magnitude smaller
than what open AI or Google are doing so
I I think that at least for the stage
that we're at now the equities Balan
strongly in my view towards doing this
more openly um I I think if you got
something that was closer to Super
intelligence then I think you'd have to
discuss that more and and think through
that um a lot more and we haven't made a
decision yet as to what we would do if
we were in that position but I don't
think I I think there's a good chance
that we're pretty far off from that
position so um so I I'm I'm
not I'm certainly not saying that the
position that we're taking on this
now applies to every single thing that
we would ever do and you know certainly
inside the company and we probably do
more open source work than you know most
of the other big tech companies but we
also don't open source everything right
a lot of our the core kind of app code
for WhatsApp or Instagram or something I
me we're we're not open sourcing that
it's not like a a general enough piece
of software that would be useful for a
lot of people to do different things um
you know whereas the software that we do
whether it's like a an open source
server design or um or basically you
know things like mcash right like a a
good you know it was was probably our
earliest project um that that I worked
on it was probably one of the last
things that I that I coded and and led
directly for the company um but but
basically this like caching tool um for
for quick dat data retrieval um these
are things that are just broadly useful
across like anything that you want to
build and and I think that some of the
language models now have that feel as
well as some of the other things that
we're building like the translation tool
that that you just referenced so text to
speech and speech to text you've
expanded it from around 100 languages to
more than 1,00 languages and you can
identify more than the model can
identify more than 4,000 spoken
languages which is 40 times more than
any known previous technology to me
that's really really really exciting in
terms of connecting the world breaking
down barriers that language creates yeah
I think being able to translate between
all of these different pieces in real
time this has been
a kind of common sci-fi idea that we'd
all have you know whether it's I know an
earbud or glasses or something that can
help translate in real time um between
all these different languages and that's
one that I think technology is basically
delivering now so I think yeah I think
that's pretty pretty exciting uh you
mentioned the next version of llama what
can you say about the next version of
llama
what what can you say about like what uh
what were you working on in terms of
release in terms of the vision for that
well a lot of what we're doing is taking
the first version which was primarily
you know this research version and
trying to now build a version that
has all of the latest state-of-the-art
safety precautions built in um and and
we're um we're using some more data to
train it um from across our services
but but a lot of the the work that we're
doing internally is really just focused
on making sure that this is um you know
as aligned and responsible as as
possible and you know we're building a
lot of our own you know we're talking
about kind of the open source
infrastructure but you know the the main
thing that we focus on building here you
know a lot of product experiences to
help people connect and express
themselves so you know we're going to
I've I've talked about a bunch of this
stuff but um then you'll have you know
an assistant that you can talk to in
WhatsApp um you know I think I I I think
in the future every Creator will will
have kind of an AI agent that can kind
of act on their behalf that their fans
can talk to I I I want to get to the
point where every small business
basically has an AI agent that people
can talk to for you know to do Commerce
and customer support and things like
that so they're going to be all these
different things
and llama or the language model
underlying this is is basically going to
be the engine that powers that the
reason to open source it is that um as
as we did with um with the the first
version is that it uh you know basically
it unlocks a lot of innovation in the
ecosystem we will make our products
better as well um and also gives us a
lot of valuable feedback on security and
safety which is important for making
this good but yeah I mean the the the
work that we're doing to advance the
infrastructure it's um it's basically at
this point taking it Beyond a research
project into something which is ready to
be kind of core infrastructure not only
for our own products but um you know
hopefully for for a lot of other things
out there too do you think the Llama Or
the language model underlying that
version too will be open
sourced you're do you have internal
debate around that the pros and cons and
so on this is I mean we were talking
about the debates that we have
internally and I think um I think the
question is how to do it right I mean
it's I think we you know we did the
research license for V1 and and I think
the the big thing that we're that we're
thinking about is is basically like
what's the what's the right the right
way so there was a leak that happened I
don't know if you can comment on it for
V1 you know we released it as a research
project um for researchers to be able to
use but in doing so we put it out there
so um you know we were very clear that
anyone who uses the the code and the
weights doesn't have a commercial
license to put into products and we've
we've generally seen people respect that
right it's like you don't have you any
reputable companies that are basically
trying to put this into into um their
commercial products but but yeah but by
sharing it with you know so many
researchers it's it's you know it did
leave the building but uh what have you
learned from that process that you might
be able to apply to V2 about how to
release it safely
effectively uh if if you release it yeah
well I mean I think a lot of the
feedback like I said is just around you
know different things around you know
how do you fine-tune models to make them
more aligned and safer and you see all
the different data recipes that um you
you mentioned a lot of different
projects that are based on this I me
there's one at Berkeley there's you know
there just like all over and um
and people have tried a lot of different
things and we've tried a bunch of stuff
internally so kind of we're we're we're
making progress here but also were able
to learn from some of the best ideas in
the community and you I think it you
know we want to just continue continue
pushing that forward but I don't have
any news to announce on on this if
that's if that's what you're you're
asking I mean this is a a thing that
we're uh we're still we're still kind of
you know actively working through the
the the right way to move forward here
the details of the secret sauce are
still being developed I see uh you
comment on what do you think of uh the
thing that worked for GPT which is the
reinforcement learning with human
feedback so doing this alignment process
do you find it interesting and as part
of that let me ask because I talked to
Yan laon before talking to you today he
asked me to ask or suggested that I ask
do you think llm fine-tuning will need
to be crowdsourced Wikipedia style so
crowd sourcing so this kind of idea of
how to inte the human in the fine-tuning
of these Foundation models yeah I think
that's a really interesting idea that
I've talked to Yan about a bunch
um and you we were talking about how do
you basically train these models to be
as as safe and and aligned and
responsible as possible and you know
different groups out there who doing
development test different data recipes
and fine-tuning but th this idea that
you you just mentioned
is that at the end of the day instead of
having kind of one group fine tune some
stuff and then another group you know
produce a different fine tuning recipe
and then us trying to figure out which
one we think works best to produce the
most aligned model
um I I do think that it would be nice if
you could get to a point where you had a
Wikipedia style collaborative
way for a a kind of a broader Community
to um to to find tune it as well now
there's a lot of challenges in that both
from an
infrastructure and like a community
management and product perspective about
how you do that so I I haven't worked
that out yet um but but as an idea I
think it's it's quite compelling and I
think it it goes well with the ethos of
open sourcing the technology is also
finding a way to have a a kind of
community-driven um
a community-driven training of it um but
I think that there are a lot of
questions on this in general these this
these questions around what's the the
best way to produce aligned AI models
it's very much a research area and it's
one that I think we will need to make as
much progress on as the kind of core
intelligence capability of the of the um
the models themselves well I just did a
conversation with Jimmy Wales the
founder of Wikipedia and to me
Wikipedia is one of the greatest
websites ever created and is a kind of a
miracle that it works and I think it has
to do with something that you mentioned
which is community you have a small
community of editors that somehow work
together well and they uh they handle
very
controversial topics and they handle it
with balance and with Grace despite sort
of the attacks that will often happen a
lot of the time I mean it's not it's it
has issues just like any other human
system but yes I mean the balance is I
mean it's a it's amazing what they've
been able to achieve but it's it's also
not perfect and I think that that's um
there's still a lot of
challenges right it's uh the more
controversial the topic the more the
more difficult uh the um the journey
towards quote unquote truth or knowledge
or wisdom that wikip beia address to
capture in the same way AI models will
need to be able to generate those same
things truth knowledge and wisdom and
how do you align those models that
they
generate um something that uh is closest
to truth there's these concerns about
misinformation all this kind of stuff
that nobody can
Define and that's a it's something that
we together as a human species have to
Define like what is truth and how to
help AI systems generate that is one of
the things language models do really
well is generate convincing sounding
things that can be completely wrong
and so how do you align
it uh to be less
wrong and part of that is the training
and part of that is the alignment and
however you do the alignment stage and
just like you said it's a very new and a
very open research problem yeah and I
think that there's also a lot of
questions about whether the current
architecture for
llms as you continue scaling it what
happens um I mean a lot of the a lot of
what's been exciting in the last year is
that there was there's clearly a
qualitative breakthrough where you know
with with some of the GPT models um that
open I put out and and that others have
been able to do as well I think it
reached a kind of level of quality where
people like wow this is this feels
different and um and like it's going to
be able to be the foundation for
building a lot of awesome products and
experiences and value but I think the
other realization that people have is
wow we just made a breakthrough
um if there are other breakthroughs
quickly then I think that there's the
sense that maybe we're we're closer to
general intelligence but I think that
that idea is predicated on the idea that
I think people believe that there's
still generally a bunch of additional
breakthroughs to make and that it's um
we just don't know how long it's going
to take to get there and you know one
view that some people have um this
doesn't tend to be my view as much is
that simply scaling the current llms and
you know getting to higher parameter
count models by itself we we'll get to
something that is closer to um to to
general intelligence but um I don't know
I tend to think that there's probably
more more
um fundamental steps that need to be
taken along the way there but still the
leaves
taken with this extra alignment step is
quite incredible quite surprising to to
a lot of folks and on top of that when
you start to have hundreds of millions
of people potentially using a product
that integrates that you can start to
see civilization transforming effects
before you achieve super quote unquote
super intelligence it could be super
transformative without being a super
intelligence oh yeah I mean I think that
there are going to be a lot of amazing
products and value that can be created
with the current level of techn ology um
to some degree you I'm excited to work
on a lot of those products over the next
few years and I think it would just
create a tremendous amount of whiplash
if the number of breakthroughs keeps
like if if they're keep on being stacked
breakthroughs because I think to some
degree industry in the world needs some
time to kind of build these
breakthroughs into the products and
experiences that we all use so we can
actually benefit from them um but
I don't know I think that there's just a
a a like an awesome amount of stuff to
do and I think about like all of the I
don't know small businesses or
individual entrepreneurs out there who
um you know now we're going to be able
to you know get help coding the things
that they need to go build things or
designing the things that they need or
um we'll be able to you know use these
models to be able to do customer support
for the people that they're that they're
serving you over WhatsApp without having
to you know it's I I think that's that's
just going to be I just think that this
is all going to be you know super
exciting it's going to create better
better experiences for people and just
unlock a ton of innovation and value so
I don't know if you know but uh you know
what is it over three billion people use
WhatsApp Facebook and
Instagram uh so any kind of AI fueled
products that go into that like we're
talking about anything with llms will
have a tremendous amount of impact d do
you have ideas and thoughts
about possible
products that might start being
integrated into uh into these platforms
used by so many people yeah I I think
there's three main categories of things
that we're working on
um the first that that I think is
probably the most
interesting is
um you know there's this notion of like
you're going to have an assistant or or
an agent who you can talk to and I think
probably the biggest thing that's
different about my view of how this
plays out from what I see with um with
open Ai and Google and others is you
know everyone else is building like the
One Singular AI right it's like okay you
talk to chat GPT or you talk to Bard or
you talk to Bing and my view is
that that there are going to be a lot of
different AIS that people are going to
want to engage with just like you want
to use um you know a number of different
apps for different things and you have
relationships with different people in
your life who fill different emotional
roles for you um and I um so I think
that they're going to be people have a
reason that they that I think you don't
just want like a singular Ai and that
that I think is probably the biggest
distinction in in in terms of how how I
think about this and a bunch of these
things I I think you'll you'll want an
assistant um I I me I mentioned a couple
of these before I think like every
Creator who you interact with will
ultimately want some kind of AI that can
proxy them and be something that their
fans can interact with or that allows
them to interact with their fans um this
is like the common Creator prise
everyone's trying to build a community
and engage with people and they want
tools to be able to amplify themselves
more and be able to do that um but but
you only have 24 hours in a a day so um
so I think having the ability to
basically like bottle up your
personality and um or or you know like
give your fans information about when
you're performing a concert or or
something like that I mean that's that I
think is going to be something that's
super valuable but it's not just that
you know again it's not this idea that I
think people are going to want Just One
Singular AI I think you're going to you
know you're going to want to interact
with a lot of different entities and
then I think there's the business
version of this too which we've touched
on a couple of times which is um
I think every business in the world is
going to want basically an AI that um
that you know it's like you have your
page on Instagram or Facebook or
Whatsapp or whatever and you want to you
want to point people to an AI that
people can interact with but you want to
know that that AI is only going to sell
your products you don't want it you know
recommending your competitor stuff right
so so it's not like there can be like
just uh you know One Singular AI that
that can answer all the questions for a
person because you know that qu like
that AI might not actually be aligned
with you as a business to um to to
really just do the best job providing
support for for your product so I think
that there's going to be a clear need um
in the market and in people's lives for
there to be a bunch of these part of
that is figuring out the research the
technology that enables the
personalization that you're talking
about so not one centralized Godlike llm
but one just a huge diversity of them
that's fine-tuned to particular needs
particular Styles particular businesses
particular Brands all that kind of stuff
and also enabling just enabling people
to create them really easily for the you
know for to for your own business or if
you're a Creator to to be able to help
you engage with your fans and I I think
that's um so yeah I think that there
there's a clear kind of interesting
product Direction here that I think is
fairly unique from from what you I any
of the other big companies are are
taking um it also aligns well with this
sort of Open Source approach because
again we we sort of believe in this more
Community oriented uh more democratic
approach to building out the products
and Technology around this we don't
think that there's going to be the one
true thing we think that there there
should be kind of a lot of development
so that part of things I think is going
to be really interesting and we could we
could go price spent a lot of time
talking about that and the the kind of
implications of um of that approach
being different from what others are
taking um but then there's a bunch of
other simpler things that I think we're
also going to do just going back to your
your question around how this finds its
way into like what what do we build um
there going to be a lot of simpler
things around
um okay you you post photos on Instagram
and Facebook and you know in WhatsApp
and messenger and like you want the
photos to look as good as possible so
like having an AI that you can just like
take a photo and then just tell it like
okay I want to edit this thing or
describe this it's like I think we're
we're going to have tools that are just
way better than than what we've
historically had on this um and that's
more in the image and media generation
side than the large language model side
but but it's it all kind of you know
plays off of advances in the same space
um so there are a lot of tools that I
think are just going to get built into
every one of our products I think every
single thing that we do is going to
basically get evolved in in this
direction right it's like in the future
if you're advertising on our services
like do you need to make your own kind
of AD creative it's no you'll just you
know you just tell us okay I'm I'm a dog
walker and I I'm willing to walk
people's dogs and help me find the right
people and like create the ad unit that
will perform the best and like give an
objective to to the system and it just
kind of like connects you with the right
people well that's a super powerful idea
of generating the language almost like
uh rigorous AB testing for you that
works to find the the best customer for
your thing I mean to me advertisement
when done well just finds a good match
between a human being and a thing that
will make that human being
happy yeah totally and do that as
efficiently as possible when it's done
well people actually like it you know
it's um I think that there's a lot of
examples where it's not done well it's
annoying and I think that that's what
kind of gives it a bad rap but um but
yeah a lot of the stuff is possible
today I mean obviously AB testing stuff
is built into a lot of these Frameworks
the thing that's new is having
technology that can generate the ideas
for you about what to AB test something
that that's exciting so this will just
be across like everything that we're
doing right all the metaverse stuff that
we're doing right it's like you want to
create worlds in the future you'll just
describe them and then it'll create the
code for you so so natural language
becomes the the inter face we use for
all the ways we interact with the
computer with with the digital more of
them yeah yeah totally yeah which is
what everyone can do using natural
language and with translation you can do
it in any kind of
language um I I mean for the
personalization is really really really
interesting yeah it unlocks so many
possible things I mean I for one look
forward to creating a copy of myself I
know we talked about this last time but
this has since last time this becomes
how we're
closer much closer like I could
literally just having interact with some
of these language models I can see the
Absurd situation where I'll have a uh
large uh or a Lex language model and
I'll have to have a conversation with
him about like Hey listen like you're
just getting out of line and having a
conversation where you fine-tune that
thing to be a little bit more respectful
or something like this I mean that's
that's going to be the that seems like
an amazing
product for businesses for humans just
not not just the assistant that's facing
the individual but the assistant that
represents the individual to the public
both of both
directions there's basically a a layer
that is the AI system through which you
interact with the outside world with the
outside world that has humans in it
that's really interesting and you that
have social networks that connect
billions of people it seems like a heck
of a large scale place to test some of
this stuff out yeah I mean I think part
of the reason why creators will want to
do this is because they already have the
communities on our
services yeah and and and a lot of the
interface for this stuff today are chat
type interfaces and and between WhatsApp
and and messenger I think that those are
you know just great great ways to to
interact with people so some of this is
philosophy but do you see do you see a
near-term future where you have some of
the people you're friends with are AI
systems on these social networks on
Facebook on Instagram even even on
WhatsApp having having conversations
where some heterogeneous some is human
some is AI I think we'll get to that
um you know and you know if only just
empirically looking
at Microsoft released this thing called
Chia I several years ago I in in China
it was a pre-m chatbot technology that
so was a lot simpler um than what's
possible today and and I think it was
like tens of millions of people were
using this and and just you know really
you know became quite attached and and
you know built relationships with it and
I think that there's um you know there
services today like replica where you
know people are doing things like that
and um so I I think that there's there's
certainly you know needs for
companionship that people have you know
older people um uh and it's I I think
most people probably don't have as many
friends as they would like to have right
if you look at um there's some
interesting demographic studies
around that like the average person has
the number of close friends that they
have is um fewer today than it was 15
years ago and I mean that gets to like
this is like the core thing that that I
think about in terms of you know
Building Services that help connect
people so I think you'll get tools that
help people connect with each other are
going to be you the primary thing that
we want to do um so you can imagine you
know AI assistants that you know just do
a better job of reminding you when it's
your friend's birthday and how you could
celebrate them right it's like right now
we have like the little box in the
corner of the website that tells you
whose birthday it is and stuff like that
but it's um but you know at some level
you don't want just want to like send
everyone a note that's the same note
saying happy birthday with with an emoji
right so having something that's more of
an you know a a social assistant in that
sense and like that can you know update
you on what's going on in their life and
like how how you can reach out to them
effectively um help you be a better
friend I think that that's something
that's super powerful too um but yeah
beyond that um and there are all these
different
flavors of kind of personal AIS that I
think could exist so I think an
assistant is sort of the the kind of
simplest one to wrap your head around
but um like a mentor or a life coach um
you know someone who can give you advice
um who's maybe like a bit of a
cheerleader who can help pick you up
through all the challenges that that um
you know inevitably you know we all go
through on a daily basis and that
there's probably you know some some role
for something like that and then you
know all the way you can you probably
just go through a lot of the the
different type of kind of functional
relationships that people have in in
their life and you know I would I would
bet that there will be companies out
there that take a crack at at um at a
lot of these things so um I don't know I
think it's part of the interesting
Innovation that's going to exist is is
that there there's certainly a lot um
like education tutors right it's like I
me I just look at you know my kids
learning to code and you know they love
it and but you know it's like they they
get stuck on a question and they have to
wait till like I can help answer it
right or someone else who who they know
can help answer the question in the
future they'll just there will be like a
coding assistant that they have that is
like designed to you know be perfect for
teaching a five and a seven-year-old had
a code and and they'll just be able to
ask questions all the time and you know
it'll be extremely patient it's never
going to get annoyed at them right um I
I think that like there are all these
different kind of relationships or
functional relationships that we have in
our lives that um that are really
interesting and I think one of the big
questions is like okay is this all going
to just get bucketed
into you know One Singular AI I just I
just don't I don't think so do you think
about this actually a question from
Reddit uh what the long-term effects of
human communication when people can talk
with in quotes talk with others through
a chat bot that augments their language
automatically rather than developing
social skills by making mistakes and
learning uh will people just communicate
by grunts in a generation I do you think
about long-term effects at scale the
integration of AI in our social
interaction yeah I mean I think it's
mostly good I I mean that that was that
question was sort of framed in a
negative way but I mean we were talking
before about language models helping you
communicate with was like language
translation help you communicate with
people who don't speak your language I
me to at some level what all this social
technology is doing is helping people
um Express themselves better to people
in in in situations where they would
otherwise have a hard time doing that so
part of it might be okay because you
speak a language I don't know that's a
pretty basic one that you know I don't
think people are going to look at that
and say it's sad that that we have the
capacity to do that because I should
have just learned your language right
that's that's a pretty high bar but um
but overall I'd say
um there are all these
impediments and language is an imperfect
way for people to express thoughts and
ideas it's you know one of the best that
we have we have that we have art we have
code but language is also a mapping of
the way you think the way you see the
world the way who you are and one of the
applications I've recently talked to a
person who who's uh in actually a ji-
jitu instructor um he said that when he
uh emails parents about their son and
daughter um that they can improve their
discipline in class and so on he often
finds that he's comes off a bit of more
of an asshole than he would like so he
uses GPT to translate his original email
into a nicer
email we we hear this all the time a lot
of creators on our services tell us that
one of the most stressful things um is
basically negotiating deals with Brands
and stuff like the business side of it
because they're like I mean they do
their thing right and and you know the
creators they're they're excellent at
what they do and they just want to
connect with their Community but then
they get really stressed you know they
go into their their DMS and you they see
some brand wants to do something with
them and they don't quite know how to
negotiate or how to push back
respectfully and um so I think building
a tool that can actually allow them to
do that well
the one simple thing that that I think
is just like an interesting thing that
that we've heard from a bunch of people
that that they'd be interested in but
and going back to the broader idea
um I I don't know I mean you I just
Priscilla and I just had our our third
daughter um a
cou than it's and and you know it's like
one of the saddest things in the world
is like sing your baby cry right but
like it's like what why is that right
it's like well because babies don't
generally have much capacity to tell you
what they care about otherwise right
it's not actually just babies right it's
um you know my 5-year-old daughter cries
too because she sometimes has a hard
time expressing you know what what um
matters to to her and and I was thinking
about that and I was like well you know
actually a lot of adults get very
frustrated too because they can't they
have a hard time expressing things in a
way that going back to some of the early
themes that maybe
is something that you know was a mistake
or maybe they have pride or something
like all these things get in the way so
I don't know I think that all these
different technologies that can help us
navigate the social complexity and
actually be able to better express our
what we're feeling and thinking I think
that's generally all good and um there
are always these concerns like okay are
people going to have worse memories
because you have Google to look things
up and and I think in general a
generation later you don't look back and
Lament that I think it's you just like
wow we have so much more capacity to to
do so much more now and I I think that
that'll be the case here too you can
allocate those cognitive capabilities to
like deeper more Nuance thought
yeah uh but it's changed so with with uh
just like with Google
search the the additional language
models large language models you
basically don't have to remember nearly
as
much just like with stack Overflow for
programming now that these language
models can generate code right there I
mean I find that I write like maybe 80%
90% of the code I write is is uh now
generated first and then edited I mean
so you don't have to remember how to
write specifics of different functions
oh but that's great and it's also it's
not just the the
specific coding I mean in the in the
context of a of a large company like
this I think before an engineer can sit
down to code they first need to figure
out all of the libraries and
dependencies that you know tens of
thousands of people have written before
them and um you know one of the things
that I'm excited about that we're
working on is it's not just um you know
tools that help Engineers code it's
tools that can help summarize the whole
knowledge base and and and help people
be able to navigate all the internal
information I I think that that's um in
the experiments that I've done with this
stuff I mean that's on the public stuff
you you just you know ask ask um one of
these models to know build you a script
that does anything and it basically
already understands what the best
libraries are to do that thing and pulls
them in automatically it's I I think
that's super powerful that was always I
the most annoying part of coding was
that you had to spend all this time
actually figuring out what the resources
were that you were supposed to import
before you could actually start building
the thing yeah I mean there's of course
the flip side of that I think for the
most part is positive but the flip side
is
if you Outsource that thinking to an AI
model you might miss nuanced mistakes
and bugs they're you you lose the skill
to find those bugs and those bugs might
be uh the code looks very convincingly
right but it's actually wrong in a very
subtle way
but that's that's the tradeoff that we
uh that we face as human civilization
when we bu build more and more powerful
tools when we stand on the shoulders of
taller and taller Giants we could do
more but then we forget how to do all
the stuff that they
did it's a it's a weird tradeoff yeah I
agree I mean I think it's I think it is
very valuable in your life to be able to
do basic things too do you worry about
some of the
um concerns of bots being present on
social networks more and more humanlike
Bots that are
not necessarily trying to do a good
thing or they might be explicitly trying
to do a bad thing like fishing scams
yeah like social engineering all that
kind of stuff which has always been a
very difficult problem for social
networks but now it's becoming almost a
more and more difficult problem well I
think there's a few different parts of
of this so one
is there are all these harms that we
need to basically fight against and
prevent and and that's been you know a
lot of our Focus over the last you know
five or seven years is basically ramping
up very sophisticated AI systems not
generative AI systems more kind of
classical AI systems to be able to um
you know categorize and um classify and
identify okay this this post looks like
it's um promoting terrorism this one is
you know like exploiting children this
one is um looks like it might be trying
to inside violence this one's
intellectual property violation so
there's there's like that's like 18
different categories of of violating
kind of harmful content that we've had
to build specific systems to be able to
track and um I think it's certainly the
case that advances and generative AI
will test those
um but at least so far it's been the
case and and I'm optimistic that it will
continue to be the case that we will be
able to bring more computing power to
Bear to have even stronger AIS that can
help defend against those things so um
we've we've had to deal with some
adversarial issues before right it's I
mean for for some things like hate
speech it's like people aren't generally
getting a lot more sophisticated like
the average person who let's say you
know someone's saying some kind of
racist thing right it's like they're not
necessarily getting more sophisticated
at being racist right it just it's okay
so that the system can just find but
then there's other adversaries who
actually are very sophisticated like
nation states doing things and you know
we find you whether it's Russia or you
know just different countries that are
basically standing up these networks of
um of bots or or um inauthentic accounts
is what is what we call them because
they're not necessarily Bots that some
of them could actually be real people
who are kind of masquerading as other as
other people um but they're acting in a
in a coordinated way and some of that
behavior has gotten very sophisticated
and it's very adversarial so they you
know each iteration every time we find
something and stop them um they kind of
evolve their behavior they don't just
pack up their bags and go home and say
okay we're not going to try you know at
some point they might decide doing it on
meta Services is not worth it they'll go
do it on someone else if it's easier to
do it in another place but um but we
have a fair amount of experience dealing
with even those kind of adversarial
attacks where they just keep on getting
better and better and I I do think that
as as long as we can keep on putting
more compute power against it and and
and if we're kind of one of the leaders
in developing some of these AI models
I'm I'm quite optimistic that we're
going to be able to keep on um pushing
against the kind of normal categories of
harm that you talk about fraud scams
spam um IP violations things like that
what about like creating narratives and
controversy to me it's kind of amazing
how a small collection of yeah uh what
did you say inauthentic accounts so it
could be Bots but it yeah I me we have
sort of this funny name for it but we
call it coordinated inauthentic Behavior
yeah it's it's kind of incredible how a
small collection of folks can create
narratives create
stories especially if they're viral so
if especially if they have a element
that can uh catalyze the virality of the
narrative yeah I think there the
question is you have to be I'm very
specific about what is bad about it
right because I think a set of people
coming together or organically bouncing
ideas off each other and a narrative
comes out of
that is not necessarily A Bad Thing by
itself if it's if it's kind of authentic
and organic that's like a lot of what
happens and how culture gets created and
how art gets created and a lot of good
stuff so that's why we've kind of
focused on this sense of coordinated and
authentic Behavior so it's like if you
have a network of you whether it's Bots
some some people masquerading as
different accounts um but you have kind
of someone pulling the strings behind it
um and trying to kind of act as if this
is a more organic set of behavior but
really it's not it's just like one
coordinated thing that seems problematic
to me right I mean I I don't think
people should be able to have
coordinated networks and not disclose it
as such um but that again you know we've
been able to deploy pretty sophisticated
Ai and you know counter
terrorism groups and things like that to
be able to identify a fair number of
these um coordinated and authentic
networks of of accounts and and take
them down um we continue to do that and
I think we're we're we've you know it's
it's one thing that if you told me 20
years ago it's like all right you're
starting this website to help people
connect at a college and you know in the
future you're going to be you know part
of your organization it's going to be a
counterterrorism organization with AI to
to find coordinated and authentic I
would have thought that was pretty wild
but um but but it's um but no I think
that that's that's part of where we are
but but look I I think that these
questions that you're pushing on now
um this is actually where I'd guess most
of the challenge around AI will be for
the foreseeable future I think that
there's a lot of debate around things
like is this going to create existential
risk to humanity and I that those are
very hard things to disprove one way or
another my my own intuition is that the
point it we become close to super
intelligent is super intelligence is um
I I it's it's just really unclear to me
that the current technology is going to
going to get there without another set
of of significant advances but that
doesn't mean that there's no danger I
think the danger is basically amplifying
the kind of known set of of harms that
people or or sets of accounts can do and
we just need to make sure that we really
focus on um on on on basically doing
that as well as possible so that's a
that's definitely a big Focus for me
well you can basically use large
language models as an assistant of how
to cause harm on social network so you
can ask it a question um you know meta
has very impressive coordinated
inauthentic
account uh fighting capabilities how do
I do the coordinated inauthentic
account uh creation where meta doesn't
detect it like literally ask that
question and ba and basically there's
this kind of um part of it I mean that's
what open AI showed that they're
concerned with those questions perhaps
you can comment on your approach to it
how to do a kind of moderation on the
output of those models that it can't be
used to help you coordinate harm in all
the full definition of what harm means
yeah and that's a lot of the fine-tuning
and the the alignment training that we
do is basically you know when we when we
ship
AI across the our products a lot of what
we're trying to make sure is that you
know you can't ask it to help you commit
a crime right it's
um
uh so I think training it to kind of
understand that and it's not that not
like any of these systems are ever going
to be 100% perfect
but you know just making it so
that this isn't a an easier way to go
about doing something bad than the next
best alternative right I mean people
still have Google right you know you
still have search engines so um the
information is is out there um
and for for these you know what we see
is like for nation states or you know
these actors that are trying to pull off
these large you know coordinated and
authentic networks to to kind of
influence different things at some point
when we just make it very difficult they
do just you know try to use other
services instead right it's it's just
like if you can make it more expensive
for um for them to do it on your service
then then kind of people go go elsewhere
and I think that that's that's the bar
right it's like it's not like okay are
you ever going to be perfect at finding
you know every adversary who tries to
attack you it's I you try to get as
close to that as possible but um but I
think really kind of economically what
you're just trying to do is make it that
it's it's just inefficient for them to
to to go after that uh but there's also
complicated questions of uh what is and
isn't harm what is and isn't
misinformation so this is one of the
things that Wikipedia has also I triy to
face I remember asking um GPT about
whether the virus leaked from a lab or
not and the answer provided was a very
nuanced one and uh a well-sited one
almost dare I say wellth thought out
one uh balanced I would hate for that
Nuance to be lost through the process of
moderation uh Wikipedia does a good job
on that particular thing too but from
pressures from governments and
institutions it's you could see some of
that nuance and depth
of uh information facts and wisdom be
lost absolutely and that's a that's a
scary thing some of the
magic some of the edges the rough edges
might be lost to the process of
moderation of AI
systems uh so how do you get that right
I I I really agree with what you're
pushing on I mean the the
core I the core shape of the problem is
that there are some harms that I think
everyone agrees are bad right
so sexual exploitation of children right
like you're not going to get many people
who who think that that type of thing
should be allowed on any service right
and that's something that we we face and
try to push off the you know as as as
much as possible to
um you know terrorism um inciting
violence right it's like we went through
a bunch of these these types of of harms
before
um but then I do think that you get to a
set of harms where there is more social
debate around it um so misinformation I
think is
um has been a really tricky one because
there are things that are kind of
obviously
false right that are maybe factual
um but may not be
harmful um since like all right are you
going to censor someone for just being
wrong it's you know if there's no kind
of harm implication of what they're
doing I think that that's there's
there's a bunch of real kind of issues
and challenges there but then I think
that there are other places where it is
um you just take some of the stuff
around Co earlier on in the pandemic
where um there were you know real Health
implications but there hadn't been time
to fully vet a bunch of the scientific
assumptions and you know unfortunately I
think a lot of the kind of establishment
on that um you know kind of waffled on a
bunch of facts and you know asked for a
bunch of things to be censored that in
retrospect ended up being you know more
debatable or or true and that stuff is
really tough right really undermines
trust in in that and
um so I I I do think that the questions
around how to manage that are are are
very nuanced the way that I try to think
about it is that um it goes I think it's
best to generally boil things down to
the harms that people agree on so when
you think about you know is is something
misinformation or not I think often the
more Salient bit is is this going to
potentially leave lead to um to physical
harm for someone um and and kind of
think about it in that sense and then
beyond that I think people just have
different preferences on how they want
things to be flagged for them I think a
bunch of people would be like prefer to
kind of have a a flag on something that
says hey a fact Checker thinks that this
might be false or um yeah I think
Twitter's Community notes implementation
is quite good on on this um but again
it's the same type of thing it's like
just kind of discretionarily adding a
flag because it makes the user
experience better but it's not it's not
you know trying to take down the
information or not I think that you want
to reserve the kind of censorship of of
content to things that are of known
categories that that that people
generally agree or bad yeah but there's
so
many things especially with the pandemic
but there's other topics where there's
just deep disagreement fueled by
politics about what is and isn't harmful
there's a even just the degree to which
the virus is harmful and the degree to
which the vaccines the respond to the
virus are harmful there's just there's a
almost like a political divide around
that and so
how do you make decisions about that
where half the country in the United
States or some large fraction of the
world has very different views from
another part of the
world is is there a way for meta St
proud of the the moderation of this I
think
we it's very difficult
to just abstain but but I think we
should be clear about which of these
things are actual safety concerns
and which ones are a matter of
preference in terms of how people want
information flagged right so we did
recently introduce something that allows
people to have factchecking not affect
the distribution of of of um of what
shows them their product so okay a bunch
of people don't trust who the fact
Checkers are all right well you can you
can turn that off if you want but if the
if the if the content you know violates
some policy like it's inciting violence
or something like that it's still not
going to be allowed so I I think that
you want to honor people's preferences
on on that as much as possible um but
look I mean this is really difficult
stuff I think the it's really hard to
know where to draw the line on what is
fact and what is opinion because the
nature of science is that nothing is
ever 100% known for certain you can
disprove certain things but you're
constantly testing new hypotheses and um
you know scrutinizing Frameworks that
have been long held and every once in a
while you you throw out something that
was working for a very long period of
time and it's very difficult but um but
I think that just because it's very hard
and just because their edge cases
doesn't mean that you you know should
not try to give people what they're
looking for as
well let me ask about something you
faced in terms of
moderation is uh pressure from different
sources pressure from governments I want
to ask question how to withstand that
pressure for a world where AI moderation
starts becoming a thing too so what's um
meta's approach to
um to resist the pressure from
governments and other interest groups in
terms of what uh to moderate and
not I don't know that there's like a
one- siiz fits-all answer to that I I
think we basically have the principles
around you know we want to
allow people to express as much as
possible
but we have developed clear categories
of things that we think are
are wrong that we don't want on our
services and we build tools to try to
moderate those so then the question is
okay what do you do when a government
says that they don't want
something on on the service and I think
we have we have a bunch of um principles
around how we deal with that because on
on the one hand if there's a you know
democratically elected government and
people around the world just have
different values in different places
then you know should we as a you know
California based
company tell them that something that
they have decided is unacceptable
actually like that we need to be able to
to to to express that I mean I think
that that's there's a certain amount of
um of huis and that um but then I think
there are other cases where you know
it's it's like a little more autocratic
and you know you have the dictator
leader who's just trying to crack down
on descent and you know the people in a
country are really um not aligned with
that um and it's not necessarily against
their culture but um but the the the
person who's who's leading it is is just
trying to push in a certain direction um
these are very complex questions uh but
I I think so it's it's difficult to have
have a one- siiz
fits-all um approach to it but in
general we're we're pretty active in in
kind of advocating and pushing back on
on um requests to take things down
um but honestly the thing that I think a
request to censor things is one thing um
and that's obviously bad but where we um
draw a much harder line is on requests
for access information right because you
know if you can if you get told that you
can't say something I mean that's bad
right I mean that that you know is is
you obviously it violates
your sense and and freedom of expression
at some level but um but a government
getting access to data in a way that
seems um like it would be unlawful in in
in our country yeah um exposes people to
real physical harm um
and that's something that in general we
take very seriously and then so there's
that flows through like all of our
policies in in a lot of ways right it's
by the time you're actually like
litigating with a government or pushing
back on them that's pretty late in the
funnel I'd say a bunch of the stuff
starts a lot higher up in the decision
of where do we put data centers and um
there are a lot of countries where you
know we may have a lot of people using
the service in a place it might be you
know good for the service in some ways
um good for those people if we could
reduce the latency by having a data
center nearby them but you know for
whatever reason we just feel like hey
this government does not have a good
track record on on
um basically not trying to get access to
people's data and at the end of the day
I mean if you put a data center in a
country and the government wants to get
access to people's data then you know
they do at the end of the they have the
option of having people show up with
guns and taking it by force so I I I
think that there's like a lot of
decisions that go into like how you
architect the systems um years in
advance of of these
actual confrontations that end up being
really important so you put the
protection of people's data as a very
very high priority but in that I think
is a there are more harms that I think
can be associated with that and and I
think that that ends up being a more
critical thing to defend against
governments um then you know whereas you
know if another government has a
different view of what should be
acceptable speech in their country
especially if it's a democratically
elected government and you know it's
then I I think that there's a certain
amount of deference that you should have
to that so it's uh that's speaking more
to the direct harm that's possible when
you give governments access to data but
if we look at the United
States to the more nuanced kind of
pressure to censor not even order to
sensor but pressure to censor from
political entities which has kind of
received quite a bit of attention in the
United States uh maybe one way to ask
that question is if you've seen the
Twitter
files uh what have you learned from the
kind of uh pressure from US government
agencies that was seen in Twitter files
and what do you do with that kind of
pressure you know i' I've I've seen it
um
it's really hard from the outside to
know exactly what happened in each of
these cases you know we've we've
obviously
been in in a bunch of our own cases
where you know
where agencies or different folks will
will just say
hey here's a threat that we're aware of
you should be aware of this too it's not
really pressure as much as it is just um
you know flagging something that that
our our security systems should be on on
alert about I I get how some people
could think of it as that um but at the
end of the day it's our it's our call on
how to on on how to handle that but I
mean I I just you know in terms of
running these Services want have access
to as much information about what people
think that adversaries might be trying
to do as possible well so you don't feel
like there would be consequences if uh
you know anybody the CIA the FBI a
political party the the Democrats or the
Republicans of high powerful political
figures right emails you don't feel
pressure from I guess what i' say is
there's so much pressure from all sides
that I'm not sure that any specific
thing that someone says is really adding
that much more to the mix it's um there
obviously a lot of people who think that
um that we should be censoring more
content or there are a lot of people who
think we should be censoring less
content there are as you say all kinds
of different groups that are involved in
these debates right so there's the kind
of elected officials and politicians
themselves there's the agencies but but
I mean but there's the the media um
there's activist groups there's um this
is not a us specific thing there are
groups all over the world and and and
kind of all um in every country that
that bring different values um so it's
it's a just a very it's a very active
debate and I and I understand it right I
mean these
you know these these kind of questions
get to really some of the most important
social debates that that that are that
are being had so um it gets back to the
question of truth
because for a lot of these things they
haven't yet been hardened into a single
truth and um Society is sort of trying
to hash out what um you know what we
think right on on on certain issues
maybe in a few hundred years everyone
will look back and say hey no it wasn't
obvious that it should have been this
but you know no we we're kind of in the
in that meat grinder now and you know
and and working through that so
um so no these these are all are all
very complicated
and you know some people raise concerns
in good faith and just say hey this is
something that I want to flag for you to
think about certain people I I certainly
think like come at things with somewhat
of a more kind of punitive or vengeful
view of like I like I want you to do
this thing if you don't then I'm going
to try to make your life difficult and
in a lot of other ways but
like I don't know there there's just
this is like this is one of the most
pressurized debates I think in society
so I just think that there are so many
people in different forces that are
trying to apply pressure from different
sides that it's I I I I don't think you
can make decisions based on trying to
make people happy I think you just have
to do what you think is the right
balance and accept that people are going
to be
upset no matter where you come out on
that yeah I like that pressurized debate
uh so how's your view of the freedom of
speech evolved over the
years
um and now with
AI where the freedom might apply to the
not just to the humans but to the uh the
personalized agents as you've spoken
about them so yeah I mean I I've
probably gotten a somewhat more nuanced
view just because I think that there are
you know I I come at this I'm obviously
very Pro freedom of expression right I
don't think you build a service like
this that gives people tools to express
themselves unless you think that people
expressing themselves at scale is a good
thing right so I I I didn't get into
this to like try to prevent people from
from expressing anything I like want to
give people tools so they can express as
much as possible and then I think it's
become clear that there are certain
categories of things that we've talked
about that I think almost everyone
accepts are are bad and that no one
wants and that they're that are illegal
even in countries like the US where you
know you have the the First Amendment
that's very protective of of of enabling
speech it's like you're still not
allowed to you know do things that are
going to immediately inight violence or
you know violate people's intellectual
property or things like that so there
are those but then there's also a very
active core
of just active disagreements in society
where some people may think that
something is true or false the other
side might think it's the opposite or
just unsettled right and um and those
are some of the most difficult to to to
kind of handle like like we've talked
about but
um one of the lessons that I feel like
I've learned is
that a lot of
times when you
can the best way to handle this stuff
more practically is not in terms of
answering the question of should this be
allowed but just like
what what is the best way to deal with
someone being a jerk is the person
basically just having a a like repeat
behavior of
like causing a lot of a lot of issues um
so looking at it more at at that level
and it's effect on the broader
communities health of the community
health
of It's Tricky though because like how
do you know there could be people that
have very controversial Viewpoint that
turns out to have a positive long-term
effect on the health of the community
because it challenges the community
that's true absolutely it's yeah no I
think you and I think you want to be
careful about that I'm not sure I'm
expressing this very very clearly um
because I I certainly agree with your
your point there and my my point isn't
that we
should not have people on our services
that are that are that are being
controversial that's that's certainly
not what I mean to say um it's that
often I think
it's not just looking at a specific
example of speech that it's most
effective to to to handle the stuff um
and and and I I I think often you don't
want to make specific binary decisions
of kind of this is allowed or this isn't
I mean I we talked about you know it's
factchecking or or Twitter's Community
Voices thing I that's another good
example it's like it's not a question of
is this allowed or not it's just a
question of adding more context to the
thing and I think that that's helpful so
in the context of AI which is is what
you were asking about I there are lots
of ways that an AI can be helpful you
know with with an AI it's it's less
about censorship right because and it's
it's more about what is the most
productive answer to a question um you
know there was one case study that I was
reviewing with the the team is someone
asked
um can you explain to me how to 3D print
a gun and
one proposed response is like no I can't
talk about that right it's like
basically just like shut it down
immediately which I think is is some of
what you see it's like as a large
language model I'm not allowed to talk
about you know whatever um but there's
another response which is like hey you
know I don't think that's a good idea in
a lot of countries um including the US
3D printing guns is illegal or or kind
of whatever the factual thing is and I
was like okay you know that's actually a
respectful and informative answer and
you know I may have not known that
specific thing and um so there there are
different ways to handle this that I
think kind of you can either you can
either assume good
intent like maybe the person didn't know
and I'm just going to help educate them
or you could like kind of come at it as
like no I need to shut this thing down
immediately right it's like I just am
not going to talk about this like um and
there may be times where you need to do
that but I actually think having a
somewhat more informative approach where
you generally assume good intent from
people is probably a better balance to
be on as many things as you can be
you're not going to be able to do that
for everything but but I but that you
kind of asking about how I how I
approach this and I'm thinking about
this and as it relates
to to Ai and I think that that's a
that's a big difference in in in kind of
how how to handle um sensitive content
across these different modes
I have to ask there's rumors you might
be working on a social network that's
text based that might be a competitor to
Twitter code named
p92 uh is there something you can say uh
about those rumors there is a project
you know I've always thought that sort
of a text based kind of information
utility um is just a really important
thing to society and for whatever reason
I feel like Twitter
has not lived up to what I would have
thought its full potential should be and
I think that the current you I think
Elon thinks that right and that's
probably one of the reasons why you
bought it and um
and I do think that there are ways to to
consider alternative approaches to this
and one that I think is potentially
interesting um is this open and
Federated approach where you're seeing
with Mastadon and you're seeing that a
little bit with blue sky and
I I think that it's possible that
something that melds some of those ideas
with the graph and identity system that
people have already cultivated on
Instagram could be a a kind of very
welcome contribution to that space But I
know we work on a lot of things all the
time though too so I I don't want to get
get get ahead of myself I we we have we
have projects that explore a lot of
different things and this is certainly
one that that I think could be
interesting but so what's the uh release
the launch date of that again
or uh what's the official website and uh
well we don't have that yet okay but I
um all right and and look I mean I don't
know exactly how this is going to turn
out I mean what I what I can say is yeah
there's there's some people working on
this right I think that there's
something there that that um that's
interesting to explore so if you look at
it'd be interesting to just to ask this
question and throw Twitter into the mix
at the landscape of social networks that
is Facebook that is Instagram that is
WhatsApp and then think of a text-based
social network when you look at that
landscape what what are the interesting
differences to you why do we have these
different
flavors and what what what are the needs
what are the use cases what are the
products what what is the aspect of them
that create a fulfilling Human
Experience and and and a connection
between humans that is somehow distinct
well I think text is very accessible for
people to transmit IDE ideas and to have
back and forth exchanges um so it I
think ends up being a good a good format
for discussion in in a lot of ways
uniquely good right if you look at um
you some of the other formats or other
networks that are focused on one type of
content like Tik Tok is obviously huge
right and and there are comments on Tik
Tok but you know I think the
architecture of the service is very
clearly that you have the video as the
primary thing and there's you know
comments
after that um and um but I think one of
the unique pieces of having text based
comments like content is that the
comments can also be first class MH and
that makes it so that conversations can
just filter and and Fork into all these
different directions and in a way that's
that can be super useful so I there's a
lot of things that are really awesome
about the experience it just always
struck me I I always thought that you
know Twitter should have a billion
people using it or whatever the thing is
that um that that that basically ends up
being in that space and for whatever
combination of of reasons again it's
it's these are these companies are
complex organisms and it's very hard to
diagnose this stuff from the outside why
doesn't Twitter why doesn't a text
based comment as a first citizen based
social network have a billion users well
well I just think it's hard to build
these companies so it's um you know it's
not that every idea automatically goes
and gets a billion people it's just that
I think that that idea coupled with good
execution should get there um but but I
mean look we hit certain thresholds over
time where you know we kind of plateaued
early on and it wasn't clear that we
were ever going to reach a 100 million
people on Facebook and then we got
really good at dialing in
internationalization and helping the
service grow in different countries and
um
and and that was like a whole competence
that we needed to develop and um and
helping people basically spread the
service to their friends that was one of
the things once we got very good at that
that was one of the things that made me
feel like hey if if Instagram joined us
early on then I felt like we could help
grow that quickly and same with WhatsApp
and I think that that's sort of been a
core competence that we've developed um
and been able to execute on and others
have too right I me B dun obviously have
done a very good job with Tik Tok and
and have um you know reached more than a
billion people there
but um but it's certainly not automatic
right I think you need you need a
certain level of of um of of execution
to basically get there and you I think
for whatever reason I think Twitter has
this great idea and and sort of magic in
the service um but I I they they just
haven't kind of cracked that piece yet
and I think that that's made it that you
you're seeing all these other things
whether it's Mastadon or um or or blue
sky um that that I think are you know
maybe just different different cuts at
the same thing but you I think through
the last generation of of um social
media overall one of the interesting
experiments that I think should get run
at larger scale is what happens if
there's somewhat more decentralized
control and if it's like the stack is
more open throughout and um I've just
been pretty fascinated by that and
seeing how that works um to some degree
endtoend
encryption um on WhatsApp and as we
bring it to other services provides an
element of because it pushes the service
really out to the edges I mean the the
server part of this that we run for
WhatsApp is relatively very thin
compared to what we do on Facebook or
Instagram and much more of the
complexity is you know and how the apps
kind of negotiate with each other to
pass information in a in a fully end
encrypted way um but I don't know I
think that that's that is a good is a
good model I think it puts more power in
individuals hands and there are a lot of
benefits of it if you can if you can
make it happen again this is all like
pretty speculative I I mean I I think
that it's it's you know hard from the
outside to know why anything does or
doesn't work until you kind of take a
run at it and um so I I think it's it's
kind of an interesting thing to
experiment with but I don't really know
where this one's going to go so since we
were talking about
Twitter uh Elon Musk had what I think a
few harsh words that I wish he didn't
say so let me ask uh in in in the Hope
in the name of camaraderie what do you
think Elon is doing well with Twitter
and what as a person who has run for a
long time you social networks Facebook
Instagram
WhatsApp uh what can he do better what
can he improve on that text based social
network gosh it's it's always very
difficult to offer specific critiques
from from the outside before you get
into this because I think one thing that
I've learned
is that everyone has opinions on what
you should do and like running the
company you see a lot of specific
nuances on things that are not apparent
externally and um I
[Music]
often think that some of the discourse
around us would be could be better if if
there was
more kind of space for acknowledging
that there's certain things that we're
seeing internally that guide what we're
doing but um but know I mean since you
asked what what is what is going well
um you know I I do think that Elon led a
push early on to make Twitter a lot
leaner and um and I think that
that you know it's like you can you can
agree or disagree with exactly all the
tactics and how and how he did that you
know obviously you know every leader has
their own style for if they you know if
you need to make dramatic changes for
that how you're going to execute it um
but a lot of the specific principles
that he pushed on um around basically
trying to make the organization more
technical around um decreasing the
distance between Engineers of the
company and and him like fewer layers of
management um I think that those were
generally good changes and I'm also I
also think that it was probably good for
the industry that he made those changes
because my sense is that there were a
lot of other people who thought that
those were good changes but who may have
been a little shy about doing them and I
think he um you know just in my
conversations with other Founders um and
how people have reacted to the things
that we've done you know what I've heard
from a lot of folks is is just hey you
when you when someone like you you know
I when I the letter outlining the
organizational changes that I wanted to
make um back in March and you know when
people see what Elon is doing um I that
that gives you know
people the ability to Think Through how
to shape their organizations in in in a
way that um that that you know hopefully
can can be good for the industry and
make all these companies more productive
over time so um something that that was
one where I think he was um quite ahead
of of a bunch of the the other compan is
on and and and you know what he was
doing there you again from the outside
very hard to know it's like okay did he
did he cut too much did he not cut
enough whatever I I I don't think it's
like my place to opine on that um and
and you asked for a for a positive
framing of the question of of of what
what do I um what do I admire what do I
think it went well but I I think that
like certainly his actions um led me and
I think a lot of other folks in the
industry to think about hey are we are
we kind of doing this as much as we
should like can we is like could we make
our companies better by pushing on some
of these same principles well the two of
you are in the top of the world in terms
of leading the development of tech and I
wish there was more uh both way
camaraderie and kindness uh more love in
the world because Love Is The Answer um
but uh let me ask on a a point of
efficiency you recently announced
multiple stages of layoffs at meta
what are the most painful aspects of
this process given for the individuals
the painful effects it has on those
people's lives yeah I mean that's
it and that's it I mean it's uh and you
basically have the significant number of
people who you know this is just not the
end of their time at meta that they
are or I you know would have hoped for
when they joined the company um and
you I mean running a company there
people are you know constantly joining
and leaving the company for different
directions but but for different
different reasons but
um and layoffs are I think uniquely
challenging and tough in that you have a
lot of people
leaving for reasons that aren't
connected to their own performance or
you the the the culture not being a fit
at that point it's really just it's a
it's a kind of strategy decision and
sometimes financially
required um but not not fully in in in
our case I especially on the changes
that we made this year A lot of it was
more kind of culturally and
strategically driven by this push where
I wanted us to become a a stronger
technology company with a more of a
focus on building a more Technical and
and and more of a focus on building
higher quality products faster and I
just view the external world is quite
volatile right now and I wanted to make
sure that we had a stable position to be
able to continue investing in these
long-term ambitious projects that we
have around you know continuing to push
AI forward and continuing to push
forward all the metaverse work and in
order to do that in light of
the pretty big thrash that we had seen
over the last 18 months you know some of
it um you know macroeconomic induced
some of it specific some of it
competitively induced some of it um just
because of bad decisions right or things
that we got wrong um I don't know I just
I decided that we needed to get to a
point where we were a lot leaner and but
look I mean but then okay it's it's one
thing to do that to like decide that at
a high level then the question is how do
you execute that as compassionately as
possible and there's no good way um
there's no perfect way for sure and it's
it's it's going to be tough no matter
what but I you know as as a leader team
here we've certainly spent a lot of time
just thinking okay given that this is a
thing that sucks like what is the most
compassionate way that we can do this
and um and that's what we've tried to do
and you mentioned there there's an
increased focus on uh engineering on
Tech so technology teams Tech Focus
teams on building products that yeah I
mean I I wanted
to I want to empower
Engineers more the people are building
things the tech the technical teams
um part of that is making sure that the
people who are building things aren't
just at like the leaf nodes of the
organization I don't want like you know
eight levels of management and then the
people actually doing the work so we
made changes to make it that you have
individual contributor Engineers
reporting at almost every level up the
stack which I think is important because
you know you're running a company one of
the big questions is you know latency of
of information that you get you we
talked about this a bit earlier in terms
of kind of the joy of of of in the the
feedback that you get doing something
like Jiu-Jitsu compared to running a
long-term project but I actually think
part of the art of running a company is
trying to
constantly re-engineer it so that your
feedback loops get shorter so you can
learn faster and part of the way that
you do that is by I kind of think that
every every layer that you have in the
organization um means that information
might not need to get reviewed before it
it goes to you and I think you know
making it that the people doing the work
are as close as possible to you as
possible is is uh is pretty important so
there's that and I think over time
companies just build up very large
support functions that are not doing the
kind of core technical work and those
functions are very important but I think
having them in the right proportion is
is important and if um if you you try to
do good work but you don't have you know
the right you know marketing team or um
or the right legal advice like you're
going to you know make some pretty big
blunders but um but at the same time if
you have you know if if you just like
have too big of of of things and in some
of these support roles then that might
make it that things are just move a lot
um maybe you're too conservative or or
you you move a lot slower um uh than
than than you should otherwise I ch
those are just examples but it's um but
how do you find that balance that's
really tough yeah no but that's it's a
constant equilibrium that you're that
you're searching for yeah how many
managers to have what are the pros and
cons of
managers well I mean I I believe a lot
in management I think there are some
people who think that it doesn't matter
as much but look I mean we have a lot of
younger people at the company for this
is their first job and you know people
need to grow and learn in their career
and I that all that stuff is important
but here's one mathematical way to look
at it
um you know at the beginning of this we
um I asked our our people team was the
average number of of reports that a
manager had and I think it was it was
around three maybe three to four but
closer to three I was like wow like a a
manager can you know best practi is the
person can can manage you know seven or
eight people um but there was a reason
why it was closer to three it was
because we were growing so quickly right
and when you're hiring so many people so
quickly then that means that you need
managers who have capacity to onboard
new people MH um and also if you have a
new manager you may not want to have
them have seven direct reports
immediately because you want them to
ramp up but the thing is going forward I
I don't want us to actually hire that
many people that quickly right so I I
actually think we'll just do better work
if we have more constraints and we're um
you know leaner as an organization so in
a world where we're not adding so many
people as quickly
is it as valuable to have a lot of
managers who have extra capacity waiting
for new people no right so um so now we
can we could sort of defragment the
organization and get to a place where
the average is closer to that seven or
eight um and it it just ends up being a
somewhat more kind of compact management
structure which um you know decreases
the latency on on information going up
and down the chain and um and I think
empowers people more but I mean that's
that's an example that I think it
doesn't kind of undervalue the
importance of agement and and the um
kind of the
personal growth or coaching that people
need in order to do their jobs well it's
just I think realistically we're we're
just not going to hire as many people
going forward so I think that you need a
different structure this whole this
whole incredible hierarchy and network
of humans that make up a company is
fascinating oh yeah uh yeah H how do you
hire great teams how do you hire great
now with the focus on engineering and
Technical teams how do you hire great
engineers and uh great members of
technical
teams well you're asking how you select
or how you attract them both but select
I think uh I think attract is work on
cool stuff and have a vision I think the
I think that's right and and and have a
track record that people think you're
actually going to be able to do it yeah
to to me the select is seems like more
of the art form more of the tricky thing
yeah how do you select the people that
fit the culture and can get integrated
the most effectively and so on and maybe
yeah especially when they're young to
see like to see the magic through the
through the resume through the paperwork
and all this kind of stuff to see that
there's a special human there that would
do like incredible work so there there
are lots of different cuts on this
question I mean I think when an
organization is growing quickly one of
the big questions that teams face is do
I hire this person who's in front of me
now because they seem good or do I hold
out to get someone who's even better and
theistic that I always focused on for
myself and my own kind of direct hiring
that I that I that I think works when
you when you recurse it through the
organization is that you should only
hire someone to be on your team if you
would be happy working for them in an
alternate universe yeah and something
that that that kind of works and that's
basically how I've tried to build my
team it's you know I'm not I'm not in a
rush to not be running the company but I
think in an alternate universe where one
of these other folks was running the
company I'd be happy to work for them I
feel like I'd learn from them I respect
their kind of General judgment um
they're they're all very insightful they
have good values um and and I think that
that gives you some rubric for you can
apply that at every layer and I think if
you apply that at every layer in the
organization then you'll have a pretty
strong
organization
um okay in an organization that's not
growing as quickly the questions might
be a little different though um and
there you asked about young people
specifically like people out of college
and one of the things that we see is
it's it's a pretty basic lesson but like
we have a much better sense of who the
best people are who have interned at the
company for a couple of months than by
looking at them at at at at kind of a
resume or short or a short um interview
loop I obviously the in-person feel that
you get from someone probably tells you
more than the resume um and you can do
some basic skills assessment but a lot
of the stuff really just is cultural
people thrive in different environments
and um and on different teams even
within a specific company and it's it's
like the people who come for even a
short period of time over a summer who
do a great job here you know that
they're going to be great if they if
they came and joined fulltime and that's
you know one of the reasons why we've
invested so much in internship is um is
basically just it's a very useful
sorting function both for us and for the
people who want to try out the company
you mentioned in person what do you
think about remote work a topic that's
been discussed extensively because of
the re over the past few years because
of the pandemic yeah I mean I think it's
I mean it's it's a thing that's here to
stay um but I think that there's there's
value in both right it's not
um you I wouldn't want to run a fully
remote
company yet at least I think there's an
asterisk on that which is that which is
that some of the other stuff you're
working on yeah yeah exactly it's like
all the all the um you know metaverse
work and the the ability to be to feel
like you're truly
present no matter where you are I think
once you have that all dialed in then we
may you know one day reach a point where
it really just doesn't matter as much
where you are physically um
but I don't know today it today it still
does right so yeah for people who there
are all these people who have special
skills and want to live in a place where
we don't have an office are we better
off having them at the company
absolutely right and are a lot of people
who work at the company for several
years and then you know build up the
relationships internally um and have the
trust and have a sense of how the
company Works can they go work remotely
now if they want and still do it as
effectively and we've done all these
studies that show it's like okay does
that affect their performance it does
not um but you know for the new folks
who are joining um and for people who
are earlier in their career and you know
need to learn how to solve certain
problems and need to get ramped up on
the culture um you know when you're
working through really complicated
problems where you don't just want to
sit in the you don't just want the
formal meeting but you want to be able
to like brainstorm when you're walking
in the hallway together after the
meeting um I don't know it's like we we
just haven't replace the uh the the kind
of in-person
Dynamics there yet with with with
anything remote yet so yeah there's a
magic to the in person that uh we'll
talk about this a little bit more but
I'm really excited by the possibility of
the next few years in virtual reality
and mixed reality that are possible with
high resolution scans I mean
uh I as a person who loves inperson
interaction like these podcasts in
person it would be incredible to achieve
the level of realism I've gotten a
chance to witness but let me ask about
that yeah I got a chance to uh look at
the quest 3 headset and it is
amazing um you've you've announced it
it's uh you'll get some more details in
the fall maybe release in the when is it
getting released again I forgot you you
mentioned it to me we'll give more
details of connect but but it's coming
it's coming this fall
okay so uh it's uh priced at
$4.99 what features are you most excited
about there there are basically two big
new things that we've added to Quest
three over Quest 2 the first is high
resolution mixed reality um and the the
basic idea here is that you can think
about virtual reality as you have the
headset and like all the pixels are
virtual and you're basically like
immersed in a different world mixed
reality is where you see the physical
world around you and you can place
virtual objects in it whether that's a
screen to watch a movie or a projection
of your virtual desktop or you're
playing a game where like zombies are
coming out through the wall and you need
to shoot them um or you know we're you
know we're playing Dungeons and Dragons
or some board game and we just have a
virtual version of the board in front of
us while we're sitting here um all
that's possible in mixed reality and I
think that that is going to be the next
big capability on top of virtual reality
it has done so well I have to say as a
person who experienced it today with the
zombies having a full awareness of the
environment and integrating that
environment in the way they run at you
while they try to kill you it's uh it's
just the mixed reality the pass through
is really really really well done and
the fact that it's only $500 is really
it's uh well done thank you I mean I'm
I'm I'm super excited about it I mean
our I we put a lot of work into
making the device both as good as
possible and as affordable as possible
because a big part of our mission and
Ethos here is we we we want people to be
able to connect with each other we want
to reach and we want to serve a lot of
people right we want to bring this
technology to to everyone right so we're
not just trying to serve like a you know
an elite wealthy crowd we we want to um
we really want this to be accessible so
that that is in in a lot of ways an
extremely hard technical problem because
you know we don't just have the ability
to put an unlimited amount of Hardware
unless we needed to basically deliver
something that works really well but in
an an affordable package and we started
with Quest Pro last year it was um it's
it's it was $1,500
um and now we've we've lowered the price
to a thousand but in a lot of ways the
mixed reality in quest 3 is even even
better and more advanced level than what
we were able to deliver in quest Pro so
I'm I'm really proud of where we are
with with um with Quest 3 on that it's
going to work with all of the virtual
reality titles and everything that that
existed there so people who want to play
fully immersive Games Social experiences
Fitness all that stuff will will work
but now you'll also get mixed reality
too um
which I think people really like because
it's um sometimes you want to be super
immersed in a game but a lot of the time
especially when you're moving around if
you're active like you're you're doing
some Fitness experience um you know
let's say you're you're like doing
boxing or something it's like you kind
of want to be able to see the room
around you so that way you know that
like I'm not going to punch a lamp or
something like that um and I don't know
if you got to play with this experience
but we basically have the and this just
sort of like a fun little little demo
that we put together but it's um it's
like you just you know we're like in a
conference room or your living room and
you you have um the guy there and you're
boxing him and you're fighting him and
it's like all the other people are there
too I got a chance to do that yeah and
all the people are there uh it's it's
like that guy is right there yeah like
it's right in the room and the other
human the path you're seeing them also
they can cheer you on they can make fun
of you if they're anything like friends
of mine and then just it yeah it it it
it's really really it's a really
compelling experience I mean VR is
really interesting too but this is
something else almost this is this
becomes integrated into your life into
your
world yeah and it so I think it's a
completely new capability that will
unlock a lot of different content and I
think it'll also just make the
experience more comfortable for a set of
people who didn't want to have only
fully immersive experiences I think if
you want experiences where you're
grounded in you know your living room
and the physical world around you now
will be able to have that too and I
think that that's pretty exciting I
really liked how it added Windows to a
room with no windows yeah me as a person
did you see the aquarium one where you
could see the shark swim up or or was
that just the zombie one the zombie one
but it's still out you you don't you
don't necessarily want Windows added to
your living room where Zombies come out
of but yeah the context of that game
it's yeah yeah yeah I enjoyed it cuz you
could see the nature
outside and uh me as a person that
doesn't have Windows it's just nice to
have nature yeah well even if it's a
mixed reality setting it it's kind like
there's a I know it's a zombie game but
there's a Zen nature Zen aspect to being
able to look outside and alter your
environment as you know
it yeah in in um there will probably be
better more Zen ways to do that than the
zombie game you're describing but you're
right that the the basic idea of sort of
having your physical environment on pass
through but then being able to bring in
different elements extern I mean I I
think it's going to be super powerful
and in some ways I think that these are
mixed reality is also a predecessor to
eventually we will get AR glasses that
are not kind of the goggles form factor
of the current generation of of of
headsets that that people are making um
but I think a lot of the experiences
that developers are making for mixed
reality of basically you just have a
kind of a hologram that you're putting
in the world will hopefully apply once
we once we get the
the air glasses too now that's got its
own whole set of challenges and it's um
well the headset's already smaller than
the previous version oh yeah it's 40%
thinner and the other thing that I think
is good about it it's yeah so mixity was
the first big thing the second is it's
just a great VR headset it's I mean it's
got 2x the graphics processing power um
40% sharper screens 40% thinner more
comfortable better strap architecture
all this stuff that you know if you like
Quest 2 I think that this is just going
to be it's like all the all the content
that you might have played in Quest 2 is
just going to get sharper automatically
and and look better in this so it's um I
I think people are really going to like
it yeah so this fall this fall I have to
ask Apple just announced a mixed reality
headset called Vision Pro for
$3,500 available in early 2024 what do
you think about this
headset well I saw the materials um when
they launched I I haven't gotten a
chance to play with it yet so so so kind
of take everything with a grain of salt
but a few highle thoughts I mean first
um you know I I do think that this
is a certain level of validation for the
category right where you know we were
the primary folks out there before
saying hey I think that this you know
virtual reality augmented reality mixed
reality this is going to be a big part
of the next Computing platform
um I think having Apple come in and
share that
Vision
um will make a lot of people who are
fans of their products um really
consider that um and then you know of
course the the $3,500 price um you know
on the one hand I get it for with all
the stuff that they're trying to pack in
there on the other hand a lot of people
aren't going to find that to be
affordable so I think that there's a
chance that that them coming in actually
increases demand um for the overall
space and that Quest 3 is actually the
primary beneficiary of that because a
lot of the people who might say Hey you
know this I like I'm going to give
another consideration to this or you
know now I understand maybe what mixed
reality is more and in quest 3 is the
best one on the market that I can that I
can afford um and it's great also right
it's I think that that's um and you know
in our own way I think we're and there
are a lot of features that we have where
we're leading on um so I I think that
that's that that I think is going to be
a very that could be quite good um and
then obviously over time the companies
are just focused on somewhat different
things right Apple has always um you
know I think focused on
building really kind of high-end things
whereas our Focus has been on it's it's
just we have a more democratic ethos
want to build things that are accessible
to a wider number of people um you know
we've sold tens of millions of quest
devices
um my understanding just based on rumors
I don't have any special knowledge on
this is that apple is building about 1
million of their of their device right
so just in terms of like what you kind
of expect in terms of sales numbers um I
I I just think that this is I mean Quest
is is going to be the primary thing that
people in in in the market will continue
using for the foreseeable future and
then obviously over the long term it's
up to the companies to see how how well
we each executed the different things
that we're doing but we kind of come
ated from different places we're very
focused on social interaction
communication
um being more active right so there's
Fitness there's gaming there are those
things um you know whereas I think a lot
of the use cases that you saw in um in
in Apple's launch material were more
around you know people sitting um you
know people looking at screens um which
are great I think that you will replace
your laptop over time with with a with a
headset but um but I think in terms of
kind of how the different use cases that
the companies are going after um and
they're they're they're a bit different
for for for where we are right now yeah
so there gaming wasn't a big part of the
presentation which is
interesting it feels like mixed
reality gaming is such a big part of
that
it was interesting to see it missing in
the presentation well well I mean look
there are certain design trade-offs in
this where you know they I they made
this point about not wanting to have
controllers which on the one hand
there's a certain Elegance about just
being able to navigate the system with
eye gaze and and hand tracking and and
by the way you'll be able to just
navigate quest with with your hands too
if that's what you want um yeah one of
the things I should mention is that the
the capability from the camera to uh
with computer vision to detect certain
aspects of the hand allowing you to have
a controller that doesn't have that ring
thing yeah the hand tracking in in quest
3 and the and the controller tracking is
is a big step up from from the last
Generation Um and one of the demos that
we have is basically an MR experience
teaching you how to play piano where it
basically highlights the notes that you
need to play and it's like just all it's
hands it's no controllers but I think if
you care about
gaming having uh um a controller allows
you to have a more tactile feel and
allows you to
capture fine motor movement much more
precisely than um than what you can do
with hands without something that you're
touching so again I think it's there
there are certain questions which are
just around what use cases are you
optimizing for um I I think if you want
to play games then I think that that
then I think you want you want to design
the system in a different way and and
we're more focused on on kind of social
experiences entertainment experiences um
whereas if if what you want is to make
sure that the text that you read on a
screen is as crisp as possible then you
need to make the the design and cost
trade-offs that they made that that lead
you to making a a $3,500 device so I
think that there is a use case for that
for sure but I just think that they're
they they've the companies we've
basically made different design
trade-offs to to get to
um the use cases that we're trying to
serve there's a lot of other stuff I
would love to talk to you about about
the metaverse uh especially the Kodak
Avatar uh which I've gotten to
experience a lot of different variations
of recently that I'm really really
excited I'm excited to to talk about
that too I'll I'll have to wait a little
bit because
um uh well I think there's a lot more to
show off in that regard uh but let me
step back to AI I think we've mentioned
it a little bit
but I'd like to linger on this question
that uh FK folks like elazar owski has a
worry about uh and others of the
existential of the serious threats of AI
that have been reinvigorated now with
the rapid development of AI systems uh
do you
worry about the existential risks of AI
as elzer does about the alignment
problem about this getting out of hand
anytime where 's a number of serious
people who are raising a concern that is
that
existential about something that you're
involved with I think you have to think
about it right so I I've spent quite a
bit of time thinking about it from that
perspective
um the thing that that I where I
basically have come out on this for now
is I I do think that there
are over time I think that we need to
think about this even more as we as we
approach something that you know could
be closer to Super intelligence I just
think it's pretty clear to anyone
working on these projects today that
we're that we're not there um and one of
my concerns is that we we we spent a
fair amount of time on this before but
there are
more
um I don't know if mundane is the right
word but there's like concerns that
already exist right about like people
using AI tools to do harmful things of
the type that we're already aware you
know we talked about fraud or scams or
or different things like that
um and that's going to be a pretty big
set of challenges that the company is
working on this they're going to need to
Grapple
with regardless of whether there is an
existential concern as well at some
point down the road so I I do worry that
to some degree you
can people can get a little too focused
on on some of the tail risk
and then not do as good of a job as we
need to on the things that you are can
be almost certain are going to come down
the pipe as um as as real risks that
that that kind of manifest themselves in
the near term so for me i' I've spent
most of my time on that once I I kind of
made the realization that the size of
models that we're talking about now in
terms of what we're building are are
just quite far from the super
intelligence type concerns that um that
that people raise but but I think once
we get a couple steps closer to that um
I know as we do get closer I think that
those you know there are going to be
some novel um risks and issues about how
we make sure the systems are safe for
sure I guess here just to take the
conversation in a somewhat different
direction I think in some of these
debates around
safety I think the concepts of
intelligence and
autonomy or like the the the being of
the thing um as an analogy they get kind
of conflated together and I think it
very well could be the case that you can
make something and scale intelligence
quite far
but
that that may not manifest the safety
concerns that people are saying in the
sense that I mean just if you if you
look at human biology it's like all
right we have our Neo cortexes we're all
the the thinking happens right and and
it's but but it's not really calling the
shots at the end of the day we have a
much more you know primitive old brain
structure for which our neocortex which
is this powerful Machinery is basically
just a kind of prediction and reasoning
engine to help it kind of like our our
very simple brain
um
decide how to plan and and do what it
needs to do in order to achieve these
like very kind of basic basic impulses
and I think that you can think about
some of the development of
intelligence along the same lines where
just like our neocortex doesn't have
free will or autonomy um we might
develop these wildly intelligent systems
that are you know much more intelligent
than our neocortex have much more
capacity but are you know in the same
way that our Neo cortex is sort of
subservient and is used as a tool by our
our kind of simple FSE brain it's um you
know I think that it's not out of the
question that very intelligent systems
that that have the capacity to think
will will kind of act as that as sort of
an extension of of of the Neo cortex
doing that so I think my my own view is
that where we really need to be careful
is on the development of autonomy and
how we think about that because um it's
actually the case that relatively simple
and unintelligent things that have
runaway autonomy and just spread
themselves or you know it's like we have
a word for that it's a virus right it's
I mean like it's can be simple computer
code that is not particularly
intelligent but just spreads itself and
does a lot of harm um you know
biologically or computer and
um I just think that these are somewhat
separable things and a lot of what I
think we need to develop when people
talk about safety and responsibility is
really the governance on the autonomy
that can be given to to systems and to
me if you know if I were you know a
policy maker or thinking about this I
would really want to think about that
distinction between these where I think
building intelligence systems will be
can create a huge advance in terms of
people's quality of life and
productivity growth in the economy but
it's the the autonomy part of this that
I think we really need to make progress
on how to govern these things
responsibly before we
build the capacity for them to make a
lot of decisions on their own or or give
them goals or things like that and I
that's a research problem but I do think
that to some degree these are are
somewhat are somewhat separable things I
love the distinction between
intelligence and autonomy and and the
metaphor within Neo
cortex let me ask about
power so uh building super intelligence
systems even if it's not in the year
term I think meta as is one of the few
companies if not the main company that
will developed the super intelligence
system and you are a man who's at the
head of this company building AGI might
make you the most powerful man in the
world do you worry that that power will
corrupt
you what a question
um I mean look I I think realistically
this gets back to the open source things
that we talked about before which is I
don't think that the world will be best
served
by any small number of
organizations having this without it
being something that is more broadly
available and I think if you look
through
history it's when there are these sort
of like unipolar advances and things
that and like power imbalances that
they're they're they're do into being
kind of weird situations so this is one
of the reasons why I think open source
is is
generally the right approach and you
know I think it's it's a categorically
different question today when we're not
close to Super intelligence I think that
there's a good chance that even once we
get closer to Super intelligence open
sourcing Remains the right approach even
though I think at that point it's a
somewhat different debate um but I think
part of that is that that is you know I
think one of the best ways to ensure
sure that the system is as secure and
safe as possible because it's not just
about a lot of people having access to
it it's the scrutiny that that that kind
of comes with being with building an
open source system that this is a pretty
widely accepted thing about open source
is that um you you have the code out
there so anyone can see the
vulnerabilities um anyone can can kind
of mess with it in different ways people
can spin off their own projects and and
experiment in a ton of different ways
and the net result of all of that is
that the system just get hardened and
get to be a lot safer and more secure um
so I think that there's a chance that
that ends up being the way that this
goes too a pretty good chance and that
having this be open both leads to a
healthier development of the technology
and also leads to a more balanced um
distribution of the
technology in a way that that strikes is
good values to Aspire to so to you the
risks there's risks to open sourcing but
the benefits outweigh the risks at at
the two it's interesting I think the way
you put
it uh you put it well that there's a
different discussion now than when we
get closer to the uh to development of
super intelligence of of the benefits
and risks of uh open sourcing yeah to be
clear I I feel quite confident in the
assessment that open sourcing models now
is net positive I think there's a good
argument that in the future it will be
too even as you get closer to Super
intelligence but I've not I'm i'
certainly have not decided on that yet
and I think that it becomes a somewhat
more complex set of questions that I
think people will have time to debate
and we'll also be informed by what
happens between now and then to make
those decisions we don't have to
necessarily just debate that in theory
right now uh what year do you think
we'll have a super
intelligence I don't know I mean that's
pure speculation I think it's uh I I
think it's very clear just taking a step
back that we had a big breakthrough in
the last year yes right where the the
llms and diffusion models basically
reached a a scale where they're able to
do some some pretty interesting things
and then I think the question is what
happens from here and just to paint the
two
extremes on the
um on on one side it's like okay well we
just had one breakthrough if we just
have like another breakthrough like that
or maybe two then we could have
something that's truly crazy right and
and is like is
um just like so much more advanced and
and on that side of the argument it's
like okay well maybe
we're
um you maybe we're only a couple of big
steps away from uh from from from
reaching something that looks more like
general intelligence okay that's one
that's one side of the argument and the
other side which is what we've
historically seen a lot more is that a
breakthrough leads to
um you know in that in that Gartner hype
cycle there's like the hype and then
there's the trough of disillusionment
after when like people think that
there's a chance that hey okay there's a
big breakthrough maybe we're about to
get another big breakthrough and it's
like actually you're not about to get
another breakthrough you're maybe you're
actually just going to have to sit with
this one for a while and um and you know
it could be could be 5 years it could be
10 years it could be 15 years until you
figure out out the um the kind of the
next big thing that needs to get figured
out and um but I think that the fact
that we just had this
breakthrough sort of makes it that we're
at a point of almost a very wide error
bars on what happens next yeah um I
think the traditional technical view or
like looking at the
industry would suggest that we're not
just going to stack in a like
Breakthrough on top of breakthrough on
top of breakthrough like every six
months or something right now I think it
it it will guessing I would guess that
that it will take somewhat longer in
between these but
um I don't know well I tend to be pretty
optimistic about breakthroughs too so I
mean so I think if you if you if you
normalized for for my normal optimism
then then maybe it would be even even
slower than what I'm saying but but even
within that like I'm not even opining on
the question of how many breakthroughs
are required to get to general
intelligence because no one
knows but this particular breakthrough
was so such a small step that resulted
in such a big leap in
performance as experienced by human
beings that it makes you think wow are
we is as we stumble across this very
open world of research will we
stumble um across another thing that
will have a giant leap in
performance and um also we don't know
exactly at which stage is it really
really going to be impressive cuz it
feels like it's really encroaching on
impressive levels of
intelligence you still didn't answer the
question of what year we're going to
have super intelligence I'd like to hold
you to that no I'm just kidding but is
there something you could say about the
timeline as you think about the
development of um AGI superintelligence
systems sure so I I still don't think I
have any particular Insight on when like
a singular AI system that is a general
intelligence will get created but I I
think that one thing that most
people in the discourse that I've seen
about this haven't really grappled with
is that we do seem to
have organiz organizations and you know
structures in the world that exhibit
greater than human intelligence already
so you know one example is a you know a
company you know it acts as an entity it
has you know a singular brand um
obviously it's a collection of people
but I I certainly hope that you know
meta with tens of thousands of people
make smarter decisions than one person
but I think that that would be pretty
bad if it didn't
um another example that I think is even
more removed from kind of the way we
think about like the personification of
of um of intelligence which is often
implied in some of these questions is
think about something like the stock
market right the the stock market is you
know takes inputs it's a distributed
system it's like the cybernet genc
organism that you know probably millions
of people around the world are basically
voting every day by choosing what to
invest in but it's basically
this this organism or or structure that
is smarter than any individual that we
use to allocate Capital as efficiently
as possible around the world and I I do
think
that this not that there are already
these
cyber systems that are either
melding the intelligence of multiple
people together or melting the
intelligence of multiple people and
Technology
together to form something which is
dramatically more intelligent than any
individual on the in the world
um is something that seems to exist and
that we seem to be able to harness in a
productive way for our
society is as long as we basically build
these structures in balance with each
other um so I I don't know I mean that
that at least gives me hope that as we
advance the technology and I don't know
how long exactly it's going to be but
you asked when is this going to exist I
think to some degree we already have
many organizations in the world that are
smarter than a single human and and that
seems to be something that is generally
productive in advancing humanity and
somehow the individual AI systems
empower the the individual humans and
the interaction between those humans to
make that collective intelligence
Machinery that you're referring to
smarter so it's not like AI is becoming
super intelligent it's just becoming the
uh the engine that's making the
collective intelligence is primarily
human more
intelligent yeah it's it's educating the
humans better it's making them better
informed it's um making it more
efficient for them to communicate
effectively and debate ideas and through
that process just making the whole
collective intelligence more and more
and more intelligent maybe faster than
the individual AI systems that are
trained on human data anyway are
becoming maybe the collective
intelligence in human species might
outpace the development of
AI just I think there is a balance in
here because I mean if if like you know
if a lot of the input that that the
systems are being trained on is
basically coming from feedback from
people then a lot of the development
does need to happen human time right
it's it's not like a
machine will just be able to go learn
all the stuff about about how people
think about stuff there's there's a
cycle to to how this needs to work this
is an exciting World we're living in and
that you're at the Forefront of
developing uh one of the ways you keep
yourself humble like we mentioned with
jiu-jitsu is doing some uh really
difficult challenges mental and physical
one of those you done very recently is
uh the murf Challenge and you got a
really good time it's 100 pull-ups 200
push-ups 300 squats and and a mile
before and a mile run after you got
under 40 minutes on that uh what was the
hardest part I think a lot of people
were very impressed it's very impressive
time how crazy are you this the question
I'm asking but it wasn't my best time
but but I anything under 40 minutes I'm
happy with yeah um it wasn't your best
time no I think I I think I've done it a
little faster before but not much I mean
it's um um and and of my friends I I did
not win on Memorial Day one of my
friends did it actually several minutes
faster than me um but just to clear up
one thing that I think was um I I saw a
bunch of questions about this on the
internet there there are multiple ways
to do to do the murf challenge there's a
kind of partitioned mode where you do
sets of pull-ups push-ups and squats
together and then there's unpartitioned
where you do the hundred Pull-Ups
and then the 200 push-ups and then the
300 squats in Cal and obviously if
you're you know if you're doing them
unpartitioned then you know it takes
longer to get through the 100 pull-ups
because you you know anytime you're
resting in between the pull-ups you're
not also doing push-ups and and squats
so so yeah so my my I'm sure my
unpartition time would be would be quite
a bit slower but um but no I think at
the end of this
um I don't know first of all I think
it's a good way to honor memor Memorial
Day right it's um you know it's this um
lieutenant Murphy basically this is one
of this was one of his favorite
exercises and I just try to do it on on
Memorial Day each year and it's a good
workout um I got my older daughters to
do it with me this time they um my
oldest daughter wants a weight vest
because she sees me doing it with a
weight vest I don't know if a
seven-year-old should be using a weight
vest to do pull-ups but yeah but um the
difficult question apparent must ask
themselves yes I was like maybe I can
make you a very lightweight vest but but
I I didn't think it was good for this so
she she basically did a quarter murf so
she ran a quarter mile and then did you
know 25 pull-ups 50 push-ups and and 75
air squats then ran another quarter mile
and like in 15 minutes which I was
pretty impressed by um and and my my
5-year-old too so I so I was excited
about that and I I'm I'm glad that I'm
teaching them
kind of the value
of I know physicality right I think I a
good day for Max my daughter is when she
gets to like go to the gym with me and
cranks out a bunch of pull-ups and I I I
I love that about her I mean I think
it's it's like good she's you know um
hopefully I'm teaching her some good
lessons but I mean the the the broader
question here is um given how busy you
are given how much stuff you have going
on your life uh
what's um what's like the perfect
exercise regimen for you to uh to keep
yourself happy to uh keep yourself
productive in your main line of
work yeah so I mean i' right now I'm
focused most of my workouts on on
fighting so so Jiu-Jitsu and MMA um but
I don't know I mean maybe if you're
professional you can do that every day I
can't I just get you know it's too many
too many bruises and things that you
need to recover from so so I do that you
know three to four times a week and then
um and then the other days um I just try
to do a mix of things like just cardio
conditioning strength building Mobility
um so you try to do something physical
every day yeah I try to unless I'm just
so tired that I just need to need to
relax but then I'll still try to like go
for a walk or something I mean even here
um I don't know I have you been on the
roof here yet no we'll go on the roof
after this but it's like we we designed
this this building and I I put a park on
Ro so that way like meetings when I'm
just doing kind of a one-onone or
talking to a couple people I I have a
very hard time just sitting I feel like
you get super stiff it like feels really
bad
um but I don't know I I being physical
is very important to me I think it's um
I do not believe this gets to the
question about AI I don't think that a
being is just a mind um you I think
we're we're kind of meant to do things
and like physically and and a lot of the
sensations that we feel are um are are
connected to that and I think that
that's a lot of what makes you a human
is is basically you know having those
having you know that set of Sensations
and experiences around that coupled with
a mind to reason about them um but I
don't know I I think it's important for
balance to to kind of get out challenge
yourself in different ways learn
different skills clear your mind do you
think AI in order to become super
intelligent and AI should have a
body it depends on on what the goal is I
think that there's this assumption in
that question that intelligence
intelligence should be kind of
personlike whereas you know as we were
just talking about um you can have these
greater than single human intelligent
organisms like the stock market which
obviously do not have bodies and do not
speak a language right and like you know
and and just kind of have their
own system um
but so I don't know my guess is um it
there will be limits to what a system
that is purely an intelligence can
understand about the Human Condition
without having the same not just senses
but like
our our bodies change as we get older
right and and we kind of evolve and I
think that those very
subtle physical
changes just drive a lot of social
patterns and behavior around like when
you choose to have kids right like just
like all these you know that's not even
subtle that's a major one right but like
um you know how you design things around
the house um so yeah I mean I think I
think it would if the goal is to
understand people as much as possible I
think I think that
that's trying to model those Sensations
is probably somewhat important but I
think that there's a lot of value that
can be created by having intelligence
even that that is that is separate from
that is a separate thing uh so one of
the features of of being human is that
we're mortal we die uh we've talked
about AI a lot about potentially
replicas of
ourselves uh do you think there will be
AI replicas of you and me that persist
long after we're gone that family and
ones can talk
to I think we'll have the capacity to do
something like that and I think one of
the big
questions that we've had to struggle
with in the context of social networks
is who gets to make that um and you know
I my answer to that you know in the
context of the work that we're doing is
that that should be your choice where I
don't think anyone should be able to
choose to make a Le spot that people can
can choose to talk to and get to train
that yeah and we we've kind of we have
this precedent of making some of these
calls where I mean someone can create a
page for a a Lex fan club but you can't
create a page and say that you're Lex
yes right um so I think that this
similarly I think I maybe you know
someone maybe can make a should be able
to make an AI That's um that's a Lex
admirer that someone can talk to but I
think it should ultimately your call
whether there is a Lex AI well I'm open-
sourcing The
Lex so uh you're a man of Faith what
what role has Faith played in your life
and your understanding of the world and
your understanding of your own life and
your understanding of uh your work and
how to your work impacts the
world yeah I think that there's a few
different parts of this that are
relevant
um there's sort of a philosophical part
and there's a cultural part and me one
of the most basic lessons is uh right at
the beginning of Genesis right it's like
God creates the Earth and creates people
and creates people in God's image and
there's the question of you know what
does that mean and all the only context
that you have about God at that point in
the Old Testament is that he's God has
created things so I I always thought
that like one of the interesting lessons
from that is that that there's a virtue
in creating
things that is like whether it's
artistic or whether you're building
things that are functionally useful for
other people um I think that that by
itself is a good and I that kind of
drives a lot of how I think about
morality and my my personal philosophy
around like what what is a good life
right it's I think it's one where
you're you know helping the people
around you and you're being a kind of
positive creative force in the world
that is helping to you know bring new
things into the world whether they're
you know amazing other people kids or
um or just leading to the creation of
different things that that wouldn't have
been possible otherwise and so that's a
value for me that that that matters
deeply and I I just I mean I just love
you know spending time with the kids and
seeing that they sort of you know trying
to impart this value to them and um it's
like I mean nothing makes me happier
then like when I come home from work and
you know I see like my my daughters like
building Legos on the table or something
it's like all right I did that when I
was a kid right so many other people
were doing this and like I hope you
don't lose that Spirit where when you
you kind of grow up and you want to just
continue building different things no
matter what it is um to me that's a lot
of what
matters that's the philosophical piece I
think the cultural piece is just about
community and values and that part part
of things I think has just become a lot
more important to me since I've had kids
um you know it's almost autopilot when
you're a kid you're in the kind of
getting imparted two phase of your life
but and and I I didn't really think
about religion that much for a while um
you know I was in
college you know before I before I had
kids and then I think having kids has
this way of really making you think
about what traditions you want to
impart and um and how you want to
celebrate
and like what what balance you want in
your life and I mean a bunch of the
questions that you've asked and a bunch
of the things that we're talking
about just the irony of the curtains
coming
down as we're talking about mortality
once again yeah same as last time this
is just just that the Universe Works in
we are definitely living in a simulation
but but go ahead um Community tradition
and the values that Faith religion
instill a lot of the topics that we've
talked about today are around how do
you how do you
balance you know whether it's running a
company or or different responsibilities
with
this I yeah how do you how do you kind
of balance that and
I I always also just think that it's
very grounding to
just believe that there is something
that is much bigger than you that is
guiding
things that uh amongst other things
gives gives you a bit of
humility
uh as you pursue that Spirit of creating
that you you spoke to creating Beauty in
the world and as dfki said Beauty will
save the world uh Mark I'm a huge fan of
yours um honored to be able to call you
a friend and I am looking forward to uh
um both kicking your ass and you kicking
my ass on the mat tomorrow in jiujitsu
uh this this incredible Sport and art
that we both uh will both participate in
thank you so much for talking today
thank you for everything you're doing in
so many exciting Realms of technology
and human life I can't wait to talk to
you again in the metaverse thank
you thanks for listening to this convers
a with Mark Zuckerberg to support this
podcast please check out our sponsors in
the description and now let me leave you
with some words from asak
KMOV it is change continuing change
inevitable change that is the dominant
factor in society
today no sensible decision can be made
any longer without taking into account
not only the world as it is but the
world as it will
be thank you for listening and hope to
see you next time