- Google CEO Sundar Pichai praised Mark Zuckerberg for Fb’s breakthrough in AI in 2021.
- However Zuckerberg did not actually know what Pichai was referring to.
- The dialog spurred Zuckerberg to start out specializing in AI, per Bloomberg.
AI could also be a key precedence for Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, however that wasn’t all the time the case.
In 2021, Zuckerberg met Google CEO Sundar Pichai at an Allen & Co. convention in Idaho. Throughout their assembly, Pichai expressed his admiration for an AI breakthrough that Fb had achieved.
Nevertheless, Zuckerberg did not know what achievement Pichai was speaking about, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing sources aware of the assembly.
The assembly ended up igniting Zuckerberg’s curiosity within the area. Zuckerberg requested a briefing on his firm’s newest work on AI after speaking to Pichai, per Bloomberg.
Meta’s former vp for AI, Jerome Pesenti, informed Bloomberg that Zuckerberg has now “educated himself much more” in regards to the topic.
Zuckerberg was, at one level, centered on his firm’s different fields of labor. The Fb founder flirted with cryptocurrencies in 2019 when the corporate introduced that it was launching its cryptocurrency, Libra. Regulatory hurdles ultimately brought on curiosity within the mission to peter out.
Zuckerberg then determined to make an enormous push into the metaverse. In October 2021, he renamed Fb, rechristening it “Meta.”
The technique, sadly, has but to repay for Zuckerberg. The corporate division that works on digital and augmented actuality tasks misplaced $4 billion within the first quarter of 2023.
However Zuckerberg has been fast to pivot his firm towards engaged on AI.
“By way of funding priorities, AI shall be our greatest funding space in 2024 for each engineering and compute assets,” Zuckerberg stated in an earnings name final 12 months.
“We will proceed deprioritising plenty of non-AI tasks throughout the corporate to shift folks in the direction of engaged on AI,” he added.
The elevated focus appeared to have paid off for Zuckerberg’s Meta, which has now turn out to be one of many main gamers within the AI race.
Meta has sought to differentiate itself from opponents like OpenAI by advocating for an open-source method towards AI improvement. In July, the corporate launched Llama 2, a principally open-source AI mannequin.
Representatives for Meta and Google didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark from Enterprise Insider despatched exterior common enterprise hours.
