Mark Zuckerberg has published a 6,500 word essay declaring that the future is for everyone, promising a world where each person will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands their goals and cares.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Rebecca Bellan, and I discussed why not everyone is buying this vision. Our colleague Russell Brandom noted that the manifesto is exactly why people do not like AI.
Comparing Zuckerberg to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who recently pushed back against the idea that he is an AI doomer, Rebecca said the Meta CEO seems to be positioning himself almost like an anti-Dario. The problem, however, is Zuckerberg and Meta’s history.
“You look back to the social media days, [Zuckerberg] was saying that he wants to make sure that everyone has an outlet for talking to their friends and having a social network,” Rebecca said. “And what do we have instead? We have ragebaiting and advertisements, and not connection.”
The strategy behind the shift
Rebecca Bellan: Cynically, I think that this is an attempt for Meta to win in a different way. They are not winning in the frontier, closed-model space. They are not necessarily even winning in the open space. But when it comes to personal empowerment, as Mark Zuckerberg talks about in his letter, “The Future Is for Everyone,” that is where he is trying to win. He is trying to provide the models that people will use for their own personal AI on their own personal devices.
I think last year, when he published a similar “Futures for Everyone” letter, [the promise] was that a lot of that AI would go onto the glasses, the wearables, but it is not really clear what the final hardware form factor for this would be, and I guess he is like leaving it up to the individual to choose.
So his idea is that you are using [Meta’s new AI model] Glimmer for managing your schedule, drafting messages, organizing files, it is always on, it can operate anytime, anywhere, with or without an internet connection.
But then there is still Muse Spark, so that maintains a way for them to have some level of control over, still, its most capable models, and provide a revenue outlet for people who want to scale their compute, and people who want to like do larger projects, or companies that might want to do larger projects.
Meta’s standing in the AI market
Anthony Ha: I imagine the part of the context here is also — Meta has made some very serious investments in AI, last year there [were] also all these stories about how much money they were trying to pay for AI scientists, but in terms of who we think of as the leading companies, the frontier labs, Meta does not tend to come up in the conversation.
Another way it does not come up in the conversation is in, you know, what are the popular consumer AI chatbots? Certainly, people are interacting with Meta AI tools in Instagram, in Facebook, but it is not a company that you think of when, “I’m going to go use my personal assistant.” Meta is not that yet, and so it feels, to a certain extent, this is an attempt to reposition them and try to claim space that they really have not been that successful at before. Is that fair?
Rebecca: I think that is really fair to say. And I would take it with a grain of salt because Mark Zuckerberg loves to put out a vision of what his companies will do for people and how they will empower people. And so far, what that looks like for Meta — I mean, of course, Llama is great; it is a great tool and open source, but I think that on a consumer level, how are people using Meta AI? Well, there is like a lot of creepy-ass chatbots.
My TLDR is: I think that [Zuckerberg’s] letter and his idea of personal empowerment is putting a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths because it is him who is saying it. Russell Brandom, our AI editor, wrote about this this week. You look back to the social media days, he was saying that he wants to make sure that everyone has an outlet for talking to their friends and having a social network. And what do we have instead? We have ragebaiting and advertisements, and not connection.
Skepticism about the messenger and the message
Kirsten Korosec: Yeah, I think that the manifesto did not strike the right note for a lot of people. And to Russell’s point, which he makes in this column, is it is what is making people hate AI or hate on AI — because, to your point, it is coming from Zuckerberg, and I do think also it feels very Pollyannish in a way. He has put these thoughts out there in the past, and it really does not provide what I think is a more realistic picture, but instead casts AI as this great tool for humanity. That might be the case, but there will also be extreme costs to that, and I think that is why the negative reaction to it has been so widespread.
Rebecca: It feels like he is positioning himself as almost like an anti-Dario. I do not know. There is a lot of talk among the frontier labs: “We are pacing the frontier, pulling back, focus on safety. We need to slow down development.” They are not doing any of that, of course, but they are talking about it, and because of all these recent cybersecurity incidents that we have had.
Whereas Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, is like, “No, no, we do not slow down. We cannot afford to give an inch to China, and slowing down would only hurt the individual, who can be empowered by this technology.”
But I mean, I was like, “Oh, maybe I’ll try to download Muse Glimmer and see what I can do with it.” Can I download it to my MacBook? No. You need specific hardware. I forget what the hardware is — it is not actually that accessible to the average person.
Kirsten: It is not for everyone. Not yet.
Anthony: The one positive thing I will say for this very long manifesto — 6,500 words, longer than almost anything that has been published on TechCrunch — is that there is one sentence where he says, “If you are an AI doomer and you believe that that is the future that AI is going to bring, why are you building this stuff?”
Which I think is fair. Although my big takeaway from that is not that the AI future is great, but it makes you wonder about people who are making these predictions and then pushing ahead anyway.
I also wanted to talk a little bit about Russell’s point, which I think is totally a fair one, about how part of it is the messenger. For a variety of reasons, I think that people are suspicious of Mark Zuckerberg, of Meta, arguably that could become amplified over the next few months as this new Facebook movie is coming out.
But it is also about the future that is being promised by these AI companies, and often why we see these viral pile-ons whenever Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg or somebody is making a prediction about this AI future and people essentially say, “Who wants this?” One of the more famous recent examples was Sam Altman talking about the idea of like, “You could use ChatGPT to make podcasts about your kids’ interests to listen to while driving to school,” And of course everyone is like, “Why don’t you just talk to your kid?”
Part of the manifesto was — half of it was just stuff where it is just, “It is going to unleash all this creativity and invention,” and it is so abstract. If you are skeptical about AI, none of that is going to convince you, because it seems unreal. And then the stuff that is more concrete, about these personal coaches and assistants, there is some aspects that appeal, but a lot of [them] that do not.
