AI Scientist Warned Mark Zuckerberg That Facebook, Instagram May Go ‘Extinct’ If… – News18

When ChatGPT came out, the world got its first glimpse at what generative AI could do. As it started to take over the mainstream, rival companies like Google were reportedly caught off guard by the unexpected competition. And per reports, Google internally declared it a “code red.”

Meta, which is focused on its mixed-reality metaverse ambitions, was another company that felt the heat. In fact, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was reportedly warned that Facebook and Instagram could go extinct if he didn’t act fast enough to create a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

As per The New York Times, Dr. LeCun, Meta’s chief A.I. scientist, had warned Zuckerberg about OpenAI’s moves. “He said Meta should match OpenAI’s technology and also push forward with work on an A.I. assistant that could do stuff on the internet on your behalf,” New York Times reported. “Websites like Facebook and Instagram could become extinct, he warned. A.I. was the future,” the report further added.

Zuckerberg eventually came around to Dr. LeCun’s way of thinking. The model his Paris team built became known as LLaMa, or Large Language Model Meta AI. Meta has kept up its heavy investment in AI since then, and earlier this year, the company released the next generation of the LLaMa model, called Llama 2.

Meta released the model as open source—meaning that it is available for free for both commercial and research purposes. However, Meta’s model is less powerful than Google’s Bard and OpenAI’s GPT-4, and even Meta’s own research paper acknowledges the same.

In addition to Llama 2, Meta has also doubled down on launching several new AI-powered products like the Meta AI chatbot. The new chatbot would be available across Meta apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and in the future, it will also come to Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Quest 3.