Zuckerberg: AI Should Not Be Controlled by a Few Big Companies

Recently, Google has removed apps including Naukri, 99acres, and Bharat Matrimony from its app store for violating its billing policies.

In the release of the powerful open-source model Llama 3, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed his vision for artificial intelligence, explicitly stating that he does not want AI to end up like mobile apps, controlled by Apple and Google.

"I think a common problem with the mobile ecosystem is that there are two gatekeeper companies, Apple and Google, that tell you what you can build," Zuckerberg said in a recent podcast.

Centralization of power

With these two companies controlling new apps and models, Zuckerberg believes it is best to build his own model to ensure they do not fall into this situation. "I don't want any other company telling us what we can build," he said.

Challenging the tech giants publicly, Zuckerberg expressed his dissatisfaction with how Apple or Google's app stores control the release of content. He even mentioned past instances where Apple did not allow them to launch new features.

With the addition of artificial intelligence, the situation of a few companies holding power becomes even more critical, as their closed models will control APIs and determine what others can build with them. Zuckerberg believes that the open-source concept of Llama should address this issue.

Meta is doing what OpenAI should have done

"In many ways, its open-source license is very permissive, we just have some restrictions on the biggest companies using it," Zuckerberg said, clarifying that these restrictions are not meant to prevent large companies from using it, but rather if they intend to use Meta's products to build and resell for profit, they should establish appropriate partnerships with them.

"If Microsoft Azure or Amazon wants to resell this model, then we should get some revenue share from it. So, come talk to us before you do that," he said.

The open-source approach of Llama 3 has been widely adopted since its release last week. Clem Delangue, co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, said that in just four days, there have been nearly 1000 variations of the Llama 3 model on the HF platform.

The open-source route will also allow users' work to remain unique and unaffected by others. "We will be able to do what we want to do. We will benefit, and all the systems - our own and the community's - will get better because it's open-source," Zuckerberg said.

The future of AI reasoning

The future mode of communication with the digital world will heavily rely on AI agents. Zuckerberg referred to Meta AI as the smartest and freest AI assistant, suggesting that Meta AI will become a platform of the "general assistant" type that people can use.

"I think it will transition from more of a chatbot-like mode to where you can give it more complex tasks and it will go and do those tasks," he said.

Autonomous AI agents have been on the rise, with many tech leaders and investors making the same prediction. Recently, entrepreneur Vinod Khosla predicted that in 10 to 15 years, internet access will be primarily done by AI agents.

He believes that most consumer access to the internet will be through agents that perform tasks on behalf of consumers and prevent robot-like behavior. Having billions of agents on the internet will be normal.

While the future may not be entirely clear, the potential for AI to appear in app stores under the control of large tech companies is what Meta is trying to achieve with Llama.

Furthermore, Google Play Store's improper control over the operations of applications on the platform is not new. Recently, Google removed several popular apps from the app store, including Naukri, 99acres, and Bharat Matrimony, for violating billing policies.