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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word essay this week declaring that \u201cThe Future is for Everyone\u201d<\/a> and painting an optimistic picture of a future powered by AI, where \u201ceveryone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about.\u201d<\/p>\n On the latest episode of TechCrunch\u2019s Equity podcast<\/a>, Kirsten Korosec, Rebecca Bellan, and I discussed why not everyone is buying Zuckerberg\u2019s vision \u2014 including our colleague Russell Brandom, who wrote that the manifesto is \u201cexactly why people don\u2019t like AI.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Comparing Zuckerberg to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (who spent the weekend pushing back against the idea that he\u2019s an AI doomer<\/a>), Rebecca said the Meta CEO seems to be positioning himself \u201calmost like an anti-Dario.\u201d The problem, however, is Zuckerberg and Meta\u2019s history.<\/p>\n \u201cYou 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,\u201d Rebecca said. \u201cAnd what do we have instead? We have ragebaiting and advertisements, and not connection.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep reading for a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n Rebecca Bellan:<\/strong> Cynically, I think that this is an attempt for Meta to win in a different way. They\u2019re not winning in the frontier, closed-model space. They\u2019re not necessarily even winning in the open space. But when it comes to personal empowerment, as Mark Zuckerberg talks about in his letter, \u201cThe Future Is for Everyone,\u201d that\u2019s where he\u2019s trying to win. He\u2019s trying to provide the models that people will use for their own personal AI on their own personal devices.<\/p>\n I think last year, when he published a [similar] \u201cFutures for Everyone\u201d letter, [the promise] was that a lot of that AI would go onto the glasses, the wearables, but it\u2019s not really clear what the final hardware form factor for this would be, and I guess he\u2019s like leaving it up to the individual to choose.\u00a0<\/p>\n So his idea is that you\u2019re using [Meta\u2019s new AI model<\/a>] Glimmer for managing your schedule, drafting messages, organizing files, it\u2019s always on, it can operate anytime, anywhere, with or without an internet connection.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Anthony Ha:<\/strong> I imagine the part of the context here is also \u2014 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 doesn\u2019t tend to come up in the conversation.<\/p>\n Another way it doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s not a company that you think of when, \u201cI\u2019m going to go use my personal assistant.\u201d Meta isn\u2019t 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 haven\u2019t been that successful at before. Is that fair?<\/p>\n Rebecca: <\/strong>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 \u2014 I mean, of course, Llama is great; it\u2019s a great tool and open source, but I think that on a consumer level, how are people using Meta AI? Well, there\u2019s like a lot of creepy-ass chatbots<\/a>.<\/p>\n My TLDR is: I think that [Zuckerberg\u2019s] letter and his idea of personal empowerment is putting a bad taste in a lot of people\u2019s mouths because it\u2019s him who\u2019s saying it. Russell Brandom, our AI editor, wrote about this this week<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n Kirsten Korosec:<\/strong> Yeah, I think that the manifesto didn\u2019t strike the right note for a lot of people. And to Russell\u2019s point, which he makes in this column, is it\u2019s what\u2019s making people hate AI or hate on AI \u2014\u00a0 because, to your point, it is coming from Zuckerberg, and I do think also it feels very Pollyannish in a way. He\u2019s put these thoughts out there in the past, and it really doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s why the negative reaction to it has been so widespread.<\/p>\n Rebecca:<\/strong> It feels like he\u2019s positioning himself as almost like an anti-Dario. I don\u2019t know. There\u2019s a lot of talk among the frontier labs: \u201cWe\u2019re pacing the frontier, pulling back, focus on safety. We need to slow down development.\u201d They\u2019re not doing any of that, of course, but they\u2019re talking about it, and because of all these recent cybersecurity incidents that we\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n Whereas Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, is like, \u201cNo, 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But I mean, I was like, \u201cOh, maybe I\u2019ll try to download Muse Glimmer and see what I can do with it.\u201d Can I download it to my MacBook? No. You need specific hardware. I forget what the hardware is \u2014 it\u2019s not actually that accessible to the average person.<\/p>\n Kirsten:<\/strong> It\u2019s not for everyone. Not yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anthony: <\/strong>The one positive thing I will say for this very long manifesto \u2014 6,500 words, longer than almost anything that\u2019s been published on TechCrunch \u2014 is that there is one sentence where he says, \u201cIf you are an AI doomer and you believe that that\u2019s the future that AI is going to bring, why are you building this stuff?\u201d<\/p>\n Which I think is fair.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n I also wanted to talk a little bit about Russell\u2019s 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<\/a> is coming out.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s 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, \u201cWho wants this?\u201d One of the more famous recent examples was Sam Altman talking about the idea<\/a> of like, \u201cYou could use ChatGPT to make podcasts about your kids\u2019 interests to listen to while driving to school,\u201d And of course everyone is like, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just talk to your kid?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Part of the manifesto was \u2014 half of it was just stuff where it is just, \u201cIt\u2019s going to unleash all this creativity and invention,\u201d and it\u2019s so abstract. If you\u2019re 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\u2019s some aspects that appeal, but a lot of [them] that don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n