Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that his business is joining the race to create super artificial intelligence, pitting it against Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google. The goal, also known as artificial general intelligence or AGI, according to an interview with The Verge, is to construct AI that can problem solve and rationalize on the same level as humans. AGI is an often-stated aim of OpenAI, the firm that developed ChatGPT, and it is the primary focus of Google’s AI teams. Zuckerberg stated that general intelligence was now his company’s mission, primarily to help attract the top developers in the rapidly expanding AI sector.
This OpenAI-made chatbot sparked an artificial intelligence frenzy
“We’ve come to this view that, to build the products that we want to build, we need to build for general intelligence,” Zuckerberg told The Verge. “I think that’s important to convey because many of the best researchers want to work on more ambitious problems.” Tech companies, including Elon Musk’s startup xAI, are battling to attract programmers and thinkers to develop generative AI models like the one that drives ChatGPT. This OpenAI-made chatbot sparked an artificial intelligence frenzy.
According to digital media outlet The Information, Google uses stock incentives to keep its researchers from being poached, but OpenAI offers top employees multimillion-dollar pay packages. Beyond the paycheck, many of these professionals want to work for organizations that are dedicated to the goal of developing human-level AI. During the conversation, Zuckerberg stated that AGI “couldn’t be put in a one-sentence, pithy definition.” “You can quibble about if general intelligence is akin to human-level intelligence, or is it like human-plus, or is it some far-future super intelligence,” he went on to say.
Speaking at a session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Meta’s Nick Clegg said: “Ask data scientists for a description of AGI, and you’ll receive a different one from each one. There isn’t even agreement on what AGI implies.” For now, Meta has launched its own AI model, Llama 2, and Zuckerberg said that his teams are working on the next iteration. Amid the desire to develop AGI, there is concern that the technology’s capabilities will become too powerful and beyond human control. These issues contributed to a corporate meltdown at OpenAI last November when the company’s board ousted and restored CEO Sam Altman over concerns that he was recklessly speeding up AI development.