In a surprising turn of events, Elon Musk has publicly praised Mark Zuckerberg for the release of Meta’s latest AI model, Llama 3.1, which has been made open-source. This marks a rare moment of goodwill between the two tech giants, who have had their share of conflicts in the past.
Acknowledging Llama 3.1
Despite their history of disagreements—highlighted by Musk’s previous jabs at Zuckerberg and even a public challenge to a boxing match following the launch of Meta’s Threads—Musk acknowledged Zuckerberg’s contribution to the AI field. On Tuesday, Musk commended Zuckerberg’s decision to open-source Llama 3.1, a move Meta claims sets it apart from competitors like OpenAI’s GPT-4.
In response to a post by former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy on X, Musk remarked, “It is impressive, and Zuck does deserve credit for open-sourcing.”
Huge congrats to @AIatMeta on the Llama 3.1 release!
Few notes:Today, with the 405B model release, is the first time that a frontier-capability LLM is available to everyone to work with and build on. The model appears to be GPT-4 / Claude 3.5 Sonnet grade and the weights are…
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) July 23, 2024
Shared Ambitions in AI
Both Musk and Zuckerberg have been keen to establish dominance in the AI sector. Earlier this year, Zuckerberg revealed to The Verge that Meta had amassed a substantial number of AI chips from Nvidia, positioning the company to achieve significant scale in AI development. “We have built up the capacity to do this at a scale that may be larger than any other individual company,” Zuckerberg said.
On the other hand, Musk’s AI startup, xAI, raised $6 billion during its Series B funding round in May, reflecting his commitment to the AI domain. Musk’s venture into xAI followed his departure from OpenAI’s board in 2018, a company he co-founded with Sam Altman in 2015. Musk has expressed his dissatisfaction with OpenAI’s shift from its original open-source, non-profit model to one now closely tied with Microsoft.
In a February 2023 post on X, Musk criticized OpenAI’s transition, saying, “OpenAI was created as an open source (which is why I named it ‘Open’ AI), non-profit company to serve as a counterweight to Google, but now it has become a closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.”
Zuckerberg’s Open-Source Advocacy
Zuckerberg has consistently championed open-source AI. He believes that such an approach is crucial for a safe and positive future in AI development. In a company blog, Zuckerberg stated, “There is an ongoing debate about the safety of open-source AI models, and my view is that open-source AI will be safer than the alternatives.”
Elon Musk’s recent praise for Mark Zuckerberg over Meta’s open-source Llama 3.1 reflects a rare moment of alignment between the two tech leaders. Their shared commitment to advancing AI technology, albeit through different approaches, highlights the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and its potential impact on the future.
