Top
Best
New

Posted by root-parent 21 hours ago

Mark Zuckerberg attacks 'closed' AI rivals as Meta returns to open models(www.ft.com)
https://archive.is/20LOJ

https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/

512 points | 474 commentspage 2
imPndy 15 hours ago|
I have to ask, is this "returns to open models" even correct, considering from a quick look the facebook huggingface collections[0] has been actively releasing different kind of models almost monthly for long time now, possibly even some actual open source ones (looks like Sam 3D had a dataset collection, but didnt look more into it).

Maybe they are not as noteworthy as the recent release, maybe they are too niche for general audience, but its not like they just stopped releasing open weight things and this is their big return, unless i am missing something?

[0]: https://huggingface.co/facebook/collections

rufasterisco 20 hours ago||
https://archive.is/p1ehR

The essay from Zuckerberg

riazrizvi 17 hours ago||
Thank you! Okay yes well this manifesto is a contradiction. Yes good let's keep empowering ppl by putting AI into their hands, I love the opening. No bad we don't do that by handing you all our personal context to make these agents "work for us 24/7 to better our lives".

I'm the agent doing that in my life, that's my fucking job. I will continue to use dumb agents that I direct, because only I retain ownership and sole rights to my personal context on which my decisions are based.

rufasterisco 9 hours ago||
I don’t understand. The model is open, you can host it and use it without giving Meta anything.

I’m not saying Meta is not eager to syphon data from users, but I don’t see how this happens via this specific product.

sammyteee 20 hours ago|||
God, it's a bit War and Peace...
ipsum2 19 hours ago|||
Non-archived version: https://www.meta.com/thefutureisforeveryone/ since its not paywalled.
antonmks 20 hours ago||
So many em dashes...
wolttam 20 hours ago|||
There really wasn’t that many and this did not have the voice of written-by-an-LLM to me

And they’re not em-dashes -- they’re double hyphens.

vehemenz 19 hours ago||
This is unneedfully obtuse. Double hyphens are a stand-in for em dashes in most contexts.
efromvt 19 hours ago||
I think the context here is that em dashes are usually generated verbatim from LLMs? I haven't seen them generate a lot of double hyphens; I suppose the post could be laundering them to double dashes, but if you're gonna try to hide LLM prose just drop them entirely? [please correct me if I'm wrong and double dashes are also an LLM tell - genuinely don't know]
wolttam 19 hours ago||
My comment was trying to point on the inanity of calling out "so many em-dashes" on a post where it doesn't seem that obvious it was LLM generated. I added some of my own inanity with my remark about them being double-dashes, even though some people undoubtedly find-and-replace the em-dashes in their LLM-generated content something else to try and make it appear more authentic.

But perhaps the best approach would have been to down-vote and move on.

moomin 20 hours ago||
The truth is all frontier models are closed. This isn't even an open source vs open weights thing. Even if you accepted that open weights are "open" the capital requirements for running your own Kimi 3 model are significant. It's not like gcc, where the binary just works well enough on random hardware.
microtonal 19 hours ago||
Even if I cannot run open weight models on my own hardware, I can choose from a number of different inference providers and choose them based on pricing, reliability, speed, privacy policy, etc. There is a healthy competition.

Also, not a single provider can pull the rug if I'd like to use a particular model.

solenoid0937 7 hours ago||
Sure but that's true with the closed models as well. They run on different providers and you can choose the cloud provider you prefer.
lumost 20 hours ago|||
There is no requirement to own the hardware. Even if you own your servers and GPUs - you would not own the power plant, real estate, or internet infrastructure to support it.

It's trivial to rent all of the above components in a competitive market under different periods, you may simply rent the token output from someone who put in the effort on this as well.

An open frontier model induces margin compression on training and inference prices across the industry.

InsideOutSanta 20 hours ago|||
This is like claiming that Linux isn't open because you don't have a PC. Models can be open-weight even if you don't have the hardware to run them.
A_D_E_P_T 20 hours ago|||
Deepseek V4 Flash works on consumer-grade hardware, and it's extremely good.
rft 20 hours ago|||
I get that argument, but I don't think it is that bad. Open weights that are out of reach for local use are still within reach for groups of people or small to medium companies. Even if you only rent enough cloud GPUs to run the weights for a few hours, you still get to do anything you want with it.

Worst case you can still archive the weights and hope for capable hardware to get affordable. At the same time this archive is the base line for a new frontier lab to start over if required. I see open weights as a pure upside even though I can't run the bigger models in my home lab.

kube-system 14 hours ago|||
"Open" in regards to software typically refers to a combination of public availability and shared legal rights to use the software. It almost never refers to hardware requirements.

There's something to be said for making these technologies equitable to those with less resources, but that's due to the cost of hardware and the nature of how transformer models scale... not really anything to do with "open"ness.

gorgoiler 12 hours ago|||
I’m not refuting your point but, ironically, wasn’t gcc first developed at a time when hackers were trading favors for CPU time on shared mainframes and the hardware was impossibly expensive?
logicchains 19 hours ago|||
>the capital requirements for running your own Kimi 3 model are significant

You don't need much capital up front, you can just rent servers to run it. It's going to be more expensive than openrouter though because you probably don't have economies of scale if you're the only customer.

scotty79 19 hours ago||
If all frontier models got opensourced 5 months after they were made available as closed it would be a great world. And it is a great world because that's exactly what open weight Chinese models are doing. They give you same capacity that was closed, just 5 months after they were released.

I'm hoping that all software will be getting opensource clones on par with original software 5 months after the closed source software release.

1vuio0pswjnm7 7 hours ago||
10 Aug 2026 14:49:05 UTC | Mark Zuckerberg Lays Out New AI Vision in 6,500-Word Essay | https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mark-zuckerberg-lays-out-new-ai-... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49244449

10 Aug 2026 17:15:20 UTC | Zuckerberg Posts 6,500-Word Essay About Giving Everyone AI Superintelligence | https://www.404media.co/mark-zuckerberg-posts-deranged-6-500... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49246721

10 Aug 2026 18:18:20 UTC | Zuckerberg makes a case for unleashing Pandora's box | https://www.theverge.com/tech/977395/meta-mark-zuckerberg-su... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247557

twright 15 hours ago||
This paragraph is wild.

> As a thought experiment, imagine only one person had a superintelligent lawyer. They would have an unfair advantage in court -- even if they were wrong on the merits. That would lead to a worse society. But now imagine everyone has a superintelligent lawyer. In this case, justice would be carried out much more fairly and efficiently than it is today when there is often an imbalance in skills and resources in litigation.

This would only be true in a vacuum. Ignoring several leaps of progress where it would suddenly be allowed for an AI to represent one in court (imagine the size of the context window) and you could also call it from prison. That is not what is imbalanced about the US court system. Whoever has more money can drown someone in court filings and court fees and then drop their case financially ruining someone.

It's also funny how the interest of "AI for everyone" only extends to the national interest but I guess he's got to make sure he stays in good graces with the current administration.

afro88 15 hours ago||
I'm not a fan of Zuckerberg in the least, but one area a super intelligent lawyer would be fine at is being drowned in court filings and paperwork

The bigger problem with his argument IMO is that even with open models, it's still the person or organisation with the most money / access to GPU compute winning. They run the larger model (or collection of models), they can process more tokens through them in the same amount of time etc

Ajedi32 15 hours ago|||
I think there's a point of diminishing returns here. A more competent lawyer can only do so much if you're wrong on the merits, assuming your opponent also has a decently competent lawyer.
altcognito 15 hours ago||||
Naively, you'd think the judicial systems would invoke "judgement" on the underlying purpose of dumping content in the form of filings, paperwork, etc...
9dev 15 hours ago|||
That is true… unless AI were to end up as a public good, available to everyone, not in the hands of a few oligarchs.

Radical times may need radically different approaches.

twright 14 hours ago|||
I think that's what's ringing to me about the whole piece. There is a large assumption of equity. There is this section header:

> Everyone will have free or affordable access to these tools.

"access" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, yes everyone has access to the US healthcare system. Is it affordable for everyone? Not even close, but politicians will always phrase it that way as a non-agreement to proposals of universal healthcare.

thewebguyd 14 hours ago|||
This is the only valid future for tech like this IMO.

Should any kind of "superintelligence" exist, it must be a public good, available to all. Not controlled by a small handful of oligarchs and profit seeking entities.

rufasterisco 9 hours ago|||
AI is having an impact on the legal system already.

https://archive.is/CzfHj

vovavili 15 hours ago|||
I think his hope is that a either a fully automated superintelligent AI lawyer or something close that won't be as costly to guide would be infinitely more affordable than the current human lawyers.
PunchyHamster 15 hours ago||
Yes but if lawyer was "just a bit of AI" you can run at fraction of the cost of hiring law firm, you couldn't just drown them as easily.

> Whoever has more money can drown someone in court filings and court fees and then drop their case financially ruining someone.

and where the money is going ? to the lawyers...

edukite 7 hours ago|||
Only in a world were AI companies can subsidize AI usage indefinitely. In reality AI is not cheap and larger & more potent model it's usage costs is more expensive
nadermx 15 hours ago|||
or in this case, to the AI company who runs the lawyer.
nerevarthelame 15 hours ago||
I prefer open models. But in his essay, Zuckerberg's broader picture of the future is not one I want to embrace: everyone with a personal agent that has information on and involvement with every aspect of our lives, including our relationships and hobbies. Like, his daughter loves to bake, so his AI agent chooses recipes and orders ingredients - as if though those aren't enjoyable and meaningful parts of cooking.

Another example Zuckerberg gives is an LLM analyzing his sleep patterns. Do you need an AI to tell you if you're fucking exhausted every day? Is that analysis somehow going to give you more time to sleep?

It's a technocratic fairy tale founded on the idea that modern problems are driven by a lack of personal analysis rather than external pressures that are often systemic and out of our control. So far, LLMs have made a lot of those systemic issues worse: concentrating more wealth in a smaller number of people's hands, increasing consumer electricity and electronic prices, etc.

dofm 15 hours ago|
This is alas not only his imagining, is it:

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-parenting-debate-sam-altm...

I think you have to pick your battles here. Is this weirdo optimised-human future going to happen? Maybe, maybe not. I hope not. But if it does I'd rather it happened with compute in my house, and I don't even have kids to worry about.

mhviraf 6 hours ago||
Not a Meta fan per say but their contribution to open source has always been great. Examples include PyTorch (has had huge impact on velocity of ML research), Llama models, segment anything, many notable research papers from FAIR, etc. I never thought I would say this but I’m with Zuck on this. The call for slowing down AI development for safety seems like an excuse for reducing opex for training better models to stay relevant.
darepublic 9 hours ago||
It's ironic Zuckerberg would criticize anyone for closing stuff up. Facebook being the classic walled garden. That said the enemy of my enemy etc.
jillesvangurp 2 hours ago||
Meta's problem is not models but doing something productive with them. Meta never really nailed that. Just like Google is struggling with this. And MS. It's the classic disruptors dilemma. In order to embrace the new thing, they have to let go of the old thing that has made them rich.

If you look beyond the somewhat tone deaf leadership, the somewhat stale business model of social media, etc. Meta doesn't actually have a whole lot to bring to the table. They probably managed to hire/keep some AI talent with the help of large salaries. But they are knee deep into having made big figure commitments to data center capacity with nothing to show for it yet. Their AI effort is increasingly looking like a repeat of their failed metaverse strategy. A lot of expensive bets that are not paying off.

It all boils down to Mark Zuckerberg not being the visionary and innovator he thinks he is. Like many billionaires he confuses him lucking out in his twenties with some magical leadership qualities or brain capacity he has. And the reality of course is that he lucked into building a nice social networking thingy not hindered by too much technical skill or deep scientific knowledge. Granted, he did that well. But that's 20 years ago. And then he added to that with some strategic acquisitions of stuff that others did (Whatsapp, Instagram, etc) that you might label as spectacularly good acquisitions for Meta.

But he's not going to reinvent AI. He's way out of his depth there. A bit of a technical lightweight without much academic credentials or much of a vision. His "vision" here is copying what the Chinese and others are already doing well. What's lacking is a vision as to how his version of that is going to be any better and win over all those users. Or indeed a vision as to what people are going to do with all this AI. Apparently there is no vision for that in the context of Meta's own products. This is a company going through the motions of being an AI company without any vision whatsoever as to why they are doing that other than a fear of missing out.

franze 19 hours ago|
i was wondering why meta has such a hard time with llm development

its the organisational goal of that endeavour

they are doing it in a phase of firing people

so the goal of llm at meta is "to make people redundant" and no matter of HR/PR speak can change it

antrophic and openai have the goal "lets create the future"

whomever they hire and no matter how much money they spend on it, the goal alone will create very different outcomes.

paxys 19 hours ago||
Here’s a personal story from back when I was at Meta that should tell you everything you need to know about how things get built and shipped there.

I was working on a service that was a bit of a disaster. Terrible reliability, performance issues, needlessly complex and brittle code, outages all the time. And this was something that everyone using Facebook or IG directly interacts with. My first couple months were spent desperately trying to get it back in order.

Once when I was in the middle of a SEV-1 my manager set up a meeting and said “you have been doing great work on the operational side, but we already have enough to put in that bucket on your PSC. Stop working on this for the rest of the half and ship one of <useless projects> instead, otherwise I won’t be able to save you in the next review.”

I realized then that I had wrongly thought the team was collectively responsible for ensuring a good user experience, when really everyone at the company is individually responsible for ensuring their own success.

ergocoder 16 hours ago||
Your story is an extremely typical one. It's even worse at older tech companies like Google, Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM.

Yet these companies are doing well by any standard. Sure, IBM is bad but it's still a $100B company.

Who is even doing useful projects at these companies? Every story I've heard is everyone is doing useless projects for promotions.

Maybe I just don't know how large companies work.

thefourthchime 17 hours ago|||
The goal of all companies is to make more money. Nobody likes getting rid of people, actual people (managers) have to do it, and they hate doing it.

It's possible that a lot of people get laid off because of AI, but it's also possible that Javin's paradox kicks in and employment goes up. Nobody knows yet, but I hope for the positive outcome.

franze 17 hours ago||
i disagree

earning money is an effect of running a company, not a goal.

its like saying the goal of an olympic swimmer is to stay afloat. no, staying afloat is a prerequisite of winning. not a goal in itself.

thefourthchime 13 hours ago||
There is a category for companies that don’t value making more money.

Non profits.

toyg 19 hours ago||
> antrophic and openai have the goal "lets create the future"

Thanks for the laugh, I needed it.

They all do it for the same reason: to make a lot of money by selling it to companies who want to cut labor costs.

More comments...