Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, reportedly warned CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the company risked falling behind in the AI sector, particularly regarding OpenAI's ChatGPT. The alarm raised by LeCun prompted the development of Meta's AI assistant, LLaMA, despite encountering issues such as a coding leak.
LeCun's warning prompts LLaMA development
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, reportedly sparked a sense of urgency in CEO Mark Zuckerberg regarding the development of an AI assistant to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT. LeCun's warning was clear - either step up the AI game or risk the extinction of flagship platforms like Facebook and Instagram. This prompted the introduction of Meta's AI assistant, LLaMA, indicating the company's efforts to stay in the AI race.
Code leak intensifies security concerns
Despite some reservations from Meta's legal and policy teams regarding safety, Zuckerberg decided to press ahead with the release of the company's open-sourced AI model. This haste, however, led to an unfortunate incident - a leak of the model's code on 4chan, an online message board. This leak not only played into the internal fears about security but also fueled external concerns about the company's risk assessment practices before releasing new technologies.
The AI race is not exclusive to Meta. Other tech giants like Google and Microsoft were also vying to outpace OpenAI with their own chatbots, albeit with varying degrees of success. However, these challenges didn't deter Meta from its pursuit of AI innovation. The company pushed forward, releasing Llama 2 and unveiling its latest generation of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, indicating its continued commitment to excel in the AI field.
