Zuckerberg Pushes US to Open up AI

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called on the US to lower barriers to open artificial intelligence, arguing that American companies risk losing ground to Chinese rivals.

Meta also released Muse Glimmer, a smaller open-weight model designed to run directly on consumer computers and perform tasks such as coding and administrative work. The company said it also plans to release open weights for its more powerful Muse Spark model.

In a lengthy essay titled The Future Is for Everyone, Zuckerberg warned against concentrating control over advanced AI in the hands of a small number of companies developing closed models. He argued that wider access to powerful AI would encourage innovation and help the US compete with increasingly capable Chinese models.

Zuckerberg also called for a more flexible US regulatory approach to AI development and defended model distillation, a technique in which smaller models learn from the outputs of more powerful systems.

Rather than imposing rigid requirements before advanced models can be released, he advocated closer cooperation between AI developers and the US government during development.

Meta also plans to launch a $1bn Future Is for Everyone Fund to support communities hosting its data centers. The initiative is intended to address local concerns about the enormous infrastructure required to develop and operate increasingly powerful AI systems.

The company is also establishing board-level governance for decisions on the release of advanced models, with safety criteria determining whether particular systems can be made openly available.

(Reuters, Max)