Meta is getting personal..again
+ a goodbye to open source
Zuck has published a letter* on Meta’s new AI positioning - this is a very interesting narrative shift from all that Meta has been doing or claiming in AI space.
“This is distinct from others in the industry who believe superintelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output. At Meta, we believe that people pursuing their individual aspirations is how we have always made progress expanding prosperity, science, health, and culture. “
This is clearly, a jab on Openai/Anthropic/Google - but here is the ultimate truth: Meta has failed to achieve anything (in a significantly bigger way) out of Llama. While open source story was a good start, Deepseek and other open source models have garnered more love than Llama, whose capability has been questioned time and again.
Meta is getting personal. Again.
- The shift is from ‘do more in less time’ (i.e. productivity AI tools like coding) to ‘be more yourself’, i.e. personal superintelligence, which is fascinating.
If trends continue, then you'd expect people to spend less time in productivity software, and more time creating and connecting. Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful.
In short, sell more personal hardware - expect Meta Glasses everywhere.
Plus, I believe Meta is also rate-limiting its enterprise ambitions (if there was).
Goodbye, Open source?
While Llama was among the first frontier models to go open source (and that served as a core differentiator / probably the only one), others like Deepseek (and now Z/Zhipu) are in a different league.
Zuck, after spending millions in AI talent hiring is now hinting at saying goodbye to Meta’s open source ambitions - time for RoI check?
We believe the benefits of superintelligence should be shared with the world as broadly as possible. That said, superintelligence will raise novel safety concerns. We'll need to be rigorous about mitigating these risks and careful about what we choose to open source. Still, we believe that building a free society requires that we aim to empower people as much as possible.
The big question : will developer community buy Zuck’s dreams?
What about consumers?
What’s your take?
A related link:
*Letter link