{"text":[[{"start":8.22,"text":"Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has argued against allowing powerful AI to become concentrated in the hands of companies and governments, as the Big Tech giant resumes making some of its AI models freely available to outside developers."}],[{"start":21.62,"text":"The $1.5tn company on Monday released the underlying parameters of Muse Glimmer, a new “open” AI model that developers will be able to download and modify. Meta said it would also release those parameters, known as “weights”, for a version of its more powerful Muse Spark model in the coming weeks."}],[{"start":39.52,"text":"Alongside the announcement, Zuckerberg published an essay on Meta’s website outlining a plan to distribute “free” and highly capable AI to “billions of people”, in an effort to empower individuals and “check and balance the power of institutions”."}],[{"start":54.64,"text":"In an apparent attack on groups such as Google, Anthropic and OpenAI, he wrote: “Most other labs are focused on building AI for companies, governments, or other institutions. So if those labs lead, then the balance of power will favor larger institutions over individuals”."}],[{"start":71.16,"text":"The pledges marks a return to the “open” AI strategy that Meta has used to distinguish itself from rivals."}],[{"start":77.48,"text":"Meta declined to release the underlying weights of Muse Spark earlier this year, citing safety concerns, as competition among leading AI companies increasingly focuses on how widely their most capable technology should be distributed."}],[{"start":90.68,"text":"On Monday, Meta also unveiled a $1bn fund for communities hosting its US data centres as it accelerates the infrastructure build-out needed to support those ambitions. Big Tech companies have been the target of a backlash from local residents near data centres, as the developments can compete for scarce resources such as power and water."}],[{"start":110.08,"text":"Zuckerberg’s intervention comes as Meta spends billions of dollars chasing the frontier of AI and promoting his vision of “personal superintelligence” — advanced AI agents intended to help individuals with everything from health and hobbies to finances and careers."}],[{"start":126.06,"text":"But Meta’s share price fell nearly 8 per cent after it revealed last month that its spending on AI infrastructure had pushed its free cash flow down by 91 per cent. The social media group’s shares have fallen nearly a fifth over the past year, as it has poured money into hiring top AI talent and building AI data centres."}],[{"start":145.08,"text":"Zuckerberg suggested the company would press on with investing in open-weight models, criticising the “closed” approach of rival labs that have made billions in revenue from selling access to their models."}],[{"start":156.28,"text":"“Some argue that the best way to reduce risk is to restrict the capabilities individuals can access,” wrote Zuckerberg, arguing that “widely deployed open source systems have proven more secure because more people can identify vulnerabilities”. He gave the example of Hugging Face, a start-up that relied on open models to patch its security systems after closed models refused its requests on safety grounds."}],[{"start":181.28,"text":"Zuckerberg’s comments came as Chinese AI labs narrow the gap between their own open models and the most advanced proprietary offerings from US labs."}],[{"start":190.52,"text":"OpenAI and Anthropic have accused Chinese rivals of training their models through the outputs of US labs, using a technique called distillation."}],[{"start":198.44,"text":"However, Zuckerberg came out in favour of the practice, saying it was “important to protect the principle that you can learn from anything you observe” and rejecting the idea that distillation was “harmful”."}],[{"start":209.56,"text":"Zuckerberg said that Meta would place the power to review the safety of its models in the hands of its independent board of directors."}],[{"start":216.64,"text":"The Meta founder criticised rival AI labs for espousing a “discourse . . . so filled with doom”."}],[{"start":222.68,"text":"“The notion that AI is so dangerous that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power seems inherently problematic,” he said. “As everyone gains more powerful tools, each person will become more capable of shaping the future, not less.”"}],[{"start":241.24,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1786364136_9314.mp3"}