AI Scientist Warned Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg That Facebook And Instagram May Go 'Extinct': Report (Image: Facebook/Yann LeCun)

Meta”s top AI scientist had reportedly warned CEO Mark Zuckerberg about the “possible extinction” of Instagram and Facebook if they did not catch up with OpenAI”s technology. The New York Times reported that Meta“s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, warned Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that OpenAI”s ChatGPT could spell trouble for the tech giant. Yann LeCun also reportedly said that Meta needed to act fast before it was too late.

The New York Times, citing sources, reported that this conversation between Yann LeCun and Mark Zuckerberg happened at Meta”s headquarters in California, six weeks after OpenAI introduced ChatGPT in November 2022. The scientist told Mark Zuckerberg that they needed to catch up with OpenAI”s technology and should push forward with work on its own AI assistant. Yann LeCun also warned that Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram could become extinct if Meta did not catch up with ChatGPT, the New York Times reported.

Mark Zuckerberg did not respond immediately to LeCun”s observation. However, the New York Times reported that LeCun”s comments irked the Meta CEO. Later that evening, Mark Zuckerberg told LeCun that he had been thinking about what he said. Zuckerberg also reportedly said that Lecun”s observations were right. Notably, in February 2023, Meta launched its Large Language Model Meta AI (LLaMA). According to Meta, it was a state-of-the-art foundational large language model developed to help researchers advance their work in this subfield of artificial intelligence.

In July, Meta made a significant development by unveiling Llama 2, the next generation of the open-source large language model. Meta claimed that Llama 2 outperformed other open-source language models on various external benchmarks. In September, the company unveiled Meta AI in beta, an enhanced conversational assistant that is available on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. “Meta AI is a new assistant you can interact with like a person,” mentioned Meta in its blog while announcing the arrival of Meta AI. Along with Meta, tech rivals like Google and Microsoft are also making heavy investments in AI technology.