Mark Zuckerberg says Meta faces a risk that outweighs even the loss of staggering sums in artificial intelligence spending.
In a new interview on the ACCESS Podcast, the Meta CEO says he has weighed the risks and the rewards of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the AI race.
While Zuckerberg acknowledges that the financial stakes are extraordinary, he highlights that falling behind is not an option for Meta.
“And if we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously. But what I’d say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side. If you build too slowly, and then super intelligence is possible in three years, but you built it out assuming it would be there in five years, then you’re just out of position on what I think is going to be the most important technology that enables the most new products, innovation, and value creation in history.
So, I don’t know. I mean, it’s, I don’t want to be kind of cavalier about it. I mean, obviously, these are very large amounts of money, and we’re trying to get it right.
But I think the risk, at least for a company like Meta, is probably in not being aggressive enough rather than being somewhat too aggressive.”
Zuckerberg’s sentiments come as reports emerged that Meta and Oracle are in the midst of a conversation about a multi-year cloud computing deal to the tune of $20 billion. Oracle would supply Meta with additional computing power to train and deploy AI models, complementing the company’s existing cloud providers, a person close to the matter said.