Under the wave of AI, giving a leather jacket has almost become the highest business social etiquette in the AI field.
On July 29th local time, Huang Renxun, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, had their first public conversation on stage. Huang Renxun still appeared wearing a leather jacket, but Zuckerberg did not wear his classic gray T-shirt, but instead changed into a black T-shirt with Huang Renxun's style. The two discussed new breakthroughs in the field of AI, including generative AI, open source technology, and the construction of virtual worlds.
NVIDIA is an AI arms dealer, and tech giants like Meta are vying for its GPU chips for training and running large language models. During the nearly hour long conversation, Zuckerberg occasionally "pursued" Huang Renxun to make the AI vision come true. At the end of the conversation, Zuckerberg also took out a black fur collar leather jacket and gave it to Huang Renxun, and the two exchanged jackets on site.
In the conversation at this conference, Zuckerberg first mentioned his vision for intelligent agents. He stated that although Meta has launched its artificial intelligence assistant Meta AI, he does not want people to only interact with this type of large-scale AI. He believes that many people want to create their own intelligent agents for various purposes such as entertainment and practicality, and Meta hopes to provide such a platform. "If there is such diversity, the world will become better and more interesting.
During the conversation, Meta announced the launch of an AI Studio based on the Llama 3.1 model. This platform supports users to create exclusive AI agents that can customize their personality, tone, or interests, and use them on social media platforms such as Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp under Meta.
In addition to targeting ordinary users or creators, Zuckerberg also introduced the usage scenarios of intelligent agents in enterprises during the conversation. He stated that in the future, every enterprise will have an AI agent that interacts with customers and can quickly establish business agents for sales or customer support.
As big model companies begin to explore AI application scenarios, the field of intelligent agents is receiving more attention. As one of the flag figures of Chinese AI, Robin Lee, the founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, has stressed on many occasions that Baidu believes that the simplest and most promising direction of AI application development is intelligent agents, and there will be millions or more of intelligent agents in the future, forming a huge ecosystem.
Returning to this conversation, Huang Renxun and Zuckerberg also talked about the debate over open and closed source models in the AI industry. Huang Renxun stated that Meta's release of the open-source model Llama 2 was the biggest event in the AI field last year, activating companies of every industry and size to start building AI.
Unlike companies like OpenAI that choose closed source, Meta is a staunch advocate of the open source path. Last week, Meta launched its latest open-source big model series Llama 3.1, in which the 405B model with the largest parameter size scored higher than closed source models such as GPT-4o in multiple ability tests.
Zuckerberg explained in the conversation that Meta chose open source not because they are "selfless altruists," but because of practical considerations. We started building computing infrastructure and data centers after some other technology companies, so it's no longer a competitive advantage. We thought about opening it up and benefiting from the ecosystem surrounding it
The previous experience of being limited in building Meta services on the Apple platform also shaped Zuckerberg's philosophy on open source technology. He stated that the first version of Facebook was released online and was open. After transitioning to the era dominated by mobile devices, the most difficult thing for Meta is to accept the fact that they must release their applications through competitors' mobile platforms. Due to the relatively closed ecosystem of Apple, Meta finds it difficult to fully develop its envisioned service model.
Let me talk about closed platforms, and I get angry, "Zuckerberg said." I hope that in the next generation of computing, we will return to an area where open ecosystems win and lead again
After Meta released Llama 3.1, Nvidia announced the launch of two new businesses, AI foundries and NIM inference microservices, to complement the model. According to Nvidia, through AI foundries, companies can use Llama 3.1 models and Nvidia software to build and train exclusive models. Huang Renxun said that although he is an "elderly citizen", as a CEO, he is able to quickly jump onto rapidly iterating technology. Now we are helping businesses around the world achieve this, all of which is sparked by Llama's open source
At the end of the conversation, the two technology leaders also shared their outlook on the next wave of AI. Huang Renxun stated that Nvidia is using videos to train artificial intelligence models in order to better understand the physical world and is betting on robotics technology. Zuckerberg stated that he will break down the next generation of computing platforms into mixed reality VR headsets and smart glasses.
Zuckerberg said he hopes to balance the technology and aesthetics of smart glasses. Smart glasses will become a presence similar to mobile phones, with multiple functions such as calling, listening to music, live streaming, etc. It is expected to attract the interest of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of people.
In the field of VR glasses, Meta acquired Oculus many years ago and has launched several generations of products. According to multiple media reports in July, Meta is planning to acquire a 5% stake in EssilorLuxottica, the world's largest eyewear company, to increase its development of smart glasses. EssilorLuxottica owns several well-known brands such as Ray Ban and Oakley, and collaborated with Meta to launch the first Ray Ban Meta smart glasses in 2021. According to other media reports, Google is also in talks with the company's leadership to incorporate its Gemini AI assistant into future smart glasses, which may increase competition.