Zuckerberg weighs in on AI after Musk’s criticism of “limited” understanding

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has once again defended the potential for positive AI growth.

Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday that he was excited about AI progress because as technology grows, it has the potential to impact many areas of our lives.

“One reason I’m so optimistic about AI is that improvements in basic research improve systems across so many different fields — from diagnosing diseases to keep us healthy, to improving self-driving cars to keep us safe, and from showing you better content in News Feed to delivering you more relevant search results,” Zuckerberg said. “Every time we improve our AI methods, all of these systems get better. I’m excited about all the progress here and it’s potential to make the world better.”

Zuckerberg’s announcement was far from the barbed tweet Tesla CEO Elon Musk fired off hours earlier, calling Zuckerberg’s understanding of AI “limited.”

I've talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2017

Initially, Zuckerberg had spoken about his optimism for AI development while smoking meat in his backyard during a Facebook live post.

“I have pretty strong opinions on this. I am optimistic,” Zuckerberg said. “And I think people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios — I just, I don’t understand it. It’s really negative and in some ways I actually think it is pretty irresponsible.”

His comments fly directly in the face of Musk’s who has long had a doomsday attitude toward the technology.

“I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI and I think people should be really concerned about it,” Musk said. “I keep sounding the alarm bell, but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal … There’s a role for regulators that I think is very important and I’m against over regulation for sure, but I think we better get on that with AI.”

As the public debate continues on, two camps seem to be emerging: Musk’s cautious outlook and Zuckerberg’s rosy views.

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