Meta’s bold AI move

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has formed a new product advisory council that will meet with the management team, periodically, to provide them with guidance on future AI developments, six months after he dissolved the ‘Responsible AI’ division due to budget cuts.

What will the product advisory council do?

The members of the new advisory council will offer Meta’s management team their “insights and recommendations on technological advancements, innovation, and strategic growth opportunities.” They won’t be paid for this, and becasue they haven’t been elected by shareholders (like Meta’s board of directors) they will have no legal responsibilities and will operate independently from the board.

Who is on the new product advisory council?

The new group is composed entirely of business people, with four big-name executives who share similar backgrounds in tech:

- Patrick Collison: CEO and co-founder of Stripe

- Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub

- Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify

- Charlie Songhurst, an investor and former executive at Microsoft

While the group has a great deal of experience in bringing AI products to market, there is no clear representation of ethics, academia, or research, leaving some questioning the lack of diversity and whether the group will have the ability to properly advise on some of the biggest risks surrounding AI development.

Why has Zuckerberg created this new group?

The formation of this new advisory group comes after Zuckerberg announced plans to spend $35B on developing new AI products for consumers, developers, businesses, and hardware manufacturers–$5B more than originally forecasted. This is an aggressive push to become the “leading AI company in the world” despite warning stakeholders that their immediate efforts may not result in an immediate pay-off.