Mark Zuckerberg Takes On Apple Fanboys, Tech Layoffs, Raising Cattle & More

Summary

Mark Zuckerberg discusses Meta's vision for the metaverse and artificial intelligence in an interview. He compares Meta's VR headset Quest 3 favorably to Apple's competing product. Zuckerberg is optimistic about AI's potential, advocating for an open source approach to prevent any one company from getting too advanced. He also talks about his longtime involvement with Facebook, his approach to management and delegation, and some of his hobbies like MMA fighting and raising cattle.

Takeaways

• 😊 Zuckerberg sees potential for Apple to build great AR/VR products, but believes Meta's open ecosystem approach gives them an edge
• 👓 Meta is investing heavily in both AI and the metaverse; focus will shift between them based on hype cycles
• 🧠 Open sourcing AI models reduces risk and enables more use cases to benefit people
• 😎 The Ray-Ban smart glasses are ready for mainstream use thanks to AI assistants
• 💪 Zuckerberg doesn't believe in delegating much as a founder - he makes as many decisions as possible
• 🤔 Meta overbuilt teams during the pandemic, leading to recent layoffs for efficiency
• 🥊 Zuckerberg is currently focused on knee rehab to get back to MMA fighting
• 🥩 He has a long-running fascination with meats and smoking them
• 🐄 His daughters think he's a cattle rancher since he's raising cows
• 👍 He believes competition with Apple in AR/VR will motivate Meta's teams

Q & A

What does Mark Zuckerberg think about Apple's new Vision Pro headset compared to Meta's Quest 3?

Zuckerberg believes that even though Apple's headset costs 7 times more than the Quest 3, the Quest 3 is actually the better product and better value overall based on a feature by feature comparison.

Why did Zuckerberg make a public video reviewing and comparing the Apple Vision Pro headset to the Quest 3?

He wanted to counter the media narrative that Apple's headset must be better because it's more expensive, and highlight that the Quest 3 stacks up very well at a much lower price point.

Does Zuckerberg think Meta will benefit from an 'Apple halo effect' with more people interested in headsets?

Yes, Zuckerberg believes competition is good and that people assuming Apple will do a good job may consider buying a headset when they otherwise wouldn't have, bringing more users into the market that Meta can capture.

How does Zuckerberg view AI development - should it be stopped or encouraged?

Zuckerberg believes AI development should be encouraged because it will do more good than harm overall. However he worries about any single organization getting much more advanced AI capabilities than others.

What is Zuckerberg's strategy for making AI safe and keeping developments relatively equal?

He believes in open sourcing AI developments as much as possible so many organizations have access to the same state-of-the-art systems, rather than a few companies keeping their models closed and proprietary.

What cool future neural interface technology is Meta working on?

A wristband that can pick up signals from your brain to your hand muscles, allowing you to silently 'type' by just thinking about moving your fingers, and get responses back through glasses display or audio.

How long has Zuckerberg been leading Facebook/Meta and how has his management approach evolved?

For over 20 years, more than half his life. At first he didn't have any management experience but over time he has learned a lot from mentors like Sheryl Sandberg and does not believe much in delegating - he tries to make decisions across as many areas as possible.

What is Zuckerberg most focused on hobby-wise right now outside of work?

Rehabbing his knee so he can get back into mixed martial arts fighting and combat sports, which he is passionate about.

What is Zuckerberg's current obsession when it comes to food?

Experimenting with raising his own cattle, seeing if he can use dense, nutritious feeds like macadamia nuts and beer to produce extremely high quality Wagyu beef.

Who does Zuckerberg credit with good advice that he follows?

The women in his life - his mother predicted correctly he would drop out of college to focus on his company, and his daughters think he will one day run a cattle ranch full time.

Outlines

00:00

😁 Taking Apple seriously but confident Meta will move faster in AR/VR space

Mark takes Apple seriously as a competitor in AR/VR but believes Meta will ultimately move faster due to its culture of shipping frequent product updates. He lays out specifics on why he believes Quest 3 is better than Apple's more expensive offering.

05:02

😎 Meta focused long-term on both AI and metaverse despite hype cycles

Mark explains that Meta has invested heavily in both AI and metaverse for over a decade, even if the hype cycles make it seem like the focus shifts. He's playing the long game and not worried about what's cool year to year.

10:05

😏 Open source models key to prevent AI power imbalance

Mark believes open sourcing AI models is key to prevent any one organization from getting too much more advanced AI capabilities than others. This aligns with Meta's business model and focuses on developer partnerships.

15:06

🤓 AI will enable more people to do what they care about in jobs

Mark takes a very optimistic view on AI's impact on jobs over the long term. He believes AI tools will enable more people to do creative, fulfilling work rather than be constrained by current jobs out of necessity.

20:08

😇 Focus on open source AI to share benefits and manage risks

Mark elaborates on the rationale for open sourcing AI models - it shares the benefits across organizations and allows collective hardening of models to manage risks better than any one company alone could.

25:09

🤩 Smart glasses mindblowing given ability to query world around you

When asked what AI application would blow people's minds, Mark points to smart glasses like Ray-Ban Stories which can see and hear what you do and answer questions about the environment around you.

30:10

😊 Learned management by working with awesome people over many years

Mark explains he never intended to start a company initially so had no management experience. He learned gradually over many years working alongside close friends like Sheryl Sandberg.

35:12

😋 Currently focused on MMA rehab but long obsessed with smoking meats

When asked about his latest hobby obsessions, Mark shares he is currently focused on knee rehab to get back to MMA fighting which he loves. But his long-time meat smoking hobby remains a passion.

40:15

🐄 Raising cow to produce world's highest quality beef for fun

Mark explains his current project to raise a cow with the highest quality diet possible, not constrained by commercial viability. He wants to produce the most delicious beef in the world for his family, purely out of personal interest.

45:15

😤 Competitive and playing to win in building Metaverse

Mark underscores his ultra-competitive nature and how he is fully committed to winning in the emerging competition to build the metaverse and realize its future potential.

Keywords

💡headsets

Headsets refer to virtual reality and augmented reality devices that Zuckerberg's company Meta is developing. They are a key part of Meta's vision for the metaverse and a major strategic focus. Zuckerberg compares headsets to the next generation of computers or TV screens and believes they will enable immersive social, entertainment, and productivity experiences.

💡AI

AI or artificial intelligence is mentioned extensively in the video. Zuckerberg sees AI as hugely important for the future and says Meta has invested over $15 billion per year in it. AI will enable new use cases like talking to a virtual assistant through AR glasses. Zuckerberg aims to make AI open source to prevent any single company from getting too far ahead.

💡metaverse

The metaverse refers to Zuckerberg's vision of an immersive virtual world where people can interact. It involves hardware like AR/VR headsets as well as software and platforms. While hype around the metaverse has cooled recently, Zuckerberg sees it as a 10-15 year journey and is focused on quietly building the ecosystem.

💡Apple

Apple is discussed repeatedly as a key competitor to Meta in areas like headsets and mobile devices. While respecting Apple's strengths, Zuckerberg argues Meta's open, partnership-based approach gives it a good chance of winning over Apple's closed model in immersive computing.

💡glasses

Glasses refer to augmented reality smart glasses, which Zuckerberg sees as the next computing platform after mobile phones. Meta's Ray-Ban branded glasses represent an introductory version that is already gaining strong adoption. Zuckerberg believes AR glasses will someday replace smartphones as people's primary mobile device.

💡software

Software refers to the AI models, platforms, and applications that power devices like headsets and glasses. Zuckerberg emphasizes the importance of software innovation and Meta's strengths in areas like social platforms. He sees Meta's open, developer-focused approach as an advantage.

💡business model

For Meta, software is not sold directly but used to enable hardware products and ad-supported services. This aligns with an open source approach, unlike some AI companies that sell software services. Meta's business model is advertising rather than software sales or headset sales.

💡competition

Healthy competition, particularly with Apple, is seen by Zuckerberg as driving innovation. At the same time, he takes competition very seriously, emphasizing Meta's focus on moving quickly and being "obsessed" with winning. He welcomes Apple's entry into the space, believing it will accelerate overall adoption.

💡adoption

Mainstream consumer adoption of products like augmented reality glasses and virtual reality headsets is seen as key by Zuckerberg. Meta is focused on building up content and capabilities to drive adoption. Zuckerberg sees adoption as a 10-15 year journey, with steady progress required at each step.

💡privacy

With products like AR glasses and neural interface wristbands, privacy is a major consideration. Zuckerberg emphasizes building private, social interactions into devices so experiences don't become isolating. He also believes subtle, discreet interfaces like a wristband will allow private communication.

Highlights

Apple wasn't like in a rush to to give me one [the Vision Pro headset].

I just wanted to kind of put my flag down and say, hey, no, just because this thing costs seven times more, it doesn't mean it's better.

I think competition is does end up being good for people.

Every major generation has sort of an open model, where it's more partnership oriented, more favorable to developers, and then they have a closed model where it's just like, you know, it's usually just Apple basically just integrating all their stuff, closely together.

One of my mentors and, you know, my business partner for a long time. I'm Sheryl Sandberg. You know, we joke that she, like raised me as a manager.

If you want to do big things, it like helps to have the resources. And in order to be able to get the resources, you want to have a business model that supports that.

Probably one of my most controversial leadership or management things is like, I don't actually believe in delegating that much.

The way that your kind of brain communicates with your body, and like controls the way you move is it sends these, these like nervous system signals, to to your, your, your muscles.

Yeah. I mean, look, ever since that sweet baby, Ray's just sitting out here with friends, smoking meats, you know, it's.

If I'm ever done with Meta, I'm going to run Mark's Meats.

Let's bring own beer. Let's let's grow our own macadamia nuts, processed that,, like have our kids be kind of a part of the process.

I'm not like trying to do this commercially. I'm just trying to create the highest quality stuff that we can.

Yeah, I mean, they're usually right [regarding his mom and daughters' predictions about him].

I got no, I got nothing. Nothing I do. I didn't realize I was, like, an option. my gosh.

When you have another 45 minutes, we want you back just to talk cattle.

Transcripts

lot of people just

get upset if you dare to question if Apple is going to lead in a new space.

we're a company that moves pretty quickly.

So I actually think we'll probably move faster.

one of the wilder things that we're working is this neural interface.

mean like a chip that you jack into your brain.

wouldn't want to use version one of that, mom

actually bet me that I was going to drop out of college.

in a good way or a bad way?

And way to college. She said, You're going to drop out.

I mean the whole meat thing fascination to for a long time.

Yeah.

sweet baby Ray's just sitting out here with friends, smoking meats,

you know, it's.

Mark, welcome to the show.

Hey, good to see you guys. Good to see you as well.

All right.

Let us jump right in on Tuesday, you posted a video to Instagram

where you reviewed the Apple Vision Pro, a competing headset,

and compared it to your own The Quest three, what we're all

wondering is why did you decide to make that video?

You know, having a CEO publicly review a rival product isn't exactly typical.

You know, the CEO of Papa John's isn't going over to Domino's and eating

their pizza.

man. Well,

I mean, look, in my household, it's basically like my wife,

Priscilla, screaming at me to like it's like, ma, come come to sleep.

And I'm like, no, there's someone wrong on the Internet.

You got to got to do something about this.

So, yeah, I mean, that's that's kind of the the daily.

But no, for real though, I mean, you know basically going into

I hadn't tried the vision Pro for a while, right?

I mean Apple wasn't like in a rush to to give me one.

But going into that, you know

I sort of expected that for a device, though.

I mean, their device is $3,500.

Ours is $500.

I kind of thought, okay, there's would be better but a bunch of things than ours.

But ours would still be the better value

for most people given that seven times less expensive.

But when I actually got a chance to try theirs out, I was like, Wow,

it's actually ours isn't just the better value, it's the better product, you know?

And and I think that, you know, I just saw the media coverage around this

was just sort of breathlessly assuming that, you know, I think because it's Apple

and because it was such an expensive product

like it must be, you know, the better one in quality,

even though a lot of people are saying, hey, no, you should go buy

Quest three because it's a it's a better price.

And I just wanted to kind of put my flag down and say,

hey, no, you know, just because this thing costs seven times more, it doesn't

mean it's better if you actually go use case by use case on this thing.

QUEST Three stacks up really well.

And I'm just really proud of the work that we did.

So I just kind of wanted to put that out there and say that it was definitely you.

You flex on them a little bit.

You brought the receipts on some level, though, you do have to be a little pleased

that Apple is getting into this space

because, well, everyone is talking about headsets now.

They weren't as much this time last year.

Do you think you're benefiting from this apple halo effect?

Well, I mean, I

think competition is does end up being good for people.

I mean, I'm a very competitive person.

So, I mean, having a competitor who's doing a good job will also motivate us.

And and it's good for the teams.

It creates more of a sense of urgency.

So I do think that, you know, people really win when there's competition.

And I definitely think that that's that's true.

And yeah, I mean, I do think that because people

sort of assume that if Apple comes into a space,

they're going to do a good job, then it's okay.

You know, maybe I hadn't considered

wearing one of these headsets and now I will.

And, you know, hey,

the Quest three is actually better and it's $500, so I'll go for that one.

I do think a lot of people are going to buy Quest because of that.

So that's going to be going to be a pretty exciting thing.

But I don't know. I mean, we're in this for the long term.

I think it's going to be into there can be a lot of ups and downs.

You know, just so I mean, I don't worry too much about any given year.

I just try to, you know, do the best stuff that we can.

I mean, speaking of a given year, I do want to take it back to 2007 for a second.

There is this infamous Steve Ballmer interview

where he literally laughs at the iPhone after its introduction because he thought

it was way too expensive.

It didn't have a keyboard gasp and he said it would never really gain market share.

Are you at all nervous that when you start comparing a product from Apple

that is

less than a month old to your product, which has ten plus years of development

behind it, that you might be making the same

laughing at the iPhone like Steve Ballmer type mistake?

I don't think so.

I mean, look, first of all, I'm not laughing at them.

I mean, I take Apple seriously.

I think it's like a good company. They do good work.

I mean, I'm just laying out the facts as I see them today.

I'm not saying that they're not going to improve,

but hey, we're going to improve, too.

And, you know, we're a company that moves pretty quickly.

So I actually think we'll probably move faster.

But I do think that there's this whole vibe with Apple fanboys,

which I find kind of a little funny and, you know, where it's like a lot of people

just get upset if you dare to question if Apple is going to lead in a new space.

And I don't know.

I mean, I just think if you look at the history of computing,

you know, every major generation has sort of an open model

where it's more partnership oriented, more favorable to developers,

and then they have a closed model where it's just like,

you know, it's usually just Apple basically just integrating all their stuff

closely together.

And yeah, in Mobile, Apple one,

I mean, there's technically more Android phones out there,

but you know basically Apple

if a business perspective one and then all the developed countries

where people could afford their products I mean people basically prefer the iPhone

but that's not the way it always works, right?

The PC is before that, you know, in the nineties, you know, Microsoft

and Windows were really the leader and they had the open model.

So I just don't think that the future is written on this yet.

And I think that for this next generation,

Apple is clearly going to be the closed model.

You know, meta in our approach is going to be more open

and partnership oriented, more developer focused.

And, you know, I think we have a really good chance at winning.

And I I'm really committed to doing that.

I mean, I'm like a you know, I'm a competitive person.

I'm like passionate about what we're doing and like, we're playing to win.

So no, I mean, you know, it's I can't like sit here and guarantee

that the future will go one way or another.

But I think people who will who try to say that there's no chance that it

goes the other way

are just wrong.

Look, I think that this is this is an open game.

And and I feel pretty good about the team and the effort and the products

that we're putting out.

Apple fanboys have been put on notice.

Absolutely.

And we know you're a competitive person, too,

and we're going to get to that later in the show.

But I do want to talk about Neil and I's personal experience with The Quest three.

We actually tried it on yesterday.

I had a great time while I was in it, but as soon as I took it off

and looked at Neil across the room, kind of waving his arms around it,

he was playing Beat Saber at one point and I thought to myself, Wow,

this is pretty socially isolating, actually, if you're not

physically wearing it, is this the future that you

or that you think consumers and people really want?

Well, I think that there's a mix.

I mean, we do spend a lot of time in front of our computers today.

You know, it's I think that there's a space for,

you know, having a big TV or an entertainment station in your living room

where you kind of do immersive things for hours at a time, like play games.

I think that that that is the thing that I think people want.

But, you know, when I see these videos of people like wearing these devices

walking down the street, that is not what we're designing this for.

I do think that there's going to be a mobile version in this next in this next

generation of computing, and that's more going to be glasses.

And we're getting started on that with the Ray-Ban meta smart glasses

that we put out that are doing really well.

You know, it's the second generation that we just put out.

It's, you know, we have met the eye and there

is a lot of really exciting use case.

So I'm really excited to roll out the,

the multi-modal part of that which which basically in a

I speak is like you can ask a questions using both the camera.

So it's like look at look at what's around and you can speak to it.

So, you know, we have people doing stuff like,

you know, going for a walking tour around Stanford campus

and just like look at a building and they just ask the glasses like,

Hey, look, and tell me what is the significance of this building?

And the history behind it? Okay, What about this sculpture that's here?

Tell me about that.

And I mean, just that's like pretty wild and and can be more social stuff

and I think is is more the thing that you're going to see more out in the world.

But I mean yeah look people do spend many hours in front of,

you know, in front of their big screens today

either either doing entertainment or productivity type things. And,

you know, increasingly even fitness oriented

devices with things like Peloton or, you know, big screen component of that.

So will the future involve those activities?

But in a more immersive version of that?

Yeah, I think so.

And I think part of what we need to do is make that social right.

So part of it is the mixed reality.

So you can see the,

the physical world around you and blend the digital objects into that.

That's a big part of what we did that

that was the there was the big jump from Quest two

to Quest three is now we have this high resolution color mixed reality passthrough

so you can see the world around you and put digital objects there.

But, you know, a big focus for us when I talk about the metaverse,

it is about

that kind of social sense of presence and being there with other people,

which is something that we kind of designed

into our products to make them all sort of multiplayer and social.

And I just think I mean, I mean, that's like the DNA of our company.

So like, you know, we're going to really focus on that.

That's an area where I think we'll do the best work in the industry.

So in your ideal world, someone would be using the Quest

headset in their home and then wear out the glasses.

Is is that kind of the relationship between those two?

Yeah.

I mean, I think that you can think of the glasses

as the next computing generation's phone, right?

It's the it's the mobile. Truly.

You're using it on the go computing platform,

whereas I think the headset is going to be more

the next generation's computer or TV screen.

So the bigger screens that you have.

And yeah, I mean, I think for most people the phone is probably the more

important device in their life.

And I think that that's probably going to be true

in this next generation, that the glasses are probably going

to be the more important and more ubiquitous thing.

But I think that they're both meaningful.

And I also think technologically there's a path where you want to build

kind of this immersive kind of 3D content

and you can build it first in mixed reality

because the devices, by virtue of the fact that they're a bit

bigger, have more compute.

So so it's easier to build stuff there.

And then by the time we get to glasses that can put holograms in the world,

we'll have built up the whole kind

of developer ecosystem and platform to have a bunch of the content there.

But the thing that I think has been really cool

is, you know, I kind of thought that smart glasses weren't going to be

a like, ubiquitous consumer product until we got to that kind of hologram

and putting,

you know, digital objects, you know, just overlaying them physically on the world.

But then this kind of crazy thing happened in the last year,

which is this emergence of these these A.I.

models, right.

Where you can talk to them and ask ask questions and and,

you know, they can do a lot of things for you.

So now I actually think that something like the Ray-Ban Metta Smart Glasses

is going to have much broader appeal

than I would have guessed even a few years ago.

I mean, we sort of when we started that, we thought of it as like

the kind of intro project working our way up towards

towards holograms, where

whereas now I actually think a lot of people

are just going to want that right here because, you know, it's, it's,

you know, it's a it's an affordable product, It's a stylish product.

It's like you don't need to cram a ton of technology into it.

You can just like, yeah, it's like it has cameras, it has speakers.

There's a microphone you can talk to AI, It's

you can take phone calls on it,

you can listen to audiobooks while you're out there.

It's, you know, it's just pretty, pretty capable already, right?

Many, many people in the tech industry have been questioning whether A.I.

will render the end of the smartphone and the building.

They're building these different hardware gadgets from a pen to peppers.

Little thing.

I don't even know how you would describe it, but.

But you think that these smartphone, because of

AI will replace or I'm sorry, the glasses will replace a smartphone?

Well, I guess maybe I should clarify that.

I think what tends to happen is that the last generation of computing

doesn't go away

where it's not like when we got phones, like people stopped using computers.

But you do shift in terms of use, right?

So like before, we probably used computers more than we got phones.

Now I do a lot of stuff on my phone today that I would have done on my computer

before, and that's clearly the primary thing.

So what I think is going to happen

is that glasses are going to become the primary mobile device.

I'm not predicting that in ten years.

Like we're not also going to have phones.

I just think that like a lot of the time, they're going to sit in our pocket

when we're just doing stuff that we could do more naturally

and in a more socially good way with with glasses, without having to,

you know, have something in your hand or like take your your kind of eyes away

from the interaction they were having and look down at a at a phone.

So but I'm not I'm certainly not predicting the kind

of complete disappearance of phones.

I think that that that's not in the cards I think anytime soon.

And and to some degree I think the glasses will interact

with the phone because, you know, if you're

if you're asking the glasses a question, the eye basically connects to the phone

and then uses the phone's connection to the Internet to

then talk to to our infrastructure, to ask the question and get it resolved.

So we're kind of betting

that you will have a phone, you will just take it out a lot less.

I've been so surprised to see the creator

kind of economy embrace this product as well.

I don't know if you saw the trend that went pretty viral on TikTok of people

kind of dancing around

while wearing the glasses that are completely organic, by the way.

And I was just surprised to see them

kind of immediately glom onto this new piece of technology

and immediately integrate it into their content.

Were you surprised about that, or is that the goal all along?

Well, it's always awesome to see.

And, you know, I mean, my history in like

where I come from, I'm a more like a like an engineer, right?

It builds software.

So building stylish hardware is relatively new for me, right?

I mean, that's not like Mark.

You've got a quiet luxury vibe, too.

You give yourself some credit.

Okay?

I, I, I appreciate that, but

I bet that's wearing other people's stuff.

But, you know, it's

don't get me wrong, I have a lot of confidence.

I do believe that, like, you know, given enough iterations, I can I can

I can I can I can get there on building the stuff that we want to.

But for this one, we did something different,

which is we worked with Ray-Ban, all right?

And, you know, they're like, you know, the company that builds the Ray-Bans

is the leading, you know, fashion and kind of glasses company in the world.

So they do great work on style and luxury, which it's really been

a very fascinating partnership.

I mean, the technology behind even producing kind of normal glasses

before you put any electronics in, it is actually quite sophisticated.

And, you know, we've learned a lot

about working with them, about how do you integrate

kind of this new consumer electronics technology with all the technology

that goes into creating, like really sophisticated lenses and

and making it so that the

the materials in the in the glasses feel premium but are light.

So there's all this stuff that I think like

neither one company could have done on their own.

But through this partnership, I think we've produced something

that like brings state of the art technology around a guy

with something that has been a fashion icon for decades.

And I think it's pretty neat that, yeah, I mean, it's so I mean, I don't know,

it's it's tough for me to predict exactly what the uptake would be, but

but it's I mean, it's not that out of the question.

I think a lot of that is because, you know, the design is really nice.

Okay.

I do want to transition to a pretty under the radar topic right now.

We've mentioned a few times

already on the show and that is artificial intelligence.

On your most recent earnings call, the phrase A.I.

was mentioned 70 times versus just seven for the metaverse.

You changed your company name to Meta and you keep saying you're not creating A.I.

and the metaverse,

but it still feels like that's where the industry focus is right now.

The metaverse feels pretty 2022 right now.

How much did your strategy shift after I kind of blew up

when chatting about was released?

Well, you know, we've been working on A.I.

and the metaverse for for a long time.

I mean, those have been the two major kind of big tech bets for for the company

for like a decade.

And, you know, the reality is, is that we're spending

if you just look at how much we're investing, it's like $15 billion

a year at least into each of them.

So, yeah, I mean, what we talk about will vary at different points.

And yeah, like what what we see happening in the industry, what will help

sharpen our product strategy and and our sense of what we can be building

right now.

I definitely think where we are in the hype cycle is much more, you know,

people want to talk about A.I.

whereas you know, yeah, in like in 21, 22,

I think people are pretty excited about the talking about the metaverse.

Now. I think we're in this mode where people are waiting for the products

to get like more fully adopted, but like we're just kind of quietly churning

and building this stuff in the background.

Like I don't care that much whether something is cool one year or not.

But yeah, I mean, at a moment when people have more questions

about the AI work that we're doing,

I think it's natural that you'll hear me be talking more about A.I.

when when the metaverse space heats up a bit.

You know, are people try to call it different things

because they want to embrace our branding around this.

But but it's but when that when that kind of heats up,

then, you know, you go through these moments

where now we're talking about our AR headsets or that stuff more.

So I just think this will kind of go back

and forth a little bit over the next several years.

But the reality is, is that

these have been huge focuses for a while and and I think are yeah.

Going to continue

to be for like the next decade or so

until these things both reach their full potential.

Let's talk about Sam Altman a bit, the open air CEO.

He's been reportedly trying to raise $7 trillion to build

the semiconductor infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence systems.

And video CEO said this week that Altman's plan was overkill.

But what do you think?

Is Sam insane

or is this scale of investment needed to support the development of AI?

I don't know.

I mean, Sam is is I think actually like a very earnest and thoughtful guy.

And I think his his level of ambition for the space

I think has been very helpful for for building it out overall.

And I mean, the number is astronomical.

So, I mean, it's it is hard to kind of wrap my head around that, but honestly,

I haven't gotten a chance to talk to Sam about it.

So I don't I don't want to weigh in, weigh in too much on that.

But I think the place that he's right is that like, you know, if you look over

year, these companies keep on building these larger

and larger training clusters of computers

to basically train the state of the art models.

So it's like a couple of years ago,

maybe it was like a thousand chips that you kind of wired together.

Then it's 10,000, then it's 100,000.

You know, at some point it's going to be a million, right?

And then it's like at some point, okay, yeah,

you really need to produce a ton of chips. So at that point,

I don't think he is crazy.

I don't know what it will take to kind of accelerate all of this

to to the point where kind of

the technological curve can keep up.

But I think that this is one of these things where like building software

sometimes hits roadblocks when you get into physical stuff.

Right. Right.

And all the stuff that we do, it's like when we're building the apps, right?

You're building like Instagram or WhatsApp or Facebook.

You know, we can just ship updates like every week.

But when we're building like a new headset, it's like, okay,

we work on that for two years and we ship one headset, right?

And then we work on another one for two years, ship another headset.

It just that the cycle time is slower.

So I think the software part of AI will probably want to move fast,

but I think at some point

Sam is right that we're going to run into some physical constraints on like

how many chips can you churn out and you know, how much power you need

from like power plants to be able to train the next bigger model.

And I don't know, I think it is worth thinking about how to how to alleviate

some of those constraints, because I think it's just going to enable

and this technology's

going to enable all these awesome use cases that

I think are going to make our lives better in so many ways.

I do just want to get into kind of the philosophical argument around

AI a little bit.

On one side of the spectrum, you have people who think that it's

got the potential to kind of wipe out humanity,

and we should hit pause on the most advanced systems.

And on the other hand, you have the Mark Indonesians of the world who said stopping

AI investment is literally akin to murder because it would prevent

valuable breakthroughs in the health care space.

Where do you kind of fall on that continuum?

Well, I'm really focused on

open source, which is I'm not sure exactly where would fit on the continuum.

But my theory of this is that what you want to prevent

is like one organization

from getting like way more advanced and powerful than everyone else.

Here's like one thought experiment is okay, like every year

kind of security folks and are figuring out

what are all these bugs in our software that can get exploited

if you don't do these security updates, right?

It's like everyone who's using, you know,

any modern technology is constantly doing security updates and updates for stuff.

So if you could go back ten years in time and kind of know all the bugs

that would exist,

then like any given organization would basically be able to like, exploit

everyone else. And that would be bad, right?

It would be bad if someone was way more advanced than than everyone else

in the world, because it could lead to some like really uneven outcomes.

And the way that the industry has tended to deal with

this is by making a lot of infrastructure open source so that way

it can just get rolled out and every piece of software can kind of

get incrementally a little bit stronger and safer together.

So that's the case that I worry about for the future.

It's not like I mean, you don't want to write off the,

the, you know, potential that like there's some runaway thing.

But right now I don't see it. I don't see it anytime soon.

The thing that I worry about more sociologically

is just like one organization basically having some like

really super intelligent capability that isn't broadly shared.

And I think the way you get around that is by open sourcing it,

which is what we do.

And the reason why we can do that

is because we don't have a business model to sell it, right?

So if you're if you're Google or you're open, I right.

I mean, this stuff is expensive to build the business model

that they have is they they kind of build a model.

They they fund it, they sell access to it.

So they kind of need to keep it closed.

And it's not I mean, it's not their fault.

I just think that that's like where the business model has led them.

But we're kind of in a different zone.

I mean, we're not selling access

to the stuff, we're building models, then using it as an ingredient

to build our products, whether it's like the Ray-Ban glasses or,

you know, an AI assistant across our software or,

you know, eventually AI tools for creators that everyone's going to build

to use to kind of like

let your community engage with you when, when,

when you can engage with them and things like that.

And so open sourcing that actually fits really well with our model.

But that's that's kind of my theory of the case is that

is that yeah, this is going to do a lot more good than harm

and the bigger harms are basically from having the system

either not be widely or evenly deployed or not hardened enough,

which is the other thing is open

source software tends to be more secure historically

because you make it open source, it's more widely available so more

people can kind of poke holes on it and then you have to fix the holes. So

I think that this is the best bet for keeping it safe over time.

And part of the reason why we're pushing in this direction.

I love your take on AI in the job market.

You know, there's a lot of anxiety among people that I could replace them,

especially with all the tech layoffs of the last few years.

And then companies signaling huge investments in AI.

From your point of view, as the person who is literally building these systems,

say I'm the average white collar employee working in professional services

as an accountant say, should I be worried?

Like, should I pivot my career to become a chat bot, prompt engineer

or whatever?

I'm not sure I'd pivot my career yet.

I mean, look, there's a lot more you're saying over the long

term, I'm actually quite bullish that all these tools will give

more people the potential to kind of do what they care about, right?

It's like when I see my kids, it's like, you know, they

they want to do all this creative stuff and then we're like going broccoli.

Right? And I do think that they,

like a lot of people I think

maybe are not in the jobs that they would like ideally want to be in.

And I think in the future

we'll just have the capacity to to do more of that.

So I think that that's that is is the long term.

But then there's always the question of how do you get there?

And yeah, I think that there will be a bunch of transformation that will mean

that certain jobs we don't do them in the way that we're doing them now.

Certain things might get automated, but I don't know.

I just think that the limit to human ingenuity, I don't know.

It's either kind of limitless or extremely high.

And I just don't think we're anywhere near kind of fulfilling that potential yet.

So I'm much more optimistic about that in terms of the layoffs and stuff like that.

I actually think that that was more due

to companies trying to navigate COVID in the pandemic.

And I mean, it was sort of this weird wave where, you know, it's

you know, at first

we saw e-commerce go through the roof and it's like, okay, yeah,

because a lot of people aren't going out and physically shopping.

But it was it was really hard to predict.

Okay.

Are you like, is that going to continue?

Is like all this e-commerce

just better than physical shopping or like what's the balance after?

And I think across the the economy, a lot of companies just kind of overbuilt

And then when when things went back to pretty close

to exactly the way they were before it,

I think a lot of companies realized, hey, we're kind of

not in a good financial place because we overbuilt.

And then so you had this wave of layoffs

that were basically responding to that.

But then you also had this generation of companies that knew nothing except growth.

So the idea of like doing layoffs was just like, no, this is crazy.

Like, we couldn't even comprehend that.

But then they had to do it.

And then I think a lot of companies

went through the zone of thinking, Hey, you know, that actually it didn't.

And the company was obviously really tough.

We parted with a lot of talented people that we cared about, but in some ways,

actually becoming leaner kind of makes the companies more effective.

So now I think that there's another kind of way of that

a bunch of companies are going to I and we did this last year,

but I think some companies are

are kind of still in this in this mode of of thinking, okay, well

we're thinking about like how efficient and lean we should be.

Maybe we should be a somewhat different shape than we are

now to do the best work that we can.

But I don't think that that

at least for us, it was not you know, the stuff was not a major driver of that.

It was it was like first

it just kind of this overbuilding and then the sense of like,

let's do the best work that we can by making a lean company

is lean as you can be for, you know, our scale.

It just yeah it does feel like the layoffs of early 2024

do have some this AI tinge to it.

It's not, it's not the back to normal COVID stuff

because when you listen to these CEOs on their earnings calls

and when they're doing the layoff announcements, it's more a strategic

reorganizing of their focus, where they're investing more in AI.

And they're not saying I'm laying you off because of that, but it's just

a trimming of certain departments and they're hiring in others.

So to me, I feel like the this wave of layoffs is a little bit

different than the ones coming out of like early 2023.

I like yours,

but yeah, that's possible.

I mean, maybe I mean, I'm just mostly

commenting on what I see in our company and sort of our our kind of peers

and the companies around me in the tech industry.

But there's certainly broader stuff.

So I would just maybe I'm not seeing that one as clearly.

Yeah, Last question on.

I hear you have a lot of listeners who have may

have only interacted with AI on a very limited basis.

If you wanted to blow their minds, delight their imaginations,

what would you show them right now?

How would you exemplify the power of AI to someone

who hasn't really experienced it so far?

I mean, I think the Ray-Ban glasses are going to enable

like already do and will enable some pretty mindblowing things.

And I think people always tend to think that these physical kind

of manifestations of things are more impressive than just the software only.

So I think having glasses that can see what you see here,

where you hear, you can ask it questions about what's going on around you.

I do think the ability to,

like I was saying, like walk around through some kind of historic place

and just ask it to like look at stuff like,

explain to me what what matter is about this.

Now you go into a store and you're like, okay, like,

is this a good price for this thing?

Or, you know, it's like, what is this?

Where else can I get this?

I can get that stuff.

It's just going to be super valuable.

Yeah.

And it's only going to get crazier.

So, I mean, some of the stuff that we're working on,

I mean, there's always this question of like,

how do you talk to the AI where it's like today,

okay, you type on a computer or phone and on the glasses you speak to it.

And one of the wilder things that we're working on

is, is this neural interface.

And I don't mean like a chip that you jack into your brain.

I think that I mean, maybe in the future someone will do that, but I don't want to.

I wouldn't want to use version one of that, right?

I mean, let me just say. Right.

I think you might want to wait until that one's pretty mature.

So it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like, I don't want to,

you know, So let's wait until I don't need to, like, upgrade that thing every year.

Like, but

I think the one that we're working on is basically a wristband.

And the way that it works is it's a neural interface in the sense that it,

the way that your kind of brain communicates with your body

and like controls the way you move is it sends these,

these like nervous system signals

to to your, your, your muscles.

And you can actually pick those up with with it with an EMG wristband.

And it turns out that there's like all this extra bandwidth and

and like all this extra signal that your brain can send

that is not currently being used to move your fingers

in the way that you want and you can just like

you'll be able to in the future, essentially just like type and control

something like by kind of thinking about how you want to move your hand,

but like it won't even be like big motions or it's I can just sit here and I'm like

basically typing something to an eye and,

and then, you know, right now the glasses are basically it can speak back to you,

but in the future, I think you'll have something

where it can speak to you or there will be a little display.

So it can it can show you like a notification.

So I think will you'll have this completely kind

of private and discreet interface where you can like walk around,

you know, throughout your day, just like text different things.

I mean, you can like, you know, text, text your friends or you can text your eye

and then then basically just get the response back in real time.

So I think that that is just going to be insane.

And it's, you know, the research is like it's like we've been working on this

for a while.

So it's actually,

you know, it's not a one year project, but we're quite a few years into it

and we're actually kind of close

to kind of having here that we're going to have a product in the next two years.

So I'm pretty excited about that.

I mean, you're making teachers lives harder.

Imagine someone with their hand in their pocket researching A.I.

stuff while taking a test.

Turnitin.com is going to have to really bolster their defenses for sure.

All right.

Let's talk about you.

People want to know more about you.

So you've been leading Facebook now better for 20 years, literally

more than half of your life.

I'm sorry to remind you. Yeah. Yeah.

How has your management style evolved over the past two

decades? man.

I mean, that question assumes that I had a management.

So when I got started, think the reality is like.

Like I didn't.

I didn't when I started Facebook, I wasn't trying to start a company.

I just like, thought it was this cool thing to build and,

you know, I was pretty convinced when I was in college,

you know, my aspiration was I like building stuff

and I thought I was going to just go through college

and then like, go be an engineer, Microsoft.

And my mom was like, Now you're going to make a company.

And it's like, No, I'm not going to make a company.

My, my, yeah, My mom actually bet me that I was going to drop out of college.

I was like, Mom, like, it's like, what?

Like in a good way or a bad way? And just, like, I don't know, we'll see

my my way to college.

She said, You're going to drop out.

Shout out, Mom. Wow.

Yeah. No, I'm a mom.

And my younger sister bet that she was going to finish

college performing, which also happened, obviously.

So yeah. So.

So I started this company,

but I started as a company, right?

I just

it's partially why I was so messy in the beginning.

We basically ended up turning it into a company

because it's like I in order to scale it, we needed money,

which means we needed a business model and revenue and all that stuff.

So basically it pulled a group people together to to try to do that.

But I don't know anything about building a company.

I mean, that was like, wasn't my goal.

And it just, you know, it just turns out

if you want to do big things, it like helps to have the resources.

And in order to be able to get the resources,

you want to have a business model that supports that.

So I guess over time I've sort of had to just learn a lot of stuff

and I've done that mostly by working with really good people.

I mean, one of my mentors and, you know, my business partner for a long time.

I'm Sheryl Sandberg.

You know, we joke that she, like raised me as a manager

and like as a parent almost. And

I think that that's true in a lot of ways.

It's I mean, a lot of my kind of leadership philosophy and management

just came from working with her and other people who I really respected

who had more experience.

But now we're sort of in this funny place where like

and if you look at early Facebook in like 2000, four, 2005,

we we were basically just like a bunch of kids running around,

just like building stuff that we thought was cool and then like

had some more professional executives helping to run the place.

But now all the kids have grown up, right?

So, you know, you have people like like Chris Cox,

our chief product officer, who's been there now.

I think he joined like 25 or 26,

Andrew Bosworth, who runs Reality Labs

similarly, you know, his has been there for

you know, it's got to be it's 18 or 19 years at this point.

So and along the way, I think we all just kind of like

learned how to run a company together.

And, you know, we're all like pretty close friends and

and it's just interesting because you can't hire that, right?

It's like if you're just thinking about today, it's like, okay,

if I was trying to build a team or like, what advice would you give people?

It's like, I don't know, you can't you know, there's

no nothing that kind of replaces all those years of,

of just experience getting to know each other

and going through all these times where everyone thinks you suck

and then other times when you know, people are just giving you way too much credit

for stuff that clearly is and can actually get pan out for for a few years.

But you believe in it.

And we've just been through all those experiences. So

I don't know I think it's

the secret to all this stuff is it's not one person.

And as much as I think like the World wants to focus on

like who's the singular figure, it's always more than one person.

And and it's the team dynamic.

And I that that that matters a lot.

So I mean, if you can just kind of stay focused,

you find stuff that you like, you stay engaged,

you know I don't mean by the way that it's like, okay, you set up the team

and then you're kind of passive.

But I think like probably one of my most controversial leadership or management

things is like, I don't actually believe in delegating that much.

I kind of think like the way a founder should work is

you should

basically make as many decisions and get involved in as many things as you can.

And like,

I mean, you need to know where your limits are and where

like you're just thrashing people because you're involved

in something that a half assed way and like you can't you're not actually

you don't have all the context, But I don't know.

I mean,

you need all these other awesome people because there's still going to be,

no matter how much time I put into all these things, there's

going to be so much stuff that I can't get to.

And we need awesome people who can, like, do all the really important stuff

that they're like, I'm not, I'm not doing. But

but I don't know.

That's something that I guess

I've just gotten more confident in over time is just sort of

feeling like, Hey, yeah, I can go deep on all this stuff and,

you know, push it in a direction that I think.

And yeah, not everything is going to go

well in the near term, but like you just learn, rinse and repeat.

It could work over a long period of time.

It sounds like you're having a great time still leading this company.

You've been at it for a very long time,

but we got to talk about some of these hobbies.

Marc Probably the one that people most know you for is your love of mixed

martial arts, but you also fly helicopter hours, you hydrofoil,

you'll love smoking meats, and you're actually raising your own cow right now.

What's the current obsession for Mark Zuckerberg?

gosh, Right now I'm

focused a lot on knee rehab so I can get back to fighting.

It's like, man, I mean,

spend budget time fighting. But

rehab takes a lot of time because you want to, like,

stay in shape and like and you can't do everything that you were before.

So it's actually it's it's not not super time efficient, but it's really important.

So that's that I think is my is my main thing. But

I've I've I've really like fighting in combat sports and that's been awesome.

But no, I mean look, I mean I've loved I've,

I mean the whole meat thing has sort of been a fascination to for a long time.

Yeah.

I mean, look, ever since that sweet baby

Ray's just sitting out here with friends, smoking meats, you know, it's.

It's.

Yeah, I love it.

And I always joke with.

With Priscilla and my my daughters now

that if I'm ever done with Metta, I'm going to run Mark's Meats.

And, you know, like, if you're like, if you're like a kid, right?

So my daughters, it's kind of hard to wrap your head around.

Like, what Metta is, right?

It's just this very abstract, like apparatus. Okay?

You're like a young kid, right?

So my daughter is for a while she was just

she just thought that I was a cattle rancher.

She's like, All right, Like, dad. That's like, that's clearly what you do.

It's like you're it's like Mark's Meat

isn't ready for prime time yet, but you're really focused on it.

I get it.

It's like you've got, like, a few of these cows, and I've just had this

this project where I want to see if we can produce

some of the highest quality meat in the world.

And I think most

most commercial

cattle operations are basically constrained

where you can't put more into the cow in terms of quality of ingredients.

Then you can then turn around and sell the cow for when you're done.

But, you know, I obviously don't have that that issue.

I'm not like trying to do this commercially.

I'm just trying to create the highest quality stuff that we can.

So and I think it's pretty fun to like vertically integrated.

So I'm like, all right, let's see if we can like what is the densest,

most, like, nutritious thing

that we can feed these cows to basically get them to be like

the healthiest and and like, gain weight as quickly as possible.

Just be the most delicious cows.

And it's a guy who is a human.

What do you think like is the thing that basically,

you know, you just like

sit and eat a lot It's like beer and nuts, basically.

Right.

And so nuts, super dense

beer induces

appetite, which I think people are familiar with.

But yeah, induces appetite I think is the kind of formal

jargon in the cattle industry.

You know, get them to eat a bunch,

which is, is why, you know, for a long time

a lot of the highest quality Wagyu beef is they basically said it beer.

It's not like there's this whole thing about, okay, does it make it more relaxed?

The scientific literature on that is a little mixed.

I just like read a bunch of this. It's not.

I'm not.

I'm not convinced on the relaxation point, but I do think

it's clear that it makes them eat more and then they gain more weight.

So, yeah, so but I just think it's like super fun.

It's like, All right, let's bring own beer.

Let's let's grow our own macadamia nuts, processed that,

like have our kids be kind of a part of the process of like

figuring out what it's like to to kind of run in this kind of a process

easier for them to do that and be involved in the software business.

So I think that that that kind of makes sense. And

I know it's just fun.

Maybe maybe one day it'll be a thing, but for now I'm just producing some meat

that I like eating.

Mark The women in your life are telling you something.

Your mom said you're going to drop out of college

and your daughters said that you are going to be a cattle rancher.

So I would take that advice to heart.

Yeah, I mean, they're usually right.

We will workshop the name now.

Mark's me, so there's still some some room to grow there as well.

no, it's intentionally really lame.

All right, All right. And you absolutely nailed it. Then.

It also sounds like you could be the Andrew Huberman of cattle ranchers.

You could launch a podcast about just cattle health.

And because I was learning a lot right there, you had me interrupted.

So maybe you and Andrew team out for a little while.

Cattle prod,

the cattle versus the cattle.

The cattle versus you. Hear, hear.

Basically, Mark, this was an awesome conversation.

I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by and nerd out with us.

I'm going to actually plug your social accounts right now.

You can follow Mark on the social networks he invented at Zach.

That was a very cool sentence to say.

And then also check out

all the cool work happening at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

to see all the work that you're doing with your wife, Priscilla.

Mark, once again, thank you so much for joining us.

Awesome. Thanks for having me on, guys.

So, yeah,

that's fun.

Yes, Thanks, Mark.

I'd actually call up Andrew.

I didn't know you said the beer to the cows also.

Yeah, I thought that was just for you. Yeah.

No, no, no, no, no.

And then there's a whole thing around massaging them, too, right?

We're like the the Japanese ranchers, the like it because it relaxes them.

It doesn't relax them.

Or maybe it does, but but it's the main thing is

if they're being stimulated, they don't move.

And if they don't move, they're not burning calories

and they're not like developing, you know, it's like they have nice, like,

loose muscles. Right?

So which is so I think that that's that's a whole thing.

But, you know, there's there's a lot there's a lot more to go in terms of stuff

that we want to do.

When you have another 45 minutes, we want you back just to talk cattle.

The cattle, I mean, I would love to hear.

It's like we have our master sire Chunk.

It's just like he is like that.

Like, how did we miss Chunk?

I don't know. I don't know.

I really should have brought up chunk chunks.

Not ready for his debut.

He's not. He's not.

Haven't kind of. Now it's chunk to the Internet. But

let's

let's let's definitely hard shotgun here.

and the final thing, Mark, I wanted to I didn't get to ask you about it,

but your birth time. I'm not kidding.

I've been obsessing over it ever since you posted that.

I Literally tried to beat it. No vest.

Didn't even get close.

So whenever you're healed up, I want to challenge you.

You know, the thing is, I think that because I had just cut weight

for a jujitsu competition, So after doing that,

I was just like, really lean but hadn't lost the muscle mass yet from doing so.

Like, so then the weight vest is mostly counteracted

from just like it's like, okay, just going back to where I was before.

But I think that like, that might have I mean, it wasn't my best time ever, but

I, I think that has a lot easier to do it After you had you break it up,

are you like a five, ten, five or did you go like ten, ten, ten.

Yeah, I mean, I do.

What is it I do five, ten, 20 so I can finish

the squat sooner and have some extra time to rest on the later sets.

Yeah.

To recover from the, the pull ups, which are the hardest for me.

I'm a push up guy.

I got to work on it. But yes, thank you. I have that.

Like, take ups are harder for you.

Listen, Mark, I'm getting out of bed chest. Okay?

I got no, I got nothing. Nothing I do.

I didn't realize I was, like, an option. my gosh.

Yeah, I love it.

mean, I take Apple seriously.

I think it's like a good company.

when the metaverse space heats up a bit.

people try to call it different things because they want to embrace our branding

I don't actually believe in delegating that much.

the way a founder should work is

you should basically make as many decisions as you can.