As 2021 draws to a close, Musk may launch a "New World Race" with Zuckerberg while throwing Bezos farther and farther away in the "space race".
The race is destined to be bigger than the space race, and it has begun more secretively. Under a completely different conceptual trend, Zuckerberg wants to take all of humanity into the digital world, while Musk is stuck in "reality".
On December 22, Musk officially expressed his position on this year's hot "meta-universe". In a podcast, Musk revealed his disdain for wearing a VR device into virtual reality. He described the incident in the vernacular as "shaking a screen in front of my face all day" and even ridiculed "When I was a child, my mother always told me not to get too close to the TV..."
The metaverse story told by Meta seems to Musk to be a bit silly and cute, and some "pediatric". Musk, by contrast, has other ideas for the new world of humanity.
Musk
In the show, he mentioned Neuralink Brain-Computer Interface Company and said bluntly: "In the long run, Neuralink's brain-computer interface can give you full access to virtual reality." ”
In the past, Neuralink did not have a strong presence in several companies founded by Musk. In 2020, when he participated in another well-known American podcast PowerfulJRE, he once said that he had things in his head, SpaceX and Tesla accounted for the vast majority, and Neuralink accounted for up to 5%. When he was on the same show in 2018, Neuralink's information was talked about so little that Musk even said he wasn't sure when the project would come to fruition.
This year, the importance of Neuralink has quietly become even more important.
At the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit on December 6, the moderator asked Musk to spend 60 seconds to explain the important plans of SpaceX, Tesla, Boring and Neuralink in 2022, but when it was Neuralink's turn, Musk specifically asked for more time.
He said the Neuralink brain-computer interface has been tested in monkeys and has been successful. In 2022, the brain-computer interface is expected to achieve the first human test, which will be tested by people with spinal cord injury, and is still awaiting FDA approval.
Neuralink seems to have come to an important breakthrough point.
Musk has live-streamed the display of brain-computer interface Coin size chips implanted in pig brains
Humans will be the brains of the tank, the ghost of the shell, or the number one player, and the starting point is at the foot. Zuckerberg and Musk, one is a social media king, the other is a super dreamer on the journey to Mars, the seemingly lack of intersection of the two, finally in the third decade of the 21st century has the possibility of fighting.
In a short period of time, what will unfold will not be a competition for "consumers", but a fierce battle of ideas. The metaverse concept represented by Meta, the brain-computer interface with Musk, and every progress and breakthrough will be the fuel for debate.
A
Musk and Zuckerberg have been dealing with each other for years.
In 2016, SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 rocket, but the result was an explosion, and the mission ended in failure. And the explosion implicated a Facebook satellite. At that time, the satellite was on Falcon 9, waiting to take the "downwind arrow" into the sky.
Later, Zuckerberg unhappily posted on Facebook: "At the moment I am in Africa, SpaceX failed to launch, destroying our satellite, which is deeply disappointing to me." The satellite was meant to provide internet connectivity to many entrepreneurs and everyone else in Africa."
And this, Musk did not react at the time, unexpectedly two years later, Musk mentioned in a retweet: "Yes, it is my fault, because I am an idiot." But we did give them a free launch to make up for that. Also, I think they've taken insurance. ”
What really escalated their grievances was the collision of Musk and Zuckerberg's ideas, that is, the attitude towards artificial intelligence.
During a Facebook live broadcast in 2017, an audience member asked Zuckerberg what to think of Musk's anxiety about artificial intelligence. Zuckerberg was quite brave, directly criticizing: "I think those who oppose it and advocate the doomsday scene may not really understand artificial intelligence." It's too negative and in some ways I think is irresponsible. ”
Musk was visibly upset, tweeting: "I talked to Zach about artificial intelligence, and his knowledge of the field is limited. "Meaning, well said next time don't say it, what do you know?"
In Musk's eyes, blindly "feeding" artificial intelligence is dangerous.
Blindness here may have several meanings. The first is the absence of effective regulatory measures, followed by the rapid and uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence, and the overconfidence of human beings.
In this December 22 podcast interview, Musk's view is logically self-consistent with Neuralink. In Musk's view, brain-computer interfaces are a human path because humans are far less intelligent than they think they are. The output of AI may be at the level of a billion bytes, while humans output at a rate of 10 bytes, so it is likely that humans will not be able to communicate effectively with AI in the future.
"AI communicates with people as much as we communicate with trees."
But in Zuckerberg's view, those concerns are somewhat superfluous. He has a great attitude of embracing artificial intelligence, knowing that among mainstream social media, the first to introduce algorithmic recommendations is Facebook.
As early as 2006, Facebook launched a news feed stream, using the original algorithm of engineers "intuitively", launched the "like" function in 2009, and began to use "information protrusion" in 2013, which put users missing the most relevant top of the message.
Twitter and Instagram (the latter now owned by Meta) both adapted feeds to algorithmic recommendations in 2016. Domestic Weibo, the beginning of smart recommendation can be traced back to 2012.
Success is also AI, defeat is also AI, and the trouble zuckerberg has caused is mostly related to this. In 2018, Facebook was mired in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, triggering a global data breach. At the moment, he is also in prison for inciting hate speech, false information, conspiracy theories, and aggravating the anxiety of underage girls' appearance.
Fears about Zuckerberg's social media empire did not end with the parent company changing its name to Meta and officially entering the metaverse, but rather intensified. It is conceivable that in the metaverse that Meta is building today, the role of AI will only become more important. A YouTube netizen said: "There are already many people around me saying that no matter how big Meta's metacosm is built, they will not use it." ”
How terrible is it that social media is "evil" in your hands for the time being, so that we all live in the "meta-universe" that you have created?
Even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly stated that Zuckerberg's metacosmonic concept is "dystopian."
After Musk was elected Time Magazine's 2021 Person of the Year, Zuckerberg's Meta Hita Yahoo reviewed the "Worst Company of the Year." Whether it is the public evaluation or the attitude of the government, it is running in the direction that Zuckerberg of the "artificial intelligence angel theory" does not want to see.
B
Zuckerberg, who is optimistic about artificial intelligence, is deeply involved in the criticism of "algorithms do evil", and the fact that "algorithms without constraints can do evil" itself is consistent with Musk's concept.
Although Musk has the upper hand in the battle of ideas, this time for the metaverse, Musk revealed not a criticism or fear of Meta, but a disdain for the concept of the entire metaverse.
Don't forget, Musk is a proponent of "simulation theory", he once mentioned that we have a great possibility of living in a simulated world, but we don't know it ourselves. From this perspective, his standard for the "simulated world" is far from what technology such as VR or AR can achieve.
He does not feel that the metaverse is "dangerous", but that it is "far from qualified".
When the host mentioned the word "dangerous" in the metaverse, Musk, who had been listening sideways, even laughed and shrugged.
Musk complained about two points in this podcast interview, one is that using VR equipment always has a sense of vertigo; the other is that he does not think that anyone will want to wear a screen in front of them all day. This is actually aside from zuckerberg's vision, talking about the current technical difficulties of virtual reality.
In other words, it is too early to discuss whether the metaverse will cause chaos and loss of humanity: "We are still far from disappearing into the metaverse." ”
Changing its name overnight, with its own social media empire all in the metaverse, Zuckerberg may seem radical, but before that, it was the development of the concept of the metacosm for nearly half a century, and the development of technologies such as VR and AR for several years.
In March this year, Roblox went public, which was the "culprit" that set off this meta-universe boom. There is no Meta in the world, and with the vent of the metaverse, there is a Meta. In terms of path selection, small solid is not radical.
While criticizing the metaverse, Musk did not forget to be self-deprecating and conservative: "Am I like those who thought in 1995 that the Internet was just a fad and would never make any sense?" ”
Although from the age of 31 when he sold paypal PayPal, Musk began to "die in reality": immigration to Mars, solar energy, electric vehicles, underground transportation, brain-computer interfaces... He says "maybe he's old", but his radical hiding can't be hidden.
In the case of brain-computer interfaces, not only researchers in the field have jumped out to say that Musk's enjoyment of brain-computer interfaces is not realistic, or even wrong. And the use of invasive implants of chips, whether in animals or humans, faces ethical challenges and legal risks.
Although Musk himself said that Neuralink pursues higher standards than the US Food and Drug Administration FDA, so there is no worry about not failing to review. But Tesla, who also (according to Musk), has higher standards than the government regulations, and has also encountered a lot of ethical pressure in the process of promoting the self-driving system.
No matter how Musk pats his chest, says that the standard is high, can be removed without damage, and opens a hole in the head to put a chip, the ethical pressure will only be greater than Tesla in the future.
C
Neuralink faced a bottleneck almost from the beginning, like an upside-down bottle, difficult at the beginning, and crossing that hurdle would be a crucial node. That's why he mentioned Neuralink many times at the end of this year, if it is true that musk said, the first human test can be achieved in 2022, then the shock to the world will be huge.
Don't get me wrong, Musk is not a pioneer in the field of brain-computer interfaces, which has been widely used for more than two decades. But in just five years, Neuralink's ability to engineer related products, as well as Musk's huge public opinion ability, has contributed to the field.
In April this year, Neuralink released a video called "Monkey Mind Pong" on YouTube, which did not end at the beginning of the film, the content was as short as the name, a total of 3 minutes and 27 seconds, and now has accumulated 5.64 million views and 110,000 likes.
In the video, a 9-year-old macaque stares at a computer screen playing a game of table tennis, and it implanted Neuralink 6 weeks before the video was filmed.
The highest praise in the comments section reads: "To the children who see this video in the future: at this moment, this thing looks fresh and cool." ”
The promotional video released by the technology giant next door after changing its name to Meta has been played 4.6 million views in the past month, the comments section has been closed, and the number of fans on the account is 200,000, which is 100,000 less than Neuralink.
Neuralink's monkey test video can still shock people to this point, can you imagine the macaque monkey in the video turning into a human, playing table tennis and changing into a wheelchair to stand up?
If the story of the brain-computer interface in the past was still a bit appalling and complex and fragmentary, then the wind of the metaverse blew through, which inadvertently provided convenience for Musk.
At the moment when the meta-universe came in a mighty way, Musk engaged in brain-computer interfaces for several years, and suddenly became less out of reach, and musk could tell the story of the new world.
If the next story is told in the direction of the "New World" blueprint, the brain-computer interface may really become the biggest problem for XiaoZa, and the two people's years of enmity may also be contained here. What awaits us may be the garden where the path forks, and this confrontation between different options is far better than jumping into the future with no other choice.