In a recent announcement, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, unveiled a staggering investment of over $10 billion in computing infrastructure aimed at developing General Artificial Intelligence (AGI). Unlike the current AI, which is specialized in specific tasks, AGI aims to match or exceed human capabilities across a wide array of complex cognitive tasks. This move marks a significant milestone in the field of AI, underscoring the growing importance of these technologies in our society.
Meta plans to acquire 350,000 Nvidia H100 graphic processing units (GPUs), among the world's most powerful, which are crucial to training the most advanced AI models. This purchase is set to more than significantly boost Meta's computing power dedicated to AI training, targeting a capacity equivalent to 600,000 H100 GPUs. By comparison, OpenAI is said to have utilized around 25,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs to train ChatGPT, although other estimates suggest a lower figure.
AGI, as envisioned by Zuckerberg, would be able to solve problems across a broad spectrum of fields, thus mimicking the key features of human intelligence, including learning and adaptability. A paper published in 2019 in the journal
EMBO Reports details these capabilities. Achieving AGI could represent a point of no return for humanity, as highlighted by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, in 2018, comparing the impact of AI research to that of electricity or fire.
Last year, numerous experts and leading figures, including OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, signed a statement emphasizing the need for humanity to mitigate "the risk of AI-related extinction", alongside other societal-level risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. Nevertheless, many scientists believe that humanity will never be able to construct an AGI.
Currently, Meta is in the process of training its response to ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, dubbed "Llama 3", and has outlined a future roadmap that includes an AGI system. Zuckerberg claimed that this "absolutely massive amount of infrastructure" will be in place by the end of the year.