Shadowing Practice: The Future Mark Zuckerberg Is Trying To Build - Learn English Speaking with Video
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So I'd love to start with these.
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10 years of work right there.
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Someone on your team call these the real life Tony Stark glasses.
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Very hard to make each one of these.
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That makes me feel incredibly optimistic.
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In a world where AI gets smarter and smarter, this is probably going to be the next major platform after phones.
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I miss hugging my mom.
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Yeah, haptics is hard.
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How does generative AI change how social media feels?
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We haven't found the end yet.
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The average American has fewer friends now than they did 15 years ago.
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Why do you think that's happening?
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I mean, there's a lot going on to unpack there.
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I'm about to interview Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
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Mark Zuckerberg.
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There are not that many people with more power over what our future might look like.
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Nearly half the total human population now uses Meta products.
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And I just tested some of their new tech that feels like science fiction.
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Stop!
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This is crazy.
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Mark Zuckerberg and the team at Meta are imagining a future that billions of other people might actually end up living in.
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So my goal for this conversation is to try to figure out what that future really looks like.
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To paint a picture of the future Mark Zuckerberg is trying to build, so that you can decide for yourself what you think of it.
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Welcome to the first episode of our new series, Huge Conversations.
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Awesome.
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I'd love to tell you what my goal is of this conversation.
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Go for it.
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So we have a show called Huge If True, which is this very optimistic show about science and technology and the potential futures that we can build.
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and in every episode we're sort of exploring what does it look like if you play a certain technological future out.
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And so my goal in this conversation is to try to help people see the future
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that you're imagining when you're building the products that you and the meta team are building.
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What are you imagining this looks like in the future?
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How are you imagining people use this?
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All of that.
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Yeah.
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Cool.
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Awesome.
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So I'd love to start with these.
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Let's do it.
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10 years of work right there.
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I got to demo them a little bit earlier today.
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I heard someone on your team call these the real life Tony Stark glasses.
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We're getting there.
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But I'd love to just hear in your voice, what are these?
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Well, these are the first full holographic augmented reality glasses, I think, that exist in the world.
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We've made, I think it's a few thousand or something, right? very hard to make each one of these
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but this is the culmination of 10 years of research
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and development that we've done to basically miniaturize all the computing
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that you need to have glasses not a headset but glasses
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that can put full holograms into the world with a wide field of view
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so you can imagine sort of in the future we'd be having a version of this conversation where you know, maybe I or you are not even here.
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It's like one of us is physically here and the other one is here as a, as kind of a full body hologram.
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And it's not just a video call.
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You can actually interact.
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You can do things.
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I mean, in the demo, we had the, you know, ping pong and games and things like that.
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But I mean, you could, you can interact, you can work together, you can, you know, play poker, play chess, whatever, like the holographic cards, holographic board game.
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I just think it's going to be wild.
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It's going to remake, I think,
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so many different fields that we think about today from how we work and productivity to a lot of things around science,
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a lot of things around education, entertainment, fun, gaming.
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But this is just the beginning.
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This is the first version.
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It's a prototype version that we've made in order to develop the next version, which is hopefully going to be the consumer one that we sell to a lot of people.
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Why build this?
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Well, I think it's going to be the next major computing platform.
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So if you look at like the grand arc of computing over time,
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you've gone from like mainframes to computers that basically like live on your desk
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or on a tower to phones that you have in your hand that you basically like, you know, can take with you everywhere that you want, but it's pretty unnatural, right?
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It takes you away from the world around you.
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And I think that the trend in computing is it gets more ubiquitous,
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it gets more natural, and it just gets more social, right?
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So you want to be able to interact with people in the world around you
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and I think that this is probably gonna be the next major platform after phones.
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Look at these two.
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These are the clear ones that show all the technology.
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Yeah, the whole thing is a special edition and this is like a really special edition.
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There's not a single millimeter of.. space.
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It's, you know, everything in here from the micro projectors that basically shoot light into the waveguides, right?
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It's a special type of display system.
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I mean, these aren't normal displays like you have in a phone or a TV or computer, like the type of displays that people have been building for decades.
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It's a waveguide system.
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The projector that's shooting light basically goes into these nano etchings across the waveguide that are what catches and creates the holograms.
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In order to synchronize that with where you're looking, there's eye tracking and little cameras.
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They illuminate your eyes.
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And then, of course, there's all the basic stuff that you need, all the computing, the batteries to power the whole thing, microphones,
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the speakers, because it needs to be able to play audio
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and speak with you and the cameras
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and sensors to see things around you in the world so
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that way when it's placing holograms in the world it can do
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that in the right place and understand where you are so
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that probably is still not covering everything because there's a lot of things
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that need to go into syncing up the holographic images between the two displays
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because you don't just have a single display like you have in a phone
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or TV you have two and it moves around and you know physical things are hard and need to be synced up.
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There's also the radio that has to communicate with your other computing devices to do heavier computing
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and the wrist -based neural interface that you probably got to try out.
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We kind of miniaturized all of this
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and fit it into you know normal looking pair of glasses
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which is you know when I told the team
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that we're going to do this ten years ago you know people weren't sure if we were going to be able to.
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But I think not only are we going to be able to do this, but I think we're going to be able to get it cheaper
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and higher quality and even smaller and more stylish over time.
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So I think this is going to be a pretty wild future.
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There are so many versions of trying to get a similar idea of digital objects in physical space.
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I'm thinking of, for example, glasses that have heads -up displays where it's headlocked
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and it's moving with my eyes glasses that are really creating digital objects in physical space that don't move as I move.
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I'm thinking of these.
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I'm also thinking of the Snapchat spectacles that they just announced.
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Then, on the other hand, there are headsets like the Quest and also like the Apple Vision Pro that seem to fall into a different category.
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I'm curious how you would organize this landscape for people
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and how you think about people using these tools in their real lives in the near future.
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Yeah, so when we were getting started on this about 10 years ago, I thought that something like this was going to be the ultimate product for everyone.
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You get to a normal looking pair of glasses, and we'll continue improving that, that can have full holographic images.
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I think it's super powerful and it is sort of the science fiction future
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that I think we all hope to get to.
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On the journey, we took a few other approaches as well to help us develop towards that,
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including building glasses that don't have displays to try to learn just take a stylish pair of glasses today
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and put as much technology into it as you can
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but really focus on the form factor and that's the ray -ban meta glasses
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and it's doing really well and initially we thought that
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that was sort of intro product for us to learn how to build this
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but one of the things that's clear now is you're going to be able to make
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that product a lot more affordable than this, probably permanently.
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So I actually think that there are going to be a bunch of different of these paths
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that we've taken are going to be kind of permanent product lines that people will choose.
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I think you'll see displayless glasses like the Ray -Ban metas continue to get better and better.
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Great for AI.
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No display, but you can talk to it.
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It can talk back.
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I think there's going to be something in between these that's basically a heads up display.
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So it's not a 70 degree field of view.
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Maybe it's a 20 degree or 30 degree field of view.
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So that's not going to be what you want for putting kind of a full hologram of a person
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or interacting with the world around you.
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But it's going to be great for, you know, when you're talking to AI, not just having voice, but also being able to see what it's saying.
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Or being able to text someone with your wrist based neural interface
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and then have their text show up rather than having it read to you, which is we read faster than we can listen.
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Or getting directions right or I'm just being able to search for information
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and get all that So there's a lot of value for a heads -up display
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that will be somewhat more expensive than the displayless glasses
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But somewhat cheaper than this then I think you're gonna get this it's going to be
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Probably the most premium and an expensive of the glasses products, but hopefully still something that you know,
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like a computer, is generally accessible to most people in the world.
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But I think that there are going to be all of those, and I think people will like them.
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I also think that the headsets that people are using around mixed reality will continue to be a thing, too, because no matter how good we get at miniaturizing the tech for this,
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you're just going to be able to fit more compute into a full headset.
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Fundamentally, our mission is not build something that is advanced and only a few people can use.
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We want to take it the last mile and do all the innovation to get it to everyone.
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We just shipped or announced Quest 3S, the new mixed reality headset.
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We basically are delivering high quality mixed reality for $299.
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I was really proud last year when we delivered Quest 3, the first kind of really high quality,
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high resolution color mixed reality device for $500.
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It's like a fraction of the cost of what the competitors are doing.
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And I think it's actually higher quality in a lot of ways.
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And now we've just doubled down on that.
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So I think that they're all actually going to end up being important long -term product lines.
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Display lists, heads -up display, full holographic AR, full headsets.
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I think that they're all going to be important.
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Yeah.
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If you play out the future of not just the hardware that we've been talking about.
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So, Meta Ray -Bans, Quest, Orion, but also the Llama models.
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If everything goes according to you and the team's wildest dreams.
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I'd love for you to just begin to describe what that feels like.
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Sure.
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I mean, I think that there are two primary values that we're trying to bring.
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On the AR and kind of mixed reality side, the main value we're trying to bring is this feeling of presence.
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So there's something that I think is just really deep about being physically present with another person
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that you don't get from any other technology today.
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And I think that's the thing when people have a very visceral reaction to experiencing virtual or mixed reality.
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What they're really reacting to is that they actually, for the first time with technology, feel a sense of presence.
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Like they're in a place with a person.
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And that's super powerful.
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Like I focused on designing social apps and experiences for 20 years.
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That's sort of like the holy grail of
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that is being able to build a technology platform that delivers this like deep sense of social presence.
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The other big track is around personalized AI.
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And for that, and that's sort of where Lama and MetAI and all those things are going.
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There's all this development that's going into making the models smarter
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and smarter over time but I think where this is gonna get really compelling is
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when it's personalized for you
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and in order for it to be personalized for you it has to have context
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and understand what's going on in your life both kind of at a global level
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and like what's physically happening around you right now
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and in order to do that I think
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that glasses are going to be the ideal form factor
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because they're positioned on your face in a way where they can let them see what you see
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and hear what you hear, which are the two most important senses that we use for kind of taking an information and context about the world.
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I think that this is all going to be kind of really deep and profound stuff.
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But it's basically those two things.
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It's this feeling of presence and this capability of really personalized intelligence that can help you.
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I'd love to talk about each of those two things.
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The first on presence, I owe a lot to being able to connect with people online, right? this job
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that i have is by definition yeah yeah also with my
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family my parents don't live anywhere close to me i video call them a lot
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and when i think about the progress of technology like this
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in a timeline from like the telegram to the telephone to
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video call to some feeling of presence with another person who's feels like they're right there in front of me
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that makes me feel incredibly optimistic i would love a future
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where like i can lose in scrabble to my mom
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and feel like she's really there in front of me yeah
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and it feels like we're not that far away from something i agree
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that persuades my brain that that's happening yeah totally and also i miss
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hugging my mom right like that never goes away yeah haptics is hard yeah
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and so my question is And my question is about that.
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It's about this feeling of like,
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it's hard for me to imagine a future where real physical presence is not different and special in some way,
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where I don't miss literally hugging my mom.
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And I'm curious how you think about the parts of human connection
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that are eye contact and physical touch and things that our eight brains value for connection with other people.
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Mm -hmm.
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Yeah, well, eye contact I think we're going to get to a lot before the touch part.
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For haptics, I do think we'll make progress on that, but it's obviously there's a spectrum there too from kind of hands, which is where
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if you draw out the kind of like homunculus version of
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a person in terms of like what are our kind of sensory, you know, what's like the majority of what we're sensing.
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Yeah, it looks funny.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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So I think being able to do that for your hands is probably the most important place to start.
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And you have a rough version of that with controllers today.
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I think that'll get even more over time.
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We have this demo playing ping pong where you have a controller where as the digital ball hits the ping pong paddle,
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you feel it hit as if it's hitting the ping pong paddle wherever it is.
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So you actually have a sense of where it's hitting the paddle.
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So I think that was just a wild demo.
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So I think we'll get some of that.
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The most extreme version of this is wanting force feedback, right?
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So, I mean, like for doing a lot of sports, right, it's like, okay,
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we can kind of do a good approximation of like boxing today where you get like good feedback on your hands.
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But it would be hard to do a virtual reality version of jujitsu where you're like grappling with someone
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and you need like real kind of force feedback on it.
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So that's probably like the hardest thing to go do.
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But I think we'll get there.
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You know, I think like most science fiction, it's not this binary thing that you just like wake up one day and we're like, oh, we've realized all the dreams.
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But I do think that these platforms are going to be the first time
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that I think that there's a realistic sense of presence in all the ways
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that that's special to people for most things that people want to do, which are not the most physical ones.
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And even some of the basic physical ones I think we'll get.
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But then there's a long tail of other stuff.
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I mean smell is also really important for people.
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Yeah.
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Right?
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I think it's disproportionately important for memories.
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And that's not really a thing
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that I think in the next few years we're going to have in any of these devices.
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I mean that's a very difficult and challenging thing on its own.
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What is the piece of that that you feel most interested in that you keep coming back to in your mind?
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This has the frustrating property to develop
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that the sense of presence is almost like when you're designing something that that's sort of trying to artificially deliver it.
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You're delivering an illusion to a person and more than any one thing that provides a sense of presence.
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It's actually more the case
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that any one thing done wrong breaks the sense of presence you kind of know that you're interacting with technology,
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but it's so convincing that you just kind of go along with it.
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And you're like, okay, yeah, no, this person feels like they're there.
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When I did that ping pong demo, at the end of it, I dropped the ping pong paddle on the virtual table and it shattered.
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So that was not the best for our internal development.
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But that's winning in our development right?
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It's like when you feel like something is kind of so realistic that you're just convinced that it's there.
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And there are a lot of things that can break that, right?
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So I think a field of view that's too low, right?
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So something feels real, but then you turn your head and it's not there.
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Latency, right?
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Physics that don't behave like realistic physics.
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It also is interesting in some ways what people can accept as physically real even though it's not right
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so like we've done a ton of work on avatars we
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we have this whole work stream on codec avatars to do these photorealistic avatars
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and it's i think it's going to be incredibly compelling and people are going to love it but
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one of the things that i found interesting is the ability to mix photorealistic
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and expressive kind of the cartoony avatars with photorealistic worlds and kind of more cartoony computer game type worlds.
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So you can have the, a codec kind of photorealistic avatar of a person in what is clearly like a video game or cartoon world.
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And people are generally pretty fine with that.
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It's like, okay, that, that feels pretty good.
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And similarly having a photorealistic world, but good, increasingly good kind of cartoon avatars,
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as long as the avatars move in a way that feels authentic to the person you're interacting with, it actually feels pretty good.
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You know, when you look at a 2D still frame of it, some of the stuff can look a little bit silly.
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And we've certainly, you know, had our share of memes around that.
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But when you're in there, you know, and you've played around with a lot of the stuff,
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it feels realistic because it's basically mimicking the kind of authentic mannerisms of a person that you're interacting with.
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And even if it's not a Kodak, but a realistic avatar, if it's kind of a more cartoony, expressive one.
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So I think that that's...
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It's very interesting to see kind of which pieces you need to unlock
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and where you just need to be like very technically excellent and consistent.
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But this isn't a space where it's like you deliver one thing and it's good.
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This is like there's a wide breadth of things that you need to nail and then have it all come together.
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And that's why these are 10 -year projects.
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It seems like an interesting way to learn about the human brain
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and what we actually care about with respect to what feels real.
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I was wondering about, there was this moment in an interview that you did with Lex Friedman.
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You quoted research that says that the average American has fewer friends now than they did 15 years ago.
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Yeah.
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And I was so interested in that because it seems like
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if we want to get to a world where there's more human connection, this is the trend that we're going to have to grapple with.
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And just to give some data on this, in the American Time Use Survey, over the last 20 years,
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the amount of time American adults spend socializing in person has dropped by nearly 30%.
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For ages 15 to 24, according to the Surgeon General, it's nearly 70%.
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And I look at that data and I think to myself, well, maybe if we're all socializing digitally, that doesn't matter so much.
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Maybe there's a future where that's actually fine.
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But there's also data that suggests that we're struggling somewhat.
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The number of Americans who say that they don't have a single close friend,
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that share has jumped from 3 % to 12 % in the last 30 years.
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It feels to me like with all the tools that we've built for human connection, we're struggling to connect.
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And I'm curious, why do you think that's happening?
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I mean, there's a lot going on to unpack there.
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A lot has changed sort of economically and socially during that period.
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And a lot of those trends go back before a lot of the modern technology.
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So, I mean, this is something that a lot of academics and folks have studied, but it is an interesting lens to look at this,
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though, because I think whenever you're talking about building digital types of connection, one of the first questions that you get is,
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is that going to replace the physical connection? and my answer to
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that especially in the case of something like this is that no because
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people already don't have as much connection as they would like
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to have it's not like this is replacing some sort of better physical connection
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that they would have otherwise had it's
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that the average person would like to have 10 friends
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and they have two right or three
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and there's just more demand to socialize than what people are able to do given the current construct
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and giving people the ability to be present with people who
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are in other places physically just seems like it will unlock more it's not going to make it
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so if I have glasses it's not gonna make it
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that I spend less time with my wife it's going to make it
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so that I spend more time with you know my sister who lives across the country
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and um that's I think that that's that's good I think people need that.
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As for the rest, I think we could probably spend a multi -hour podcast just going into all of the different kind of socio -economic,
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political dynamics that are going on.
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But none of the trends that I've seen, does it seem like the primary thing that's going on, is that because people are interacting online,
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they're now not interacting with people physically.
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It's, no, certainly I think you, I do interact with people online who I also like to interact with physically,
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but, and I think that that's kind of like a combination, like more combined, richer relationship that you have overall.
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But I think that there's a lot going on with the loss of, of kind of social capital and connections that really predates a lot of the modern technology.
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The goal of what I'm trying most to learn about is how we can structure the technologies
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that we use in the future to get toward this future I think you're imagining of more human connection in more ways.
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I'm curious, you brought up the other big pillar of AI.
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And in some of your conversations, I'm thinking of a conversation with Tim Ferriss in particular, you talked about a lot of different use cases of AI.
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And they seem to me to fall on somewhat of a spectrum.
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Like, for example, you mentioned automatic real -time translation.
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It's like basically the Star Trek translator, universal translator.
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I think we're pretty much there.
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Yeah.
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And that's one example on one end of the spectrum where some people might argue
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that there is a chance that someone is less likely, for example, to learn a language because we can all speak to each other in real time in different languages.
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I think nobody would really argue that therefore we shouldn't have that kind of universal translator.
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Also, a lot of people still learn Latin and Greek.
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Right, exactly.
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And so I think that end of the spectrum is something like technologies
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that really measurably unlock our humanity because they remove a struggle between people.
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And then on the other end of the spectrum, there are a lot of educational things, for example, where the struggle is kind of the point.
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It's like building a muscle.
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I can think of so many times in my life where the reason why I was doing something was not the output, it was the fact that I was trying so hard to do it.
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There's one example in the Tim Ferriss interview where you talked about your kids struggling to articulate themselves emotionally.
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And adults very much have the same problem.
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And you talked about AI as a way to help them articulate those emotions.
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Yeah.
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And I thought about all of the many times in my life where I have struggled to articulate my emotions
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and how I really could have used some help in those moments.
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And I also find myself thinking about the times when that was really building a muscle,
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where like the act of struggling to communicate with someone and understand what they wanted from me was important to my development.
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And so my question is, if you think about that as a spectrum between things
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that are really important to our humanity
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and the struggle being removed is helpful versus things where the struggle is the point
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and it unlocks something about our humanity and is important to preserve, like building a muscle.
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How do you draw the line between those things
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and how do we ensure that the muscles that we're building for this future are stronger and not weaker?
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Yeah, it's interesting.
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I mean, I think we're always going to find new things to struggle with.
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And I mean, it's you can always get better at communicating with other people
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and kind of expressing yourself and understanding other people.
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So having a tool that can help you do that better isn't going to mean that like, oh, now we perfectly understand every, you know, it's.
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Yeah.
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And I mean, I think the maybe one of the most functional aspects of this, you're already seeing a lot of these AI models really help
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people with coding right like a generation ago before I was
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getting started a lot of coding was like really low -level system software
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and you know then by the time
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that I got into it there's a little bit of that
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but you can make websites pretty easily make apps pretty easily
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and I think in 20 years or a lot sooner than
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that you're gonna basically be in a world where kids will be able to just describe the things
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that they want and build incredibly complex pieces of software.
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So it's, um, in that world, are kids going to be not struggling?
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I don't think so.
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I think that they're going to be just, um, expressing their creativity and it'll, it'll be this kind of constant iterative feedback loop around like,
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okay, like, yeah, I, you know, took a few minutes to describe this thing and like,
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yeah, this whole like amazing virtual world was created that I can now see on my glasses or whatever, but like these things are not exactly what I want them to be.
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So now I need to like go back and edit them.
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It just, I don't know.
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I think that there's always more.
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That's one of the things that makes people so good.
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It just, there's always more to do.
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We'll always find the struggle.
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Yeah.
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Another way to get at this is if you play this out to make the tools even better, in like 10 years, let's say your kids are in high school,
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are there ways that you would want them using AI
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because you think it would accelerate them intellectually and ways that you would
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Advocate for them not to use it or things that you would have concerns about.
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I Mean I think that there are some things
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that you need to be able to do yourself I think that's a lot of the basic fear
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that people have around this is that while we're building these amazing tools
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We get away from the self -confidence and ability of being able to do like this basic stuff yourself So it's like, all right, you have a calculator,
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but it's still good to be able to do kind of basic math in your head
397
because there are a lot of things that come up throughout the day
398
that you just want to have a general numeracy around, right?
399
That often they're not expressed in numerical terms, but just in terms of understanding trends or understanding arguments that people are making,
400
you kind of need to understand the shape of how numbers come together.
401
And so I think one of the big debates is like, should we still teach our kids to program computers,
402
even though you're going to have these these tools in the future that are just so.
403
much more powerful than anything that we have now to produce incredibly complicated pieces of software?
404
I think the answer to that is probably yes, because I think teaching someone how to code is teaching them a way to think rigorously.
405
And that even if they're not doing most of the code production, I think it's important that you kind of have the ability to think in that way.
406
And I think it's going to just make you generally a better thinker and better person.
407
So yeah, maybe that's like this generation's version of calculators.
408
It's like, so you'll want to use the calculator, but you'll also want to be able to generally do without it.
409
Other ones like language, I don't know, I mean, different people can come out.
410
I mean, I think this is one of the interesting questions about parenting these days is like,
411
is just kind of like what's important to teach your kids in an era where
412
so much is going to change over the time that they're even in school.
413
language I think you can make similar arguments I know there's
414
a lot of it's like it's probably gonna be less functionally relevant in the future to learn multiple languages
415
but it sort of helps you think in different ways you know I found from the languages
416
that I've studied
417
that a lot of it yeah you learn about the structure
418
of your own language you can you know you also learn about the culture right
419
because so much of how things are expressed in different places is tied to the nuance
420
and the history of of kind of what how so I I think that's all valuable and interesting stuff to get into.
421
But then, I don't know, at the same time, we only have so many hours in the day, so people need to prioritize what they're going to learn.
422
And it may be that, okay, in a world with perfect translation, which, by the way, we basically just announced on the Ray -Ban Metas
423
that now you're going to be able to just go to different countries.
424
I was testing that as well.
425
Yeah, we're starting out with just a few languages, but we'll roll it out to more.
426
And you could be traveling anywhere, and you have your glasses, and they just translate in real time in your ear. So it's wild.
427
Yeah, so I think people are going to need to choose what they want to focus on going forward.
428
How do the developments that we've been talking about in AI intersect with social media
429
and the platforms that most people use today?
430
There's a future where there's generated images and generated text and maybe AI influencers.
431
How does generative AI change how social media feels in the future?
432
Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a really deep one.
433
You know, there's already been one big shift, which is that social media started out as people primarily interacting with their friends.
434
And now it is, you know, at least half of the content is basically people interacting with creators
435
or content that's not created by people who they kind of personally know.
436
So we sort of already have that paradigm
437
and I think AI is probably going to accelerate that it will give all these people additional tools Right,
438
so your friends will create kind of funnier memes and more interesting content
439
That will come from a lot of different ways I think
440
some of it will be okay your friends have glasses
441
and they capture a bunch of stuff
442
and Before they might have not been able to edit it to make it interesting
443
Or maybe it was just too much work or they didn't realize
444
that they captured something amazing but now the AI is like, hey, I like made this thing for you out of your content.
445
It's like, okay, that's awesome.
446
Like people enjoy that.
447
Creators, obviously kind of much more specialized skills are going to
448
be able to use even more advanced AI tools to make more compelling content.
449
But then I think
450
that there will be a bunch of kind of green field
451
type stuff where maybe in the future there will be content
452
that is purely generated by AI by the system personalized for you.
453
Maybe it's summarizing things that are out there that are going to be interesting.
454
Maybe it's just producing something funny that makes you laugh.
455
This is going to be a very kind of deep zone that there's a lot to experiment with.
456
I know there There are going to be AI creators as well as creators building AI versions of themselves.
457
I mean, that's a thing that we just showed too at Connect is basically, I mean, if you're a creator, one of the big challenges is like, all right, there are only so many hours in the day
458
and your community probably has a nearly unlimited demand to interact with you
459
and you want to interact with them because you're trying to grow your community.
460
I mean, that's both socially and from a business perspective, that's sort of growing the community is an important part of what every creator does. So, okay,
461
if we can make it so that each creator can basically make an AI artifact that their community can interact with,
462
people will be clear that it's not the actual creator themselves, but it's almost like a piece of digital art that you're producing, like an interactive sculpture or something, that it's like you train it to,
463
here's the context that I wanted to have, here's the topics I wanted to communicate on, here's stuff that I wanted to stay away from.
464
You're giving your community something to interact with when you can't be there to kind of answer all the questions.
465
And I know that's going to be super compelling.
466
So there's like all these interesting things, but I think it's AI.
467
It's kind of like the Internet in a way where it's probably going to change almost every field
468
and almost every feature of every application that we use.
469
It seems sort of hyperbolic to say that, but I do think that's true.
470
And it's just hard to sort of enumerate all the different things up front.
471
But I think that over the next five to 10 years, we're just going to explore the impacts in each of these areas.
472
And it's going to be an amazing amount of innovation and really exciting.
473
I feel two things simultaneously when you say that.
474
I feel both like I really want to be optimistic about the future of these platforms
475
and I obviously have gained so much from an enormous pace of change, right?
476
Like everything that we're doing now.
477
And what I actually feel is worried.
478
I feel some specific concerns around the way that, you know, I might communicate with an audience and the way
479
that they might respond to that or the way that human communication might change, but also more generalized just sort of fear of the pace of change and worry.
480
And I don't think I'm alone in that feeling.
481
Yeah, and you're supposed to be the optimist.
482
I know.
483
And I'm curious, like, how you talk to people who feel that way.
484
What concerns do you feel are most legitimate?
485
And what do you feel most misunderstood?
486
I think the pace of change is always a concerning thing, right?
487
It's, um, there is a lot of uncertainty about how things will go in the future
488
and we're all going to get really amazing new tools to do both our hobbies and our jobs and
489
they'll make it so we can do better work
490
and have better lives
491
but at least on the professional side it's going to be our responsibility to keep up with that
492
or else it's going to be difficult for us to compete
493
with other people who are doing a good job of kind of keeping up with the new trend.
494
So I get it.
495
I mean, I think, um, um, you know, especially in the, you know, line of, of work of being a creator and it's a very sort of competitive space.
496
I don't think that like creators necessarily think about it as competitive, but it is right.
497
It's like, it's, you know, and, um, and so I get it.
498
I think that this is going to make it so
499
that like the quality of work that people produce
500
and how interesting it is and how much they can communicate
501
and and really efficiently is just gonna kind of go through the roof.
502
But when you're staring down a set of changes, like you know that there's some big change coming,
503
and you don't know what it is, that's always a time of anxiety.
504
So I get it.
505
If I take my creator hat off, and I'm just a person who is young -ish, starting out my career -ish,
506
starting out building a family,
507
how would you advise someone like me to prepare well for the future that we're headed toward,
508
to be able to learn new skills now or just think about this future in an educated way?
509
Yeah.
510
I mean, I just think maintaining curiosity about things is important.
511
I do think we can overstate to what extent the next
512
10 years is going to be sort of different from the last 10 or 15.
513
I mean, a ton of stuff changed over the last 10 or 15 years too.
514
It's not like this is the only time in history where there's some technology that's going to make it
515
so there's new opportunities and things change.
516
The internet coming into maturity and everyone having smartphones has already rewired things dramatically.
517
And I mean, maybe the next period will be a somewhat bigger change or maybe it won't.
518
Um, I think it'll feel different to different people, but, um, I don't think this is like going from zero to one.
519
It's not like, okay, everything's just kind of been normal.
520
And now like, now it's about to change.
521
It's like the technology evolves over time and, and like the opportunities that we have evolve and improve.
522
And I think that that's like the people who do well, I think are people who are generally, um, curious about it and dig in
523
and try to use it to live better lives rather than the people who basically try to fight it in some way.
524
One thing that I really want to ask you about is open sourced.
525
Yeah.
526
I think, imagine that we're talking to an audience that has maybe heard that term,
527
but doesn't have any real idea of how that might impact them in the development of AI.
528
Yeah.
529
How would you explain the reasonable debate that people in your field are having about this right now?
530
Well, I think there are two pieces.
531
I mean, so what does open source mean?
532
It means that people can build a lot of different things.
533
So at a high level, I look at the vision that a bunch of companies have.
534
So OpenAI, Google, they're building an AI, one AI that I think in general they're like, okay, this is going to be, it's like you're going to use,
535
they think you're going to use Gemini or ChatGPT for all of the different things that you want to interact with.
536
And at a high level, that's just not how I think the world is going to go.
537
I think we're going to have a lot of different AI systems, just like we're going to have, we have a lot of different apps.
538
I think in the future, every business, just like they have a website and a phone number
539
and an email address and a social media account is also going to have an AI
540
that can interact with their customers to help them sell things, to help them do support.
541
I think a lot of creators will have their own AIs, right?
542
I think like a lot of people will will interact with
543
with a bunch of different things there's a question of okay do you want a future
544
that's fundamentally kind of very concentrated
545
and where you're interacting with kind of one system for everything
546
or do you want one where a lot of different people are building a lot of different ais
547
and systems just kind of like you probably didn't want there to be you know just one app
548
or just one website it's like a richer world
549
when there's a diversity of different things So that's one piece is just giving people the ability to build it themselves.
550
And what open source does, it makes it so that everyone can take and modify the model and build stuff on top of it, which is different from the kind of closed and centralized approach.
551
The safety debate is a specific part of this, which is in a world where AI gets smarter and smarter.
552
What's the way that we have the highest chance of having a kind of positive future
553
and not having a lot of the safety concerns?
554
And I think some people think that if we keep the model closed and don't give it to a lot of developers,
555
that should make it safer because then you don't get bad developers doing bad things with the model.
556
Historically, I think what we've seen with open source is actually the opposite, which is that this is not the first open source project, right?
557
I mean, this is obviously, this has been a thing in the industry for decades.
558
And I think what we've traditionally seen is that open source software is safer and more secure, largely because you put it out there,
559
more people can scrutinize it because they can see all parts of the system.
560
And then there are inevitably issues with any software there are bugs, there are security issues, and initially with open source people thought,
561
hey, if you're putting the software out there and there are holes in it, isn't everyone just going to go exploit those holes, and especially the bad guys?
562
But it turned out that it sort of in this counterintuitive way that by adding more scrutiny to the systems,
563
the holes became apparent quicker and then were fixed.
564
And then people roll out a new version, just like we roll out a new version of our models
565
right llama 3 llama 3 .1 llama 3 .2 everyone upgrades
566
um
567
so i think the same thing is going to happen here
568
i think it's sort of this counterintuitive thing where even though
569
i think there's some concern around all right are bad guys
570
going to do bad things with these models i actually think you just get a kind of smarter
571
and safer model for everyone, the more it's rolled out, the more kind of scrutiny is on it.
572
And then part of that is we get feedback and we make the model safer.
573
So that as we roll it out to more people, it's safer for more people to use.
574
So I think that the history of open source and the software industry
575
generally would suggest that open source is going to lead to a more prosperous and safer future.
576
Our show is called Huge If True.
577
And what I mean by that is kind of testing the most optimistic, non -obvious thing.
578
And so my question to you is, what is the biggest open,
579
genuine question on your mind right now? In which field?
580
You're in so many.
581
I am particularly curious about the combination of AI and hardware, but I realize that we've covered a lot.
582
So I'm curious the direction you'd take this on a question that occupies you right now.
583
Gosh, I mean, I think maybe one that's a little more AI specific is the recurrent set of methods
584
that seem to be scaling very well, right?
585
So with past AI architectures, you could kind of feed an AI system a certain amount of data and use a certain amount of compute,
586
but eventually it hit a plateau.
587
And One of the interesting things about these new transformer -based architectures over the last,
588
you know, five to ten years is that we haven't found the end yet.
589
So that leads to this dynamic where Lama 3, you know, we could train on, you know, 10 ,000 to 20 ,000 GPUs.
590
Lama 4, we could train on more than 100 ,000 GPUs.
591
Lama 5, we can plan to scale even further.
592
And there's just an interesting question of how far
593
that goes it's totally possible that at some point we just like hit a limit
594
and just like previous systems there's an asymptote
595
and it doesn't keep on growing but it's also possible that
596
that limit is not gonna happen anytime soon and
597
that we're gonna be able to keep on just building more clusters
598
and generating more you know synthetic data to train the systems
599
and that they're just going to keep on getting more and more useful for people for quite a while to come.
600
And it's a really big and high stakes question, I think, for the companies,
601
because we're basically making these bets on how much infrastructure to build out for the future.
602
And this is like hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure.
603
So like I'm clearly betting that this is going to keep scaling for a while.
604
But it's one of the big questions, I think, in the field, because it is possible that it doesn't.
605
You know, that obviously would lead to a very different world where it's, I mean, I'm sure people still figure it out eventually,
606
just need to make some new fundamental improvements to the architecture in some way.
607
But that might be a somewhat longer trajectory for, okay, maybe, you know, the kind of fundamental AI advances slow down for a bit
608
and we just take some time to build new products around this.
609
Or it could be the case, and that's what I'm betting on, that the fundamental AI will just continue advancing for quite a
610
while and that we're going to get both a new set of products
611
that are just really compelling in all these ways and
612
that the technology landscape and what's possible will just continue being dynamic over like a 20 -year period and
613
That's probably what I guess is gonna happen
614
But it I think it's one of the bigger questions in the industry
615
and kind of for technology across the world today Is there anything else that you want to say?
616
I don't know.
617
We're good Amazing.
618
Thank you so much for doing this.
619
Yeah, no, thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Future Mark Zuckerberg Is Trying To Build”. This video has 619 sentences and 8442 words to shadow. The speech runs for 46:58. The speaker talks fast, about 180 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| interact verb | /ɪn.təˈɹækt/ | To engage in communication and other shared activities (with someone). |
| compute verb | /kəmˈpjuːt/ | To reckon, calculate. |
| avatar noun | /ˌæv.əˈtɑː(ɹ)/ | An incarnation of a deity, particularly Vishnu. |
| meta adjective | /ˈmɛtə/ | Self-referential; structured analogously (structured by relationships), but at a higher level. |
| holographic adjective | In the form of a hologram or holograph. | |
| pung noun | /pʌŋ/ | A set of three identical tiles. |
| headset noun | /ˈhɛdsɛt/ | A pair of headphones or earphones, or a singular headphone or earphone, typically with an attached microphone. |
| ping verb | /pɪŋ/ | To make a high-pitched, short and somewhat sharp sound. |
| compel verb | /kəmˈpɛl/ | To overpower; to subdue. |
| hologram noun | /ˈhɑləˌɡɹæm/ | A three-dimensional image of an object created by holography. |
| personalize verb | /ˈpɜː.sə.nə.laɪz/ | To adapt something to the needs or tastes of an individual. |
| photorealistic adjective | /ˌfoʊ.toʊˌɹiː.əlˈɪs.tɪk/ | Of or pertaining to photorealism. |
| optimistic adjective | /ˌɒptɪˈmɪstɪk/ | Expecting the best in all possible ways. |
| demo noun | /ˈdɛm.oʊ/ | A demonstration or visual explanation. |
| realistic adjective | /ˌɹɪəˈlɪs.tɪk/ | Expressed or represented as being accurate, practicable, or not idealistic. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| roll out verb | To deploy or release (a new film or software, etc.); to launch (a product or service), especially in a gradual fashion across multiple regions. | |
| start out verb | To emerge suddenly; to jump out. | |
| come together verb | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | To assemble; to congregate; to combine. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| keep up with verb | To manage to remain beside or just behind someone or something that is moving away from one. | |
| bring up verb | To mention. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- We haven't found the end yet.
- Why do you think that's happening?
- How are you imagining people use this?
- What concerns do you feel are most legitimate?
- I mean, so what does open source mean?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | we've been talking |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | haven't found · We've made · we've done |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | True, which is · version, which is · hear, which are |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be synced · be personalized · being removed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 185 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, we're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: authentic /ɔˈθɛn.tɪk/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: socialize /ˈsoʊʃəlaɪz/, stylish /ˈstaɪlɪʃ/, socially /ˈsoʊʃəli/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: personalize /ˈpɜː.sə.nə.laɪz/, photorealistic /ˌfoʊ.toʊˌɹiː.əlˈɪs.tɪk/, optimistic /ˌɒptɪˈmɪstɪk/, articulate /ɑːɹˈtɪk.jə.leɪt/, counterintuitive /ˌkaʊntəɹɪnˈtuɪtɪv/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like interact, compute, avatar.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.