The influential tech icon Elon Musk and the wiz kid Mark Zuckerberg have never seen eye
to eye, despite their companies working together on several occasions.
The Musk-Zuckerberg feud has been around for years now.
This first started when a SpaceX rocket carrying a satellite for Facebook exploded during launch.
What followed is a series of comments, disagreements and accusations.
Both the billionaire tech CEOs are at the top of their respective domains and yet have
often gone against each other over multiple topics.
Find out what Musk had to say in his latest warning to Mark Zuckerberg which could have
a big impact on how we see the internet.
Let’s get started.
Musk vs Elon : The Rivalry Begins The two moghuls first crashed in September
2016.
Facebook was beginning to expand its horizons in different tech domains and was also targeted
by many for their infamous data leak.
Amidst all this, they decided to launch their very first satellite mounted on SpaceX’s
Falcon 9 rocket.
The rocket exploded on its launch pad and also destroyed the Facebook satellite which
cost them $200 million.
Thus, this sudden explosion in Cape Canaveral turned out to be a big loss for Facebook.
Elon later promised to make up for their mistake by offering a free rocket trip.
The Facebook satellite was aimed to improve connectivity in parts of Europe, Africa and
the Middle East.
It was also crucial to fulfill Israeli government’s communication needs.
Post the incident, Mark Zuckerberg stated that he was highly disappointed and upset
with what happened.
SpaceX reported that the accident occurred due to a faulty pressure vessel, but did not
give any response to the statement passed by Mark.
It was two years later when reporter Kerry Flynn asked Musk about the time he blew up
Mark’s satellite to which Elon said : “Yeah, my fault for being an idiot..we did give them
a free launch to make up for it and I think they had some insurance as well.”
The two year silence was indeed met by a good roasting reply.
In the following years..
Then in 2017, they had a feud due to having opposite views on artificial intelligence.
When a viewer asked for Zuckerberg’s view on AI during a Facebook Live broadcast he
mentioned how positive he was on the subject.
Mark Zuckerberg thought that the people who are naysayers and try to glorify these doomsday
scenarios should stop doing so.
He indirectly taunted Musk who is in favour of putting regulations on AI by saying it's
pretty irresponsible to do so.
He also told the American congress in 2018 that AI tools are the perfect scalable option
to detect inappropriate posts and nudity across the internet.
He supported his statement by saying that such tools are used at Facebook and always
do a good job in spotting nudity and terrorist-related content.
But there’s one downside to this which Mark didn’t see through, it is that the human
language is constantly changing and these tools still struggle to stop misinformation
from propagating.
Musk has been a long time proponent of regulation and caution when it comes to new AI technology.
He striked back at Mark by tweeting : “I’ve talked to Mark about this.
His understanding of the subject is quite limited.”
Later in 2018, Facebook was caught in the Cambridge Analytica scandal during which Musk
made quite a public scene by deleting SpaceX and Tesla’s Facebook pages.
In response to a fan’s tweet which asked if Musk would delete SpaceX’s Facebook page,
he stated that he didn’t know they had one.
Musk also added that Facebook’s UI looks lame and he finds it quite unsettling.
After a while, both Tesla and SpaceX’s Facebook pages were nowhere to be found on Facebook.
Musk said that it wasn’t a political move and the company gives him the willies.
Later in 2018, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton also tweeted : It is time #deletefacebook.
To which Elon Musk replied by saying : What’s Facebook?
That said, Musk also used to be quite over-confident about AI once.
In 2019, he told Tesla investors that soon there will be more than 1 million autonomous
Tesla’s on the roads.
He said they will achieve this by 2020.
Well, it's 2021 and no sign of a fully autonomous software can be seen.
Tesla customers do have the option of paying an extra 2000 dollars to purchase a future-beta
of the software whenever it gets launched.
For now, as you might know, self driving is only limited to parking, changing lanes in
the highways and casual driving on empty streets.
Musk believes that if we create machines that are smarter than us, then they will eventually
control the human race.
Don’t worry, you are not the only person who is getting terminator flashbacks.
Musk vs Elon : Who will come out at the top?
Most recently, after the riots at the US Capitol, Elon posted various memes linking the riots
to Facebook.
As a follow-up to his tweet on the rampage in Washington, Musk posted a picture of dominoes
with the caption "a website to rate women on college," a reference to Facebook's foundation
at Harvard University, and the caption "This is called the domino effect."
The rioters were the subject of the final domino.
Musk also lambasted Facebook's data-sharing methods, tweeting another meme about the firm
that referenced the corporation "spying" on customers in response to the news by Facebook-owned
WhatsApp that it will begin requiring users to share their personal data with the social
media giant.
As per Musk's comment, individuals should "use Signal," an encrypted communications
programme, instead.
His message was retweeted by Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, another tech tycoon who
has had a public spat with Zuckerberg.
In terms of defining personal brands, Musk's is the most transparent.
Tony Stark, the fictional industrialist and alter ego of Iron Man in Marvel comics, has
often been compared to him.
With $307 million from AltaVista, Musk sold Zip2, his first online publishing firm, to
co-found X.com in 1999, which became PayPal and was bought out by eBay in 2002 for $1.5
billion.
Peter Thiel, Musk's PayPal business partner, invested his winnings in venture capital,
but Musk opted to build space rockets instead, giving birth to SpaceX.
His later businesses, including Tesla, SolarCity, Hyperloop, and The Boring Company, all exhibit
infrastructure inventiveness of the Tony Stark sort.
Portraying AI as an existential threat to mankind is something which Elon has done for
a long time.
Mark Zuckerberg on the other hand, essentially controls the internet as he has complete rights
over WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.
Ideas rather than commodities are Zuck's professional and personal focus.
For him, Facebook is a one-stop shop for all things digital, including text, photographs,
video and sound.
It's a representation rather than a tangible object.
He has always sought to take use of greater chances for symbol-creation and distribution
when he has gone beyond these immaterial representations.
Facebook’s purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp offer examples.
Facebook's purchase of Oculus, the developer of virtual reality headsets, doesn't offer
a new way to conquer cities, continents, or the universe but is rather a move of their
own personal benefit.
At the very least, their AI software seems pleasant and domesticable from this vantage
point.
Frequent feuds and accusations simply alienate Zuckerberg's billions of users and millions
of marketers who want to try new AI because they're afraid about the future of computers.
It was a hard lesson to learn for Zuckerberg, who was also mocked and sneered at for his
display of a home-grown AI dubbed Jarvis.
With Facebook’s transition to ‘Meta’, getting their security uptight and error-free
has become highly crucial for him.
Both these billionaires will face changes, but only time will tell who will come out
victorious.
Takeaway from this rivalry One thing we can say for sure after this rivalry
is that AI is not yet ready to be fully relied upon and probably never will be.
Human intervention is an integral part of a work process and should always be included
at one or the other stage.
For now, companies are using people to collect data and analyze the very same data.
Many people are still employed to do the tasks that AI is not ready to do.
AI has also been falling short in the healthcare section, an area where even a little mistake
could lead to a life-or-death situation.
A recent study analyzed lots of machine learning models which were designed to detect signs
of COVID-19 in X-rays and CT scans.
But none of the results could be used in a clinical setting as it had many flaws.
As technology advances, deep learning AI systems are significantly getting better.
But in order for it to be useful in practical scenarios, the probability of error will have
to be zero.
Now that both these billionaires are competing in the AI and satellite internet domain, the
resulting competition will be quite interesting to watch.
Do you agree with Musk in statements against AI or are in favour of it?
Let us know in the comments below.