After pledging to create a potent AI system that is on par with human intelligence, Mark Zuckerberg has come under fire for allegedly adopting an irresponsible approach to artificial intelligence. Additionally, the founder of Facebook has mentioned the possibility of opening it up to the general public.

According to the CEO of Meta, the company will try to create an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system that is open source, meaning that developers from other companies can use it. The system should be made “as widely available as we responsibly can”, he added.

Zuckerberg stated in a Facebook post that it was obvious that "building full general intelligence" would be necessary for the upcoming generation of tech services.

While there is no set definition for artificial general intelligence (AGI), the word is often used to describe a speculative AI system that is as intelligent as or more intelligent than humans in a variety of tasks. AGI's possible development has scared professionals and politicians worldwide because they believe that one AGI system—or several AGI systems combined—might be able to operate outside of human control and endanger humankind.

Like the company's Llama 2 AI model, Zuckerberg affirmed that Meta will think about making its AGI open source, or readily available for use and adaptation by developers and the general public.

"We should open source and make this technology as widely available as we responsibly can, so everyone can benefit. It is so important, and there are so many great opportunities with it," he stated.

Dame Wendy Hall, a computer science professor at the University of Southampton and a member of the UN's AI advisory board, called open source AGI a "really very scary" idea and claimed Zuckerberg was being reckless by even considering it.

"It is extremely unsettling to consider the release of open source artificial intelligence before we have figured out how to control these extremely potent AI systems," the speaker stated. Such technology has the potential to be extremely harmful in the wrong hands. It is incredibly reckless of a business to recommend it.

Fortunately, Hall continued, "I think it will be many years before such an aspiration [AGI] can be achieved in any meaningful way. This gives us time to set up the regulatory frameworks." But we must move this task along quickly because it concerns public safety.

At a worldwide AI safety summit held in the UK last year, Meta was one of the tech companies that pledged to let governments test artificial intelligence products both before and after they are released. Another expert based in the UK stated that a tech corporation shouldn't be the one to decide whether to open source an AGI system.

"Moving that into the realm of AGI could be world-saving or catastrophic—there are deep and complex arguments about the merits of open-sourcing current AI models," stated Dr. Andrew Rogoyski, director of the University of Surrey's Institute for People-Centred AI. "International consensus is required to make these decisions; a tech giant's boardroom will not suffice."

During an interview with the tech news website The Verge on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg stated that he would favour open sourcing where it made sense and was the "safe and responsible thing to do."

Some experts, including Hall, criticised Meta's plan to release Llama 2 as open source last year, comparing it to "giving people a template to build a nuclear bomb."

AGI is being developed by the California-based OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. According to OpenAI, AGI is “AI systems that are generally smarter than humans.” Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis has stated that AGI might be developed in less than ten years.

At this week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman issued a word of warning, stating that additional advancements in AI would be unachievable without a breakthrough in energy provision, such as nuclear fusion. While Zuckerberg mentioned that Meta had developed a "absolutely massive amount of infrastructure" to generate new AI systems, he did not provide a timescale for developing an AGI system. The business placed a sizable order for AI processing chips. Zuckerberg also mentioned that work was underway on a Llama 2 sequel.