Mark Zuckerberg and other top Meta execs are spending most of their time on AI, the company's CTO says

• Meta's CTO said AI was probably the area that he and other top execs were focusing the most on.
• Andrew Bosworth told Nikkei Asia that the company had been investing in AI for more than a decade.

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief product officer, Chris Cox, are among the executives at the company who spend most of their time on AI, its chief technology officer said.

Andrew Bosworth told Nikkei Asia in an interview published on Wednesday: "We just created a new team, the generative AI team, a couple of months ago; they are very busy. It's probably the area that I'm spending the most time [in], as well as Mark Zuckerberg and [Chief Product Officer] Chris Cox."

Meta has been pushing ahead with AI development in recent months. In February, the company released its large language model, "LLaMA," to researchers. The company said the model was aimed at driving research into what it called an "important, fast-changing field," alluding to the success of OpenAI's viral ChatGPT and other generative AI products.

Bosworth told Nikkei Asia that Meta had been investing in AI for more than a decade. He believed the company's AI could be used in advertising to save a lot of time and money. The tech could be used to tell advertisers what tools to use and create images for different audiences, he said.

In the interview, Bosworth also addressed a recent backlash against the development of advanced AI technology. He called the demands expressed in an open letter for a pause on advanced AI development "unrealistic."

"I think it's very important to invest in responsible development," Bosworth told the outlet, "and we do that kind of investment all the time. However, it's very hard to stop progress and make the right decisions on what changes you would make."

Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, made outside normal working hours.