Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, has said that openness around AI is the “way forward” for the technology.

In an op-ed for the Financial Times, Clegg pondered whether BigTech companies should keep their AI systems in house or make them available more openly – a question many may likely wonder about Meta itself.

“As the debate rumbles on, the case for openness has grown,” Clegg said. “This is in part because of practicality — it’s not sustainable to keep foundational technology in the hands of just a few large corporations — and in part because of the record of open sourcing.”

Clegg went on to state that it is important to consider where AI models are currently at, and what state they may reach in the future.

“If and when these advances become more plausible, they may necessitate a different response,” he said. “But there’s time for both the technology and the guardrails to develop.”

The comments come after Elon Musk-funded Future of Life Institute recently called for a six-month pause on training AI systems in an open letter signed by prominent figures including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Emma Bluemke, Centre for the Governance of AI, PhD Engineering, University of Oxford.

Cleg concluded that openness around AI was “the best antidote” to fears surrounding the technology.

“It allows for collaboration, scrutiny and iteration,” he said. “And it gives businesses, start-ups and researchers access to tools they could never build themselves, backed by computing power they can’t otherwise access, opening up a world of social and economic opportunities.”

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