Elon Musk continues to challenge Mark Zuckerberg: "Anywhere, anytime, any rules"

Elon Musk has remained willing to duel Mark Zuckerberg since the challenge was issued in June 2024. Both billionaires have similar views on the development of artificial intelligence.

Elon Musk, a billionaire known for his unpredictable personality, expressed his impression of Meta’s latest artificial intelligence model but still firmly challenged Mark Zuckerberg. “I will fight Zuckerberg anywhere, anytime, under any rules,” Musk said at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday .

The incident occurred as Musk traveled to Capitol Hill to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. But despite numerous exchanges between the two billionaires, the duel has yet to materialize since Musk issued his challenge in June 2023. At the time, there was widespread speculation that Meta was developing a competitor to Musk’s X platform, and Zuckerberg launched his text-based social networking platform Threads in July.

On August 11, Zuckerberg wrote on Threads: “I’ve been ready to duel since the day Elon challenged me. If he agrees to a specific date, you’ll hear from me. Until then, please assume that anything he says is unconfirmed .” This response has left many curious about the real possibility of a duel.

Musk has repeatedly floated the idea of a cage fight, even as Zuckerberg celebrated his 40th 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡day in May. On the X platform, Musk wrote: “If only Zuckerberg were strong enough (sigh). I offered to fight him anywhere, anytime, under any rules, but all I hear are crickets . ”

Not everything between Musk and Zuckerberg is a disagreement, though. The two have similar approaches to competing in artificial intelligence, and have talked about building AI products to disrupt the monopolies of large companies like OpenAI and Microsoft.

Notably, Musk also gave Zuckerberg a rare compliment when Meta released its latest AI model, Llama 3.1, on Tuesday. Of the open-source model, Meta claims it outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4 and has made it freely available to the public. ” That’s impressive, and Zuck deserves credit for open-sourcing,” Musk wrote on X.