Zuckerberg's AI media blitz: 3 key takeaways

Mark Zuckerberg spent a single week making his most concentrated public case yet on how artificial intelligence should be built and who should control it.

The CEO of Meta released an open letter, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, and an unprecedented interview with The New York Times, which is unusual for a tech executive, especially when this one usually commands a lot of media attention.

All three events featured Zuckerberg criticising an emerging trend within the industry, the shift toward the development of closed and protected artificial intelligence. 

According to him, such a situation poses a threat to the economy and politics, and decentralised AI innovation is essential for the competitiveness of the US.

In his New York Times interview, he was blunt about rival labs. "So much of the discourse from a lot of the other labs that are developing this is overwhelmingly filled with doom," he said, adding that the debate needed "a voice or several voices that are bringing realism."

He went further still, telling the paper it was "literally impossible to have a single benevolent superintelligence that is simultaneously aligned with everyone at once".

Zuckerberg rejects the AI-jobs-apocalypse narrative

In the journal article, Mark Zuckerberg challenged the pessimistic view on AI and employment. He said that he did not understand how one could believe in the ability of AI to “eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance” while wanting to make it happen anyway.

He argued that because the use of AI technology is becoming more accessible to everyone, it becomes possible to establish new companies, which, according to him, will create more employment.

Instead of promoting AI as primarily an automation technology, Zuckerberg promoted AI technology as something that can help people create things which do not even exist right now.