Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg posted a letter yesterday focused mostly on the potential for so-called “personal superintelligence.” He said that while AI will inevitably cause societal change akin to the agricultural revolution, allowing for discoveries that “aren’t imaginable today,” the real frontier will be at an individual level.
Zuckerberg wrote: “As profound as the abundance produced by AI may one day be, an even more meaningful impact on our lives will likely come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, experience any adventure, be a better friend to those you care about, and grow to become the person you aspire to be.”
He claimed that Meta has seen “glimpses of (its) AI systems improving themselves” in recent months, suggesting that superintelligence is “now in sight.” Developing superintelligent systems, those which outperform humans, is a key goal of Meta, along with its major rival OpenAI.
The billionaire CEO couldn’t resist taking a subtle swing at “others in the industry” pursuing superintelligence. He said they “believe superintelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output.”
OpenAI announced in January that its primary goal for the year would be the development of superintelligence, and, last month, CEO Sam Altman announced that his company had “recently built systems that are smarter than people in many ways.”
In that same announcement, he acknowledged that AI will lead to job losses, and that robots would eventually build the AI infrastructure, making progress cheaper.
Smart glasses will deliver personal superintelligence, according to Zuckerberg
But Meta’s superintelligence goals may not be wholly altruistic, either. Zuckerberg couldn’t resist plugging his smart glasses, saying they will “become our primary computing devices” because they will deliver the revolutionary personal experiences that superintelligence allows for.
Meta has been working on smart eyewear since the start of the decade, and it recently invested $3.5 billion in the company that owns Ray-Ban and Oakley. Just two weeks ago, he said that if people do not have AI glasses in the future, “you’re basically going to be at a cognitive disadvantage.”
While some of Meta’s historic big bets, such as virtual reality, have not lived up to expectations in the past, other tech giants are also backing smart glasses.
Apple plans to launch its own smart glasses by the end of 2026, offering smartphone-like functionality at eye level. Meanwhile, Google has recently partnered with Kering Eyewear, Warby Parker, and Gentle Monster to develop AI-powered glasses featuring Android XR. OpenAI, on the other hand, is working on a mystery AI-powered wearable device with Apple designer Jony Ive, which Altman has confirmed won’t be glasses.
Another clue that Zuckerberg isn’t above self-interest is the limited attention his letter gives to AI safety. Amid all the sweeping talk of progress, he offers only a brief remark: “We’ll need to be rigorous about mitigating (novel safety) risks and careful about what we choose to open source.”
Meta’s reputation regarding privacy and security has not been stellar, and its previous decision to open source its Llama models backfired financially, rather than in terms of safety, when DeepSeek released models based on them that were more advanced and less expensive.
Meta maintains it is the best company to pursue superintelligence, mostly because it has the cash
With another dig at his industry rivals, Zuckerberg hammers home that Meta is the company that will deliver superintelligence first and best. “We have the resources and the expertise to build the massive infrastructure required, and the capability and will to deliver new technology to billions of people across our products,” he wrote.
This is not the first time he’s made this point; in a July memo, Zuckerberg said Meta is “uniquely positioned” to deliver superintelligence, as it has enough cash to acquire the significant compute resources required, a track record of delivering products to billions of people, experience in AI hardware with its smart glasses and VR headsets, and a company structure that allows it to take big swings.
Meta made more than $160 billion in revenue in 2024, largely from online advertising on its social media platforms, so it certainly has the cash to support the power-hungry infrastructure that advanced AI needs, unlike its smaller rivals.
It is already building two massive data centres that will produce multiple gigawatts of energy for training and running the superintelligent system, and Zuckerberg has poured hundreds of millions into luring top talent from OpenAI, Google, Apple, and Safe Superintelligence for a new AI research division, much to Altman’s disgust.
Nevertheless, OpenAI’s CEO has alluded that Meta’s social fortune is evidence that it won’t be successful, arguing that its roots suggest a lack of true commitment to superintelligence, and that the company will eventually chase “their next flavor of the week.”
After all, Meta began life as Facebook and still maintains an almost too strong grip on the social media landscape, while also incurring around $60 billion in losses by investing in metaverse-related technology.
As Meta and OpenAI pour billions into superintelligence, a new report warns that the energy demands of AI have reached unsustainable levels.
