Zuckerberg distances Meta from calls for a coordinated approach on an AI slowdown

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it’s up to each AI company to make sure its technology is safe, distancing himself from calls by rival companies for a coordinated slowdown in the development of advanced artificial intelligence.

The comments Zuckerberg posted on social media followed a proposal from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that quickly found support from tech leaders including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk at SpaceXAI.

Warnings from researchers about the technology's potential threats to humanity have sparked a debate among industry leaders over how best to rein in the technology before it could escape human control.

AI companies are already motivated to develop their models in a safe way and face “significant liability” to prevent them from causing harm, Zuckerberg said.

“Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens," he wrote on X.

Zuckerberg, who didn't name Anthropic or any other companies, posted days after Amodei outlined a three-step plan to ensure AI safety, including a proposal for companies and countries to coordinate a slowdown in its development.

Zuckerberg said Meta delayed releasing its Muse AI agent for several months to ensure its safety and security.

“We didn’t call for everyone else to do this before we would,” he said.

Companies should prioritize building safe AI models instead of systems that can automatically improve themselves, a function known as recursive self-improvement, Zuckerberg wrote.

“Committing the significant majority of compute towards serving people rather than racing towards recursive self-improvement is one of the best ways to ensure we develop this technology safely.”