Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday outlined his vision for “personal superintelligence,” predicting a “new era of personal empowerment.”
“I am extremely optimistic that superintelligence will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress,” Zuckerberg wrote in a letter published on Meta’s blog and social media platforms.
“But perhaps even more important is that superintelligence has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where people will have greater agency to improve the world in the directions they choose,” he said.
“Meta’s vision is to bring personal superintelligence to everyone,” he wrote. “We believe in putting this power in people’s hands to direct it towards what they value in their own lives.”
He also talked about the hardware that he expects people to use to access AI, saying he believed glasses would become “primary computing devices.”
“Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful,” he added. “Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices.”
Meta is bullish on the form factor and has developed and launched multiple models of AI-powered smart glasses, with its AI Ray-Bans being the most popular. It’s also working to develop a more advanced version of AI glasses with integrated displays, showing off a prototype of the technology, called “Orion,” last year.
If the term “superintelligence” sounds familiar, that’s because it’s one of the phrases AI companies have used to describe a yet-to-be-reached breakthrough generally defined as when AI is capable or more capable than human intelligence. Another similar phrase is “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI.
Last month, Zuckerberg announced Meta’s superintelligence lab. The Meta CEO has aggressively recruited established AI talent, including hiring Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead the new lab, and offering jaw-dropping offers to top engineers at OpenAI, Apple, and other AI firms.
Read Zuckerberg’s full letter below:
Personal Superintelligence
Over the last few months we have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves. The improvement is slow for now, but undeniable. Developing superintelligence is now in sight.
It seems clear that in the coming years, AI will improve all our existing systems and enable the creation and discovery of new things that aren’t imaginable today. But it is an open question what we will direct superintelligence towards.
In some ways this will be a new era for humanity, but in others it’s just a continuation of historical trends. As recently as 200 years ago, 90% of people were farmers growing food to survive. Advances in technology have steadily freed much of humanity to focus less on subsistence and more on the pursuits we choose. At each step, people have used our newfound productivity to achieve more than was previously possible, pushing the frontiers of science and health, as well as spending more time on creativity, culture, relationships, and enjoying life.
I am extremely optimistic that superintelligence will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress. But perhaps even more important is that superintelligence has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where people will have greater agency to improve the world in the directions they choose.
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.
Meta’s vision is to bring personal superintelligence to everyone. We believe in putting this power in people’s hands to direct it towards what they value in their own lives.
This is distinct from others in the industry who believe superintelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output. At Meta, we believe that people pursuing their individual aspirations is how we have always made progress expanding prosperity, science, health, and culture. This will be increasingly important in the future as well.
The intersection of technology and how people live is Meta’s focus, and this will only become more important in the future.
If trends continue, then you’d expect people to spend less time in productivity software, and more time creating and connecting. Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful. Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices.
We believe the benefits of superintelligence should be shared with the world as broadly as possible. That said, superintelligence will raise novel safety concerns. We’ll need to be rigorous about mitigating these risks and careful about what we choose to open source. Still, we believe that building a free society requires that we aim to empower people as much as possible.
The rest of this decade seems likely to be the decisive period for determining the path this technology will take, and whether superintelligence will be a tool for personal empowerment or a force focused on replacing large swaths of society.
Meta believes strongly in building personal superintelligence that empowers everyone. 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. I’m excited to focus Meta’s efforts towards building this future.
— Mark
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