Last week, Mark Zuckerberg took to Instagram, naturally, to lay out Meta’s vision for the future of artificial intelligence: personal superintelligence. Superintelligence is imminent, argues Zuckerberg in the video, but the question is: What should we direct this superpower toward?
Meta’s answer: “personal superintelligence” for everyone.
What does that mean, exactly? The company intends to spend up to $72 billion over the next year to ramp up its AI development, with an eye toward bringing each human an AI companion that “knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them.”
AI will be the lens through which we view the world. And he means that literally. Devices like AI glasses, says Zuckerberg, will soon replace computers and phones.
Over time, these personalized companions will help humans “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.”
If you read that and wonder what the hell Zuck is talking about, you’re not alone. Meta’s announcement had us asking: How will this technology work? Who’s going to regulate it? And: What even is superintelligence? Is this a marketing ploy? Or does it signify a profound shift in what it means to be human in a world of ever-advancing machine intelligence?
Here to help us make sense of these questions and more are some of the smartest people we know in the AI world. Their perspectives vary: Some consider Meta’s ambitions to be a continuation of Big Tech’s disturbing romp toward social engineering, while others discuss the opportunity to direct AI toward progress and the public good. All agree that the breakneck pace of AI development will transform the way humans interact with the world—for better, and for worse.
