Mark Zuckerberg rejects calls for industrywide AI slowdown

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, pushed back against calls for the AI industry to collectively slow development of AI products, following warnings from within AI labs about potential existential risks. In an interview with NBC News' Joanna Stern, Zuckerberg said leading AI companies should individually take time to address safety concerns rather than requiring industrywide coordination. His position contrasts with recent calls for coordinated action from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who, along with Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis and xAI's Elon Musk, have endorsed slowing the pace of AI development to allow more time for safety measures. Amodei and Altman recently briefed the United Nations Security Council on the need for cooperation. Zuckerberg argued that commercial incentives would naturally drive companies to develop safe products, as users would avoid unsafe technology. He also highlighted Meta's recently launched Muse AI agent — now the most popular free app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play — and its oversight system through a secondary agent called Sentinel. Rather than focusing on apocalyptic scenarios, Zuckerberg said AI companies should prioritize understanding users' desires and handling information with discretion, expressing optimism that AI would have a "very positive future for everyone."

(Source：NBC News)