Mark Zuckerberg rejects calls for industrywide AI slowdown

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed back on calls for AI companies to work together to slow the pace of their products’ development, following warnings from inside AI labs of the potential for human annihilation via rogue technology.In an interview with NBC News’ chief tech analyst Joanna Stern, Zuckerberg said that leading AI companies could slow down or pause development of their own products if they felt the technology was unsafe.

His position cuts against recent calls for coordinated action from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.“I don’t think that we need some kind of industrywide coordination,” Zuckerberg said.

“I think that each lab needs to take the time, and when it sees that there are issues, you just take the time that you need internally to basically make sure that you’re proceeding safely.”His comments came during a wide-ranging discussion with Stern about Meta’s approach to AI, wearable devices and privacy.Zuckerberg expanded on comments he posted on X last week, distancing himself from Amodei and Altman’s calls to “pace” or regulate the speed of AI development.

Zuckerberg staked out a defiant position amid growing concern about risks from advanced AI systems.In early September, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon set off a wave of pitched concerns when he resigned over fears that AI systems could spiral out of human control in the next few years.Amodei released an essay calling for intercompany efforts to “pace the frontier” of AI development, which Altman soon endorsed alongside Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis and xAI’s Elon Musk.

Zuckerberg said there was no need for such efforts, which critics have said are a Trojan horse that could allow AI companies to shut out competition and take control of efforts to regulate the industry.“I happen to think that there’s plenty of commercial incentive to get this right,” he said.Amodei and Altman briefed the United Nations Securit...