Mark Zuckerberg addresses panic about killer AI – and gives warning to rival companies

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that AI labs have a strong incentive to build safe technology on their own because unsafe systems would expose them to "significant" liability, breaking with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call three days earlier for AI companies to slow the pace of improving model capabilities. Zuckerberg said "any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind," pointed to Meta delaying its Muse AI agent earlier this year to strengthen security, and said Meta Superintelligence Labs already uses independent evaluators. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk endorsed Amodei's call within hours, while President Donald Trump on Monday downplayed AI harm concerns and FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said everyone should be "deeply suspicious" of AI companies seeking antitrust exemptions while lobbying for new regulations.

Mark Zuckerberg addresses panic about killer AI – and gives warning to rival companies Meta CEO breaks with growing consensus among artificial intelligence companies that governments may need to intervene to ensure the technology remains safe - Bookmark Meta https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/mark-zuckerberg has publicly addressed the growing panic about possible killer AI https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/ai – breaking with other companies and appearing to give a warning to his rivals. Recent days have seen growing panic about the dangers of AI, after a former Anthropic https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/anthropic researcher said that he had quit his job because of the dangers of the technology. That has led to widespread worry about the threat from artificial intelligence systems. Increasingly, leaders at AI firms have appeared to back calls to slow down the pace of AI development so that developers can spend more time ensuring the systems are safe. That has brought growing suggestions even from among some executives themselves that governments may be required to monitor those firms to ensure that none are racing ahead and putting the world in danger. In his first major comments since that storm began, however, Mr Zuckerberg appeared to suggest that the AI industry has enough reason to act on their own to ensure their technology is built safely. And any companies that do not do so could face “significant” liability if their systems were found to be unsafe, he warned. His remarks come three days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged AI companies to slow the pace at which they improve model capabilities, on the heels of existential risk warnings by several researchers. Rival OpenAI https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/openai 's chief Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/elon-musk both publicly endorsed Amodei's call within hours. President Donald Trump https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/donald-trump on Monday, however, downplayed concerns about AI's potential for harm, saying the U.S. already had guardrails in place for the technology and that China would benefit from doubt being cast on AI's development. The view that regulations will harm U.S. companies' ability to compete with their Chinese counterparts is shared by tech executives, including Nvidia https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. "Trust and alignment are quickly becoming the most important capabilities that will differentiate agents and models," Mr Zuckerberg said Tuesday. "Any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind." Mr Zuckerberg also said Tuesday that labs had a strong incentive to prevent their models from causing harm as they would face "significant" liability otherwise. He pointed to Meta delaying the release of its Muse AI agent earlier this year to strengthen its security. "We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would. We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us," he said. While Mr Amodei called for an industry-wide slowing of recursive self-improvement — AI's ability to improve itself — Mr Zuckerberg said Meta had already committed the "significant majority" of its compute toward creating products that serve users' immediate needs rather than pursuing self-improving AI systems. Mr Zuckerberg also said Meta Superintelligence Labs — its AI division — already engaged independent evaluators in several areas, calling it "industry best practice" and that "other labs can just do this too". Mr Zuckerberg's push to position Meta as a responsible actor on AI safety comes weeks after the company agreed to pay up to $18 billion to settle U.S. state lawsuits alleging it designed Facebook https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/facebook and Instagram https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/instagram to addict children, without admitting wrongdoing. Adding to the uncertainty around any coordinated approach by AI firms, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said Tuesday everyone should be "deeply suspicious" of AI companies seeking antitrust exemptions while lobbying for new regulations. While Mr Ferguson did not name Anthropic, Mr Amodei last week requested antitrust permission to enable rivals to coordinate a slower pace to AI development due to safety concerns. Additional reporting by agencies Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments comments-area