Zuck sees Meta creating AGI, but will investors share his expensive vision?

The Meta CEO wants to use record revenue and audiences to build an all-knowing AI, but investors, governments and the public, might prefer a different future

Let’s switch attention to Meta where Zuck’s on a screamer, reporting his best revenue in a decade, and his investors are coining it in. Only at whose expense?

On stage in 2019, someone asked me what history books would say about Meta and Google in the future. This was my response.

“Two visionary companies, Google, and Meta, figured out that unregulated data was an advertising goldmine when combined with tech.

“They both executed brilliantly, creating the most valuable companies ever, and products that people loved and that benefitted the world. At least initially.

“Over time, the data began to reveal real dangers. Election interference. Depression and addiction. Self-harm in children. Unfettered comms for terrorists, and a soapbox for any loon with a phone.

“They saw it first but did nothing. It took The Guardian exposing Cambridge Analytica, and the New York Times on childhood depression, to alert the world.

“Meta had the time, and the opportunity, to course correct, but not the will, and…