Meta bets big on wearable AI as Zuckerberg pushes back against AI doom

Meta is going all in on a consumer-friendly AI agent and pushing forward with AI-powered wearable devices during a moment in the industry when its CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged it is a “wild time to be building”.

At the company’s annual Connect conference on Wednesday, Zuckerberg opened his keynote address by saying “it’s no secret that people in the industry have a wide range of views about how the future is going to go”. But at Meta, he said, “we are optimists because we believe in people”.

Zuckerberg has distanced himself and Meta from recent calls by rival companies for a coordinated slowdown in the development of advanced artificial intelligence (AI), arguing that individual labs can and should ensure their technology is safe.