The story

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that AI companies have enough incentive to act individually on safety without coordinating an industry wide slowdown. He said people will not use AI agents that are misaligned with them, giving labs a strong natural incentive to ensure alignment. Because AI labs risk significant liability if their models cause harm, Zuckerberg believes companies are incentivized to prevent potential problems. He said trust and alignment are quickly becoming the most important capabilities that will differentiate agents and models, and any lab that does not focus on alignment will fall behind.

Zuckerberg pointed to Meta delaying the release of its Muse AI agent for several months to strengthen safety and security. He said Meta did not call for everyone else to do this before acting, but just did it as part of day to day work because it was clearly the right thing. Zuckerberg also endorsed the use of independent evaluators and advisers, calling it industry best practice, and said Meta has already committed the significant majority of its compute toward creating products that serve users' immediate needs rather than pursuing recursive self improvement.

His comments come three days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged AI companies to slow the pace at which they improve model capabilities. OpenAI chief Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk both publicly endorsed Amodei's call within hours. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also argued against a slowdown while speaking at Salesforce's annual Dreamforce event, saying the choice between safety and speed was a false one and companies could definitely have both at the same time. President Donald Trump on Monday downplayed concerns about AI's potential for harm, saying the U.S. already had guardrails in place and that China would benefit from doubt being cast on AI's development.