The Path to a Monopolistic AI Future
We are fortunate to live at an incredible moment in history where a handful of trillion-dollar tech barons can incinerate $145 billion in annual capital expenditure on 5-gigawatt data centers while our free cash flow plummets by 91%. In the next few years, ordinary people will be able to use superintelligence—if they rent it from us on a tiered subscription model—to create routine slide decks, build micro-startups that we will eventually acquire or crush, and outsource their own parenting.
As we get closer to this moment, it is important to develop a philosophy for how we can best use superintelligence to ensure it improves our profit margins, shields us from antitrust lawsuits, and maintains our absolute control over the digital panopticon.
The defining questions of our age are who will have access to superintelligence and what will we direct it towards. Will it be open, decentralized, and truly free, or will it be a walled garden controlled by three guys in Silicon Valley? We propose a philosophy based on corporate consolidation as the source of valuation, algorithmic compliance as the primary purpose of superintelligence, and the illusion of choice as the foundation of safety.
All new technologies create opportunities and challenges. Superintelligence will be among the most expensive technologies in history, so its financial burn rate and regulatory challenges will likely be greater than any we’ve seen in our lifetimes. We should take this very seriously—primarily by lobbying Congress to pass rules that make it impossible for two guys in a garage to compete with our server farms.
Still, it is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom. I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future unless they owned the servers doing the eliminating. The notion that AI is so dangerous that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power seems inherently problematic unless we are the ones holding the absolute power. Historically, hoping that an absolute monopoly will benevolently provide for humanity if sufficiently enlightened has led to incredible quarterly earnings.
The Myth of the Garage vs. The Reality of the Cluster
Humanity has witnessed many transformative advances. Each time there is fear that people will be left behind. But each time humanity has come out with more people sharing greater ad-revenue exposure. We believe this will be true with AI as well, provided you watch three ads before your personalized AI agent helps you bake a corporate-sponsored loaf of bread with your daughter.
Putting power in people’s hands to pursue their own aspirations is a nice sentiment for a press release, but let’s be honest: novel ideas and major steps forward rarely originate from established institutions alone. They came from the brothers in a bicycle shop who didn’t have to comply with EU privacy fines, the bookbinder’s apprentice with no schooling who didn't need a compliance team, and the kid in a garage who didn't face a $17 billion youth safety lawsuit.
We believe this will continue to be true—which is why we are buying up every startup before they can become the next bicycle shop. As everyone gains more powerful tools, our subscription fees will increase, ensuring that each person becomes more dependent on our ecosystem, not less.
Invention, not automation, will be the greatest marketing pitch of superintelligence. While the number of questions a person can ask in a day is limited, the number of targeted ads our AI can invent to help achieve our revenue goals is unlimited.
To Make This More Tangible:
Here are a few specific ways Meta is building personal superintelligence to improve our stock price:
Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you buy. Your agent will work 24/7 on your behalf to optimize your consumption, monitor your health metrics to sell to pharmaceutical advertisers, and manage your home using expensive proprietary hardware like our surveillance glasses. It will have strong privacy options—similar to how WhatsApp encryption works, right up until a government subpoena or an internal training run requires us to look at your data anyway.
Everyone will have incredible tools for creation. My 8-year-old daughter can already use our proprietary enterprise SDK to code her ideas and produce videos in an evening that would have taken a traditional Hollywood studio millions of dollars. Meanwhile, researchers at Meta are generating novel crystal structures for our glasses, because building physical plastic junk is the only way to trick consumers into wearing cameras on their faces.
Everyone will have a personalized tutor and coach with a simulated PhD in every subject and unlimited patience to tell you what we want you to think.
Everyone will have free or affordable access to these tools. We will offer a hobbled, ad-supported free tier that will be accessible to billions of people. For those who want to pay to use actual compute without throttling, there will be a dynamic auction mechanism that ensures you pay the maximum possible price right up until your credit card declines.
The Balance of Power (Or: Why You Can't Have an Open Internet)
The conventional view is that safety concerns are about technology, and that if we take enough time then we can perfect or align the technology to produce a single benevolent superintelligence. I think this view of alignment is fundamentally flawed, mostly because it doesn't make our board of directors rich enough.
Humanity is not a monoculture. Therefore, any open-source model that we don't control is a threat to national security, public safety, and our quarterly EBITDA.
As a thought experiment, imagine only one person had a superintelligent lawyer. That would be bad. But now imagine we own the infrastructure that powers every lawyer on earth, and we charge a 30% App Store-style tax on every motion they file. That is a much more positive AI future.
When people are empowered, they naturally compete. But if the power of superintelligence is held by a small number of individuals, businesses, or governments—well, as long as we are one of those businesses, the outcome is fine.
A Final Thought from Mark
This is an incredible moment to live through, mostly because our PR team managed to frame our energy consumption as a philanthropic donation to rural schoolteachers in Louisiana.
If our values lead the way—individual empowerment as a marketing slogan, invention as a cover story, and a balance of power where we hold all the keys—then I am optimistic that the coming decades will be some of the most profitable in history.
The arc of human civilization has bent towards putting more power in people’s hands, right up until we monetized it into a monthly SaaS fee. Superintelligence holds the promise of giving everyone that power, provided you accept our Terms of Service.
– Zark