Mark Zuckerberg is putting his all into the future of artificial intelligence, whether you want it or not

Meta is betting big on AI. But will CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s investment in technology finally pay off? This is one of the major lingering questions after Wednesday’s earnings call, which was announced Meta’s losses in the second quarter are more than $4.6 billion In the reality lab sector.

Throughout the hour-long call, Zuckerberg talked about Meta’s business across its roster of social media apps — Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp — and the overall message he kept driving home was the role of AI within the company and for the people who use Meta’s products every day.

In the middle of all this MouseSparkan artificial intelligence model created by Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. However, Zuckerberg said Meta is working hard on making a variety of things Artificial intelligence agents To streamline workflow for small businesses and improve the lives of individual Meta users.

“Soon we will have agents who can work 24/7 on your behalf to help you achieve your goals and improve your life, health, relationships, money, whatever you want,” Zuckerberg said.

If you’ve been paying attention to all the fit-to-print Zuckerberg news, you probably know that Meta’s CEO was Building an AI personal assistant To himself.

Due to his hardline stance Making artificial intelligence accessible For everyone (see him New York Times interview For more information on this), it makes sense to expand this technology to the billions of people using Meta applications around the world.

Privacy is a major concern When it comes to AI models, whether for business or personal use. Zuckerberg said during the call that Meta makes “strong privacy and security a core part of the agents” it builds.

At the same time, though, he pointed out Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses As the perfect product to bring this functionality to people – the same technological item that many on social media have begun calling “Misaligned glasses“.

Instagram is cracking down on content captured using glasses, but this use case raises broader concerns about how people’s information will be used by proposed AI assistants if Zuckerberg’s big bet on… Super intelligence for everyone It pays off.

Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that more than 1 million businesses use Meta business agents on WhatsApp and Messenger. Instagram is next in line for this type of agentic AI, which learns over time what customers need and feeds those insights back to the company to help shape overall strategies.

This is the “business service within the box” that Meta aims to build, which can help you start and manage your entire business using service platforms.

The primary goal, repeated during the earnings call, is to put superintelligence directly into people’s hands rather than centralizing it.

“We’re focused on distributing it widely and giving everyone the ability to target it to what matters to them,” Zuckerberg continued. “This is how society has always made progress, and I believe these are the right values ​​for building a positive future for AI.”

What exactly does this future look like? According to Meta’s CEO, billions of people will have a personal agent locked into their goals and working non-stop to help you achieve them.

“I realize this is kind of a big bet across the industry,” he said, in what could be seen as a sort of understatement.

As part of Meta’s earnings report, Reality Labs – part of the company that develops virtual reality headsets and smart glasses – generated revenue of $431 million, while its operating losses widened to $4.6 billion.

Since 2020, the division has had a total operating loss of $80 billion. In response to this loss that comes two days later New Meta Investing To build a Data center At the campus in El Paso, Texas, Meta’s stock price was down 10% by the end of the day Wednesday.

“There is a bit of a similarity to Metaverse bugs in that Meta spends back before confirmed demand for the product,” Forrester research director Mike Proulx He told CNET. “The difference is that the adoption and value of AI is real. The technology is different, but the market’s patience is starting to look familiar.”

Zuckerberg appeared unfazed by the loss during the earnings call, acknowledging the reaction to Meta’s push for AI spending.

“My personal bet is that people who invest in this will be rewarded and will feel good over time.”

Overall, for the second quarter, Meta reported revenue of $60.8 billion, up 28%, and net income of $15.8 billion, down 14% from the prior year. Total costs and expenses reached $42 billion, an increase of 55%.