Why "Mark" superintelligence post is just a pile of BS

Disclaimer: I tend to be quite biased against "AI", in a negative way. "AI" bros would call me a "skeptic" or say I'm "negative". I personally don't care about that wording, but I guess it's better to clarify things from the beginning.

A few days ago Mark Zuckerberg released a post titled Personal Superintelligence. While I don't generally follow Meta or care about their narratives in the technology land, this got my attention because of some posts on BlueSky and a YouTube video by Theo. And the more I read through this post, the more I found myself in the need to go back and re-read some sentences, as I had increasing difficulty understanding it.

So I decided to write down my concerns, and here's what I've come up with. I will also pretend to talk directly to Mark Zuckerberg, because, well, it's fun and.. why not?

First things first: WTF is superintelligence?

My first reaction to the word superintelligence was

it sounds like a word that a 7 year-old made up

but besides that, Mark – can I call you Mark? at the end of the day you signed the post this way – one doesn't simply drop in a new term and leave it undefined. Can you please describe to the rest of us what you mean by that? And, since we're here, can you also describe what you mean by intelligence?

Not to be the party pooper here, but given we're talking about "AI" – and I keep writing that in quotes, because the actual truth is that we're not talking about Artificial intelligence, but Machine Learning, something that anyone with a computer science background would know – where you see the intelligence? Because, you see Mark – I'll call you Mark – if you don't define intelligence, I'll interpret the word in its semantic meaning, which is – according to Oxford, Cambridge and Merriam-Webster dictionaries:

• The faculty of understanding; intellect. Also as a count noun: a mental manifestation of this faculty, a capacity to understand.
• The ability to learn, understand, and make judgements or have opinions that are based on reason.
• The ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations

Therefore, do these LLMs understand what you write or even what they write? No. Do they learn? Sure, but only within the limits of their training – performed by you, by the way. They stop there. Do they make judgements or have opinions? No. Do they deal with new or trying situations? No. At best they can infer from their training data. But they definitely don't adapt. As a matter of fact, some LLMs can't even read the entirety of this post without hallucinating¹.

So, Mark, where's even the intelligence part here? What are you talking about? And I'm ignoring the super part here, which has its own meaning

especially; very

I know inventing new words is fun. But if you "invent" new words by concatenating existing words, please – I beg you – at least consider what those words mean.

The anthropomorphic narrative around "AI"

The very first paragraph of the post states

Over the last few months we have begun to see glimpses of our AI systems improving themselves.

and it's already quite an interesting start, Mark, because I'd say if you actually found a way to make LLMs train themselves in a fully autonomous way, you would already be making trillions of dollars and OpenAI would be ruined. Given this didn't happen – yet, at least – it seems like you're trying to steer the narrative to convince the readers "AI" has some human-like potential – at least in terms of learning – which is, simply put, not true. What are you trying to sell me here, Mark? Why you have to start already with this?

And – as if this isn't enough – the post continue stating this improvement is undeniable. Says who? You, Mark? Pardon me if I won't trust your word on this, given you didn't provide any actual example of these glimpses. How convenient, huh?

The convenience of talking about "things we cannot imagine"

And here is another point, Mark. You say:

AI will improve all our existing systems and enable the creation and discovery of new things that aren't imaginable today.

And.. I'm so confused. Given – hard to do, but I'll believe you for a sec, Mark – these incredible models will discover things that we cannot imagine, how can you be sure it will improve – not one, not many – ALL our systems? Isn't possible that some of these new things won't be improvements?

But also: why do we need an LLM to do that? What's so wrong about people thinking about new ways of improving our existing systems? Do we actually need an LLM to tell us something like "hey, you should hoard wealth accumulated by exploiting cheap labor"? I guess we don't. Because – I guess, again – if we zoom out a bit, the issue here is not to think about systems differently, is to actually empower people to make such changes. And a LLM will empower nobody that today doesn't have such power.

Mark, maybe you should stop talking about things we cannot imagine and focus more on what we already imagined and need? Maybe.

Talking about humanity while being very far from it

The rest of the post is just a series of statements that, frankly speaking, Mark, are just so funny if I think for a second who you are and how much you make:

Advances in technology have steadily freed much of humanity to focus less on subsistence and more on the pursuits we choose.

[...] people have used our newfound productivity to achieve more [...] as well as spending more time on creativity, culture, relationships, and enjoying life

[...] superintelligence will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress.

[...] superintelligence has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where people will have greater agency to improve the world in the directions they choose.

Mark, Mark, Mark.. are you talking about humanity or yourself? Because, you see, the vast majority of humanity still focus on subsistence. The vast majority of humanity cannot spend more time on creativity, culture, relationship and enjoing life. I understand it's hard to get from one of the richest people of the world, Mark. But if you don't get it, you shouldn't talk about humanity.

And the funniest thing of all this, Mark, is that you talk about enjoying life, while you spent the vast majority of your life entangling all the rest of the humanity into Facebook and Instagram, aggressively marketing to the entire world the narrative of enjoying life should be measured by Instagram stories and be friends means connecting on Facebook. Of all the possible companies in the world, Mark, you're saying Meta is the best one to empower the people building the world they want so that they can spend more time doing other stuff? Yes, Mark, sure. As if Meta had this long series of evidence supporting the narrative that they care about the people.

The hard truth is, Mark, Meta won't care about all of this. Because in that case, people would just stop spending their time on your products and actually live their lives. If people had the time and empowerment to change the world and reshape as they wanted, there will be no need for the metaverse – one could argue that there's no need for that in any case, but that's a different story.

It's all about marketing

But I get it Mark.

I know you spent billions of dollars in "AI" stuff and you're yet behind in the race. I understand you need to capture back people and investments. I understand that if Meta doesn't play in the VR and "AI" fields, then is just an advertisement company. I feel you man.

But at the same time: you're one of the 10th most richest person in the whole world. Do you really need to care about any of this?

I don't know mate – yes, I'll call you mate from now on – if I were you I'd just retire. Is it really that hard to do something else? I don't know, spend time with your family. Travel the actual world. Meet that humanity you talk about in person.

Go back to university and study something different. Take a history class, mate! At least you would avoid saying idiotic phrases like "200 years ago, 90% of people were farmers". Because 200 years ago, the rich people were the one spending time in improving their culture. Just keep that tradition, and maybe you will be super intelligent.

And, in case that's not enough, you can still put your headset on, am I right?

But at the end of the day, Mark, I still struggle to find any meaning in your post other than:

We're building something cool. We don't know what it is, we don't know what it does, but it will be personalised to you. How? We don't know. But it's cool.

Which is something that doesn't really deserves a post nor attention from the media. What did you say, Mark? Oh, you're right, you are the media.