Meta is pushing its vision for “personal superintelligence” — and tech observers aren’t impressed.
Mark Zuckerberg dropped an Instagram video saying Meta’s goal is AI-powered glasses that “see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day.” He pitched it as a way to help everyone “achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, be a better friend, and grow to become the person that you aspire to be.”
But AI experts are calling it underwhelming. Superintelligence by definition means AI vastly outperforming humans in most areas, yet Zuckerberg’s big idea is basically “smart Ray-Bans.” Fortune’s Sharon Goldman put it bluntly: Jobs gave us “a bicycle for the mind,” Zuckerberg wants superintelligence to help you “be a better friend.” 
Meta’s spending tells a different story. This year Zuckerberg has hired top AI talent like former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Apple AI chief Ruoming Pang, and ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao. He even dangled offers above $1 billion to staff at rival companies. That’s more than he paid for Instagram in 2012.
Despite the money splash, the AI vision seems modest: better ad targeting, more Instagram Reels engagement, enhanced business messaging via WhatsApp, and some ChatGPT-style features.
Zvi Mowshowitz, an AI writer, summed up the pitch as
“It was like if you took a left wing caricature of why Zuckerberg is evil, combined it with a left wing caricature about why AI is evil, and then fused them into their final form. Except it’s coming directly from Zuckerberg, as explicit text, on purpose.”
Meta’s AI race is real, but its goal looks like selling more ads through glasses. The world-changing “personal superintelligence” may just be sugar water in another bottle.
