Zuckerberg: Everyone Will Have a Super-Powered Personal Assistant in the Future That Understands Them and Their Goals
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled his detailed vision for the future of what he calls “personal superintelligence” and the benefits he expects it to bring to humanity. A statement he published on August 10 made clear that “his vision will only be realized with full user consent regarding their personal data.” However, experts interviewed by Asharq Al-Awsat warned that the “personal AI project” could face a crisis of user trust.
In his statement, Zuckerberg said that everyone will eventually have a highly capable “personal agent” that understands them and their goals, working around the clock to improve their relationships, health, career, finances, home management, and hobbies, thereby freeing up more time for them to enjoy life. However, this proposal raises several concerns, foremost among them being that Meta wants users to activate tracking systems that allow access to highly private personal information—an objective that is difficult to promote given the company’s history of using such data for questionable purposes or allowing others to do so.
According to observers, Meta faced accusations in 2016 of “leaking” data from millions of Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica without their knowledge, where it was used for political advertising purposes. The fallout from this scandal led to a sharp decline in public trust in the company, to the extent that Facebook ranked last in the 2019 “Digital Trust Index” published by Business Insider.
He goes on to clarify: “Nevertheless, this data is insufficient for the ambition of building a personal assistant that manages the details of a user’s life. For AI to manage your life and act as a personal secretary or smart assistant, Zuckerberg will need to target much deeper layers of sensitive and real-time data, such as voice tone, facial expressions, eye movements, and even what you look at in the real world and your physical interactions with your environment. It will also require knowledge of your sleep schedules, physical activity, diet, and even mood fluctuations by linking the assistant to health technologies and smartwatches.”
Saeed also believes that “Zuckerberg’s project” will collide with a crisis of user trust. He explained: “Ethically and institutionally, user trust in Meta has been severely shaken due to its history rife with data breach scandals and psychological manipulation... But practically, we are facing a paradox: Meta today relies less on trust and more on dependency and addiction.” He added that “users today are aware that their privacy is threatened, but they remain due to network effects, as their families, friends, and communities are there, making it extremely difficult to leave the platforms despite the lack of trust.”
To overcome the barrier of distrust and collect deeper data, Saeed expects Meta to adopt several strategies, explaining: “Through the ‘benefit trap’ strategy, if the personal assistant provides immense value, users will willingly surrender their sensitive data in exchange for this convenience. There is also the ‘Trojan horse’ strategy, coming through expansion into physical devices and a shift from a software company to a hardware company that interacts with the user’s body and environment. This includes integrated e-commerce, by completing all buying and selling processes entirely within apps, which gives it accurate information about actual purchasing behavior, as well as leveraging psychological data extraction through AI.” Returning to Zuckerberg’s statement, his core argument is that “superintelligence” will be one of the most important technological developments in history, and therefore it should be available to everyone and not monopolized by corporations or government entities.
Zuckerberg also argues that “artificial intelligence is not the product of automation or the replacement of human labor with machines, but rather emerges through expanding opportunities via systems that help discover new knowledge.” However, this stance contradicts Meta’s own recent actions, having cut 20 percent of its workforce earlier this year.
For his part, Egyptian journalist and digital media trainer Mutasim Nadi emphasizes that “Meta’s bet on a personal AI assistant faces a dilemma that goes beyond the quality of the technology itself.” He explains that “an assistant that knows a user’s schedule, messages, relationships, location, interests, and perhaps even their health and financial status requires an exceptional level of trust.”
Regarding Meta’s plan to regain user trust, Nadi adds: “The public will not be convinced by a marketing statement, no matter how detailed, because what is needed are guarantees that are understandable, testable, and capable of answering numerous questions, such as: What data does the assistant collect? Where is it stored? Who has access to it? Is it used for advertising or training models? And how can it be permanently deleted?”
He then argues that “the project’s success will be measured by Meta’s ability to give users real control, not by rhetoric asking them to trust… Technology may be dazzling, but users will not hand over the keys to their digital lives to a company they perceive as knowing too much about them, unless it proves that privacy is an integral part of the product, not just a lengthy legal clause that no one reads.”
