Zuckerberg Insists AI Will Not Replace Humans

As usual, shortly after the publication of Meta’s financial results, Mark Zuckerberg decided to share his extensive commentary and future plans with the world. AI, of course, dominates the discussion, although the billionaire’s vision doesn’t entirely align with the giant’s recent actions.


Sales increased by 33%, revenues ranged from $58 billion to $61 billion, and income reached $26.8 billion (compared to $16.6 billion a year earlier). Although Meta is losing users, it can consider the past quarter a success. However, the market reacted skeptically to reports of much lower than expected capital expenditures. These are expected to increase in the near future, however, due to announced mass layoffs at the company. As many as 8,000 people will leave their jobs in May , and an additional 6,000 open positions have been closed. This is all to free up funds for building new data centers and training new artificial intelligence models.

Zuckerberg and the New AI Hope

In a long Facebook post discussing what was said during the results’ release, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned AI frequently, indicating that his approach to this technology differs significantly from the views of people running other big tech companies: “My view of artificial intelligence differs significantly from the views of many others in the industry. I often hear that AI will replace humans. I believe otherwise. I believe AI will enhance human capabilities to do what we want —whether it’s improving health, learning, building relationships, or achieving personal and professional goals.”

He also adds, in the context of AI’s impact on our reality: ” Humans will become increasingly important, not less. Meta believes in empowering people. These are the kinds of products we intend to build, and I believe they will prove to be among the most important and valuable products in history.”

He also indicated his high hopes for AI agents, which he has reportedly been using for some time—creating a once-high-profile AI CEO to help manage Meta. In the post, Zuckerberg wrote: “We are building a personal agent focused on helping people achieve their diverse life goals. We are also building a business agent that will help entrepreneurs and companies around the world use our and other tools to grow, reach new customers, and better serve existing ones. These agents will work together within a single ecosystem.”

Expanding on this theme, he also shared the prospects and current test results: “I believe that regardless of whether you use a personal or business agent to achieve your goals, the future will bring a huge increase in entrepreneurship—people will create things they’ve always wanted to create but previously lacked the tools to make them a reality. We’re already testing an early version of AI for business , and the number of weekly conversations has increased tenfold since the beginning of this year.”

Theory and practice

Mark Zuckerberg’s vision is, of course, an extremely attractive one, and the declaration that AI shouldn’t replace humans but merely support them sounds very rational… at least until we consider it in a certain context. And that context is that, in addition to the mass layoffs this year, which involved 10% of the entire company , there have been several similar layoffs in recent months and years. All of them were made in the name of optimization, increased efficiency, and freeing up resources needed for AI development.

In 2022, Meta laid off as many as 11,000 people at once, and a few months later — another 10,000. In subsequent periods, there were several more minor reductions, which, together with the latest ones, give a shocking total — in the last 40 months, Zuckerberg has laid off between 30,000 and 35,000 employees.

The increasingly smaller team is compensating for the loss of processing capacity with a more active use of artificial intelligence in daily processes. Using in-house AI agents, which Zuckerberg calls for from his employees, is a necessity in the current environment, because reducing teams doesn’t necessarily mean reducing the responsibilities of those who remain in their positions. Quite the opposite.

Will there be more layoffs?

From the perspective of Meta’s employees, the biggest concern, however, is that this may not be the end of layoffs. As Susan Li, Meta’s Chief Financial Officer, recently admitted, the company is still in the process of evaluating its optimal staffing levels : “It’s difficult to predict what the optimal company size will be in the future. There are so many changes happening right now, and with the rapid development of AI capabilities, we’re strongly focused on leveraging these tools to significantly increase our productivity.”

On the one hand, Mark Zuckerberg presents beautiful visions of AI that does not replace humans but only helps them achieve their potential, but on the other, in everyday decisions, together with the management board, he is guided by cold calculations and makes decisions that are largely contrary to this vision.

Meta, like other big tech companies, has been making rapid job cuts since the pandemic, and the emergence of advanced artificial intelligence tools and the development of AI agents that can replace humans in some tasks have only accelerated this process.