AI Endgame: Mark Zuckerberg goes full throttle to build AI superintelligence

Newsletter #40

Jun 27, 2025

https://debbiecoffey.substack.com/p/ai-endgame-mark-zuckerberg-goes-full
By Debbie Coffey, AI Endgame

June 27, 2025

NOTE: I’ve shared an Action Alert by PauseAI at the bottom of this newsletter.

While our eyes are on the crisis in the Middle East and other news, a much bigger worldwide crisis is looming, but it receives significantly less coverage.

This month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he’s recruiting about 50 people to build a new “superintelligence AI team” at Meta in Menlo Park, CA. [1]

Zuckerberg has tapped 28 year-old billionaire Alexandr Wang, the co-founder and former CEO of Scale AI, to lead Meta’s superintelligence team.

Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and is now investing over $14 billion to acquire a 49% stake in Scale AI, a company that specializes in AI training data. [2]

Meta is also sparing no expense to entice leading AI researchers to join its AI superintelligence team, by offering compensation packages as high as $100 million. [3]

The reason I’m not jumping up and down with joy and clapping my hands about Zuckerberg’s announcement is because AI superintelligence is the point at which AI is smarter than humans, and we could lose control of it.

Many AI experts have warned that the unchecked development of AI superintelligence could lead to human extinction. Soon.

Move fast and break things

Mark Zuckerberg has been quoted as saying:

“Move fast and break things. Unless you’re breaking things, you’re not moving fast enough.”

It’s important to note that the “thing” Zuckerberg might “break” is human existence.

Zuckerberg has also said “People developed planes first and then took care of flight safety. If people were focused on safety first, no one would ever have built a plane.” [4]

Zuckerberg’s analogy using flight safety (in comparison to AI safety) to justify why he and the other AI oligarchs are racing towards AI superintelligence, is so overly simplistic that it’s ludicrous.

For one thing, there has never been a technology in human history that surpasses all human intelligence or has come close to the totalitarian scope of AI.

Since AI will soon become smarter than Zuckerberg and the AI oligarchs, they cannot possibly fathom what AI could, or will, do in the near future.

These AI oligarchs are making deals with the devil. Their risky decisions are putting all of us in danger.

AI Endgame will include more on other AI oligarchs in future newsletters, but for now, the focus is on Mark Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang.

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg is the 2^nd wealthiest person in the world. [5]

Zuckerberg has been at the helm of Facebook during many controversies, including:

1) In 2014 it was revealed that Facebook conducted psychological tests on 70,000 unconsenting participants in 2012, by removing certain words from users' newsfeeds in order to test how they reacted to the posts. [6]

2) The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal involved the hidden harvesting of the Facebook data of 87 million people. Facebook, without the consent of users, shared this personal data with the British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica then used this data (including every post, like, or private message) to build voter profiles in order to manipulate people during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. [7] [8] [9]

3) In 2019, the FTC fined Facebook $5 billion for violating users’ privacy.

4) In 2020, Zuckerberg was questioned at a congressional antitrust hearing (along with CEOs of Amazon, Apple, and Google). Lawmakers concluded these companies are monopolies and should be regulated.

5) In 2020, Sophie Zhang, a Facebook data scientist, accused Facebook of failing to stop political manipulation by foreign governments.

6) In 2021, whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before Congress that Facebook puts profits over people's safety and should be regulated. [10]

As you can easily see, Mark Zuckerberg is continuing to put profits over people’s safety by steamrolling towards uncontrollable AI superintelligence.

Alexandr Wang

Alexandr’s first name is composed of eight letters, because in Chinese culture, the number eight signifies prosperity and abundance.

Wang was born in New Mexico. His parents are Chinese immigrants who were nuclear physicists at Los Alamos where they worked on projects for the U.S. military.

Wang dropped out of MIT after only one year, but that certainly didn’t hurt his career. Wang co-founded Scale AI and became the "youngest self-made" billionaire in the world in 2022, when he was just 25. [11]

Maybe all of us should change our names to contain eight letters.

Alexandr Wang may not be a household name, but he’s extremely well-connected in both Silicon Valley and Washington D.C.

Scale AI has organized and labeled massive datasets used by the world’s most advanced AI systems, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and other AI giants. Wang has had early access to the research, weaknesses, objectives, and strategies of these companies. So much so that “Every major AI breakthrough passed through Scale AI before going public.”

In other words, Wang “controls” data. [12]

Now Zuckerberg owns a big piece of this pie.

Wang has stated that if the U.S. doesn’t dominate the AI race, it risks losing global influence to its rivals, such as China.

I’m concerned that AI will wipe out humanity, and this will be a moot point.

The AI oligarchs have formed a small, tight, and powerful circle.

Alexandr Wang’s former roommate was Sam Altman, the CEO and founder of OpenAI. [13]

Scale AI also received $100 million in funding from Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. [14]

A lot of them are probably rubbing elbows at Jeff Bezos’ wedding in Venice as I write this newsletter. I wonder if they were at the “foam party” on Bezos’ $500 million yacht. [15]

Singularity is the beginning of AI superintelligence

As reported by Axios, this matters because “Competitors aren't standing still, as made clear by recent model releases from Anthropic and OpenAI and highlighted with a Tuesday night blog post from Sam Altman that suggests "the gentle singularity" is already underway.” [16]

“Singularity” is the moment when AI exceeds human intelligence, is beyond human control, and rapidly transforms society. [17]

Are these AI oligarchs going to be the death of us all?

The “Extinction-Level” threat From AI

Our own government commissioned a 2024 report by Gladstone AI that warned the U.S. must move “decisively” to avert the “Extinction-Level” threat From AI. [18] Gladstone AI even prepared an action plan. https://www.gladstone.ai/action-plan

Despite this, the AI oligarchs continue to move fast and break things. All of the big AI companies are partnering with, and embedding themselves within, the military and government.

Not only are our lawmakers failing to regulate AI technology, the “big beautiful” budget package the Senate is supposed to vote on still includes language to ban AI regulations by states.

Meanwhile, we’re hanging onto this dangerous precipice by our fingernails.

Find links to all past AI Endgame newsletters HERE.

An Action Alert from PauseAI:

We need your help to remove the dangerous provision from the budget reconciliation bill that would ban state-level AI regulation for 10 YEARS. If this provision passes the Senate, we could see a DECADE of inaction on AI.

What’s the context?

The House Energy & Commerce Committee included a provision in its reconciliation bill that would ban AI regulation by state and local governments for the next 10 years.
Several states have led the way in AI regulation while Congress has dragged its heels.
Stopping state governments from regulating AI might be okay, if we could trust Congress to meaningfully regulate it instead. But we can’t. This provision would destroy state leadership on AI and pass the responsibility to a Congress that has shown little interest in seriously preventing AI danger.

What’s happening now?

A point of order was raised in the Senate that this provision violates the Byrd Rule (a Senate rule which is meant to prevent non-budget items from being included in the reconciliation bill), but the Senate Parliamentarian decided not to strike it.
Senator Markey has vowed to oppose the preemption provision by filing an amendment that would remove the 10 year state-level ban.

What can I do?

Here are 2 things you can do TODAY, in order of priority:

(5 minutes) Call and email both of your Senators. Tell them you oppose AI preemption, and ask them to support Senator Markey’s amendment.
- Find your Senators here.
- Here’s an example of a call:
  
  “Hello, my name is {YOUR NAME} and I’m a resident of {YOUR STATE}. The newest budget reconciliation bill includes a 10-year ban pre-empting state AI legislation without establishing any federal guardrails. This is extremely concerning to me – leading experts warn us that AI could cause mass harm within the next few years, but this provision would prevent states from protecting their citizens from AI crises for the next decade.
  
  I’d like the Senator to speak out against this provision and support Senator Markey’s amendment to remove it from the budget reconciliation.”

(5 minutes) Call and email Senate leadership with the same message.
- John Thune (Majority Leader): (202) 224-2321; Email Form
- Chuck Schumer (Minority Leader): (202) 224-6542; Email Form
- Lindsey Graham (Budget Committee Chair): (202) 224-5972; Email Form

Save your Senators’ contact info and mark your calendar to call your Senators every day – don’t let up until this insane provision has been removed.

Get involved at pauseai-us.org

What else you can do:

1) Let your Congressional representatives know that you want strong AI regulations.

Find out how to contact your Congressional representatives here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Find out how to contact your Senators here: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?Class=1

2) Support (and if you can, make donations) to organizations fighting for AI Safety:

Pause AI

https://pauseai.info/

Center for AI Safety

https://safe.ai/

Center for Humane Technology https://www.humanetech.com/who-we-are

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-10/zuckerberg-recruits-new-superintelligence-ai-group-at-meta