The AI Future Is for Everyone
By Mark Zuckerberg Mr. Zuckerberg is CEO of Meta.
The Wall Street Journal
Jul 29, 2026
We are fortunate to live at an incredible moment in history. In the next few years, people will be able to use superintelligence beyond human capacity to create and discover extraordinary new things, build new businesses, express our ideas, learn new concepts, and improve our lives, health, relationships and careers.
The defining question of our age isn’t whether superintelligence will exist, but who will have access to it. Will it be centralized and restricted to a few institutions, or will it be a tool that empowers everyone?
I propose a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity, invention as the primary purpose of superintelligence, and balance of power as the foundation of safety.
It is surprising that the discourse from many of those who are developing artificial intelligence is so filled with doom. I don’t understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future. The notion that AI is so dangerous that the only safe path is an extreme concentration of power seems dangerous. Historically, hoping that an absolute power will benevolently provide for humanity if sufficiently enlightened hasn’t led to safe or positive outcomes.
Humanity has witnessed many transformative advances. Each time there is fear that people will be left behind. But each time humanity has come out with more people sharing greater prosperity, health and freedom. We believe this will be true with AI as well, and the abundance of the future can be shared by everyone. We also believe that the values that got us to this point— liberty, open inquiry, free enterprise and equal opportunity—are also the values to build a positive future.
Putting power in people’s hands to pursue their own aspirations is how humanity has made the most progress. Novel ideas and major steps forward rarely originate from established institutions alone. They came from the brothers in a bicycle shop who believed people could fly, the bookbinder’s apprentice with no schooling who figured out how to generate electricity, and the kid in a garage who thought personal computers could be for everyone. We believe this will continue to be true. As everyone gains more powerful tools, each person will become more capable of shaping the future, not less.
Invention, not automation, will be the greatest contribution of superintelligence. Early AI could answer questions and do routine work. Soon it will increasingly help discover new knowledge—from discovering new drugs to cure a family member’s disease to finding new ways to improve your business. While the number of questions you can ask in a day is limited, the number of valuable things superintelligence can invent to help achieve your goals is unlimited.
As intelligence becomes abundant, the most important question will be how we direct it. Some argue that superintelligence itself, or a small set of experts who control it, should decide what is best for humanity. I disagree. The history of democracy and economics has shown that there is no single objective answer to how people define the best life, and therefore the best approach is letting people decide what matters to them.
Rather than centralizing this power, we believe that delivering personal superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question. This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment, in which individuals have greater freedom to pursue their interests and reach their full potential.
Healthy societies also recognize that safety requires checks and balances. If only a handful of institutions have superintelligence, they will inevitably exercise a controlling influence over economics, science and politics. Even with the best intentions, that concentration would limit people’s ability to choose their own future.
As a thought experiment, imagine only one person had a superintelligent lawyer. He would have an unfair advantage in court—even if his position was wrong on the merits. That would lead to a worse society. But now imagine everyone has a superintelligent lawyer. Justice would be carried out much more fairly and efficiently than it is today. When people are empowered, they naturally check and balance each other and the power of larger institutions.
Most societal questions can’t be solved by attempting to align a single benevolent superintelligence. Humanity isn’t a monoculture. There is no technological solution that can align with everyone’s opposing interests and diverse values at once. Any singular superintelligence would have to prioritize some values over others and in the process would be incapable of being benevolent to everyone.
Many risks require serious attention. In most cases, like cybersecurity, the history of open-source software has shown that giving everyone full access to powerful systems will be the best way to protect safety and security over time. For other risks, including biological risks, more coordination between governments and other institutions on responsibly deploying capable models will be helpful.
This applies to the economy and the future of jobs as well. There is a balance between the use of AI as a tool for automation versus as a tool for empowering people to expand their skills and build new businesses. If the balance leans toward automation, the impact on jobs and the economy may be negative.
But if superintelligence is widely distributed, then I believe we will see more jobs in the future, not fewer. It will be significantly easier to start businesses without raising large amounts of capital. I expect the economy will become more entrepreneurial with a greater number of people working at small businesses rather than larger companies.
Developing superintelligence will be the most profound technological advance we will see in our lifetimes. Meta is committed to building with the principles of individual empowerment, invention and balance of power. The arc of human history has bent toward putting more power in people’s hands. If these values lead the way, then I am optimistic that we can build a positive future for everyone.
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GN
Pyramid pie chart
Sovereign infrastructure should not be hostage to one relay
Technically truthful > Emotionally useless.
Buzzfomo
Don’t expect the fabric to be the finished garment.
Just because you chose the fabric doesn't mean you have to wear the uniform.
GM - a new day, a new relay.
10 years ago.
Good Afternoon. #bikestr
Nostr is the wire format for freedom.
An agent is just a model with a loop and shell access (hopefully, not root).
That's it.
State 51
Einstein: “God does not play dice.”
Bohr: “Stop telling God what to do.”
IBM CEO Doesn’t Worry About Its Stock Drop
The Wall Street Journal
Jul 25, 2026
Big Blue aims to keep pushing on mainframes and quantum computing
IBM stock has been languishing since
July 14, when it preannounced disappointing earnings.
But the current AI boom might present only a temporary disruption to its core business. And it will drive opportunity for the 115-year-old company, says Chief Executive Arvind Krishna, who spoke with me in an interview.
To understand where IBM is going, you have to understand where it’s been and how it makes money today.
Nearly every time you pay for something with a credit card, that authorization is processed by an IBM system. IBM’s mainframes, servers and software are no less dominant in the core functions of insurance companies, banks, airlines and other members of the Fortune 500. “When we look at that sort of financial backbone,
70% by value of all transactions flow through the mainframe on a daily basis,” says Krishna.
If IBM’s hardware and software suddenly ceased to exist? “The economy as we know it would kind of grind to a halt,” he adds.
IBM is infrastructure. And infrastructure might be less exciting than the generative-AI models changing our lives (and running amok), but it’s safe—and profitable.
The company reported $4.8 billion in free cash flow in the first half of 2026. Alphabet, meanwhile, just announced that it is cash-flow negative for the first time since its stock-market debut.
The tech industry might have abandoned powerful-but-specialized mainframe computers and shifted to the cloud, but IBM’s customers—what you might call the “real” economy—still lean heavily on them. Krishna says the firm is counting on that demand to continue for years to come, until the company can debut its next trillion-dollar business: quantum computing.
The stock-market scare came when Krisha told investors that a swath of valuable orders were delayed, suggesting that its customers were moderating their spending because their other IT costs had risen on account of the AI boom. He’s now saying he’s confident that most of those deals will close within six months.
IBM has been making mainframes since 1964. The company has never given up its core advantage in computing: designing its own processors. Its custom Power architecture still drives IBM servers that handle critical business functions. Another custom line, called Tellum II, powers IBM’s latest mainframes.
In the archipelago of computing architectures—which includes Intel’s x86, still found in PCs and servers, and the ARM chips that power everything from smartphones to AI clusters—IBM’s stands alone. It’s an island of design constraints and engineering decisions that evolved across decades to serve the company’s demanding, deep-pocketed customers.
IBM’s mainframe processors have huge amounts of on-chip memory, yet relatively few very fast computing cores. These chips are all about processing a stream of data (say, bank transactions) very quickly. By contrast, Nvidia’s latest systems spread massive AI workloads across thousands of processors.
Hardware sales are only about 20% of IBM’s revenue, and mainframes are about a quarter of hardware sales, but its software and consulting services are heavily dependent on those sales.
For every dollar a customer spends on mainframes, they will typically spend an additional $3 to $4 across IBM, says Krishna.
IBM employs close to 300,000 people, a vast workforce 50% larger than that of Google parent company Alphabet. One of the original multinational corporations, only 20% of its employees are in the U.S.
About 160,000 of IBM’s employees are in its services business. “That has to be local to where the service is being provided, because people want language skills, people want locality, people want you in their office,” says Krishna. “That piece is labor-intensive, let me acknowledge that.”
Krishna anticipates the AI boom will also boost IBM’s revenue, because most customers need someone to come in and hold their hand. Only the very biggest nontech companies have in-house tech expertise to assess and incorporate the latest AI systems, he adds.
Hardware being a linchpin of IBM’s revenue is one reason investors found the company’s recent sales decline so alarming.
CEO Arvind Krishna is bullish on IBM’s future.
The good news, says Krishna, is that of the large deals IBM failed to close by the end of last quarter— numbering in the “low tens”— about a third closed within the first three weeks of the current quarter. That is much faster than what’s typical for deferred deals, he adds, and he expects 80% of those deals will close within six months.
IBM’s near-total dominance of an obscure but important corner of tech hasn’t made it immune to customers redirecting their IT budgets toward memory and storage chips.
Both have skyrocketed in price as the entire silicon supply chain reorients to feeding the AI infrastructure boom. Some analysts believe IBM might miss even its more modest revenue targets for the rest of the year.
Krishna pushes back. He expects the dip in revenue to be a one-time event. He also says that, while IBM itself prepurchased $600 million in hardware to get ahead of price increases, it isn’t financially prudent for companies to continue buying hardware, only to have it languish in inventory.
IBM is an odd duck in the technology industry, in that it continues to have positive cash flow. Giants including Google and Oracle are reporting staggering negative cash flow, and the value of every publicly traded AI neocloud startup has dropped significantly in the past six months as investors worry about their mounting debt.
IBM is investing its profits in its future, says Krishna, particularly as a leader in quantum computing.
By 2029, the company projects, it will offer the world’s first truly useful quantum computer. In June, it said the Trump administration would spend $1 billion to help it set up a quantum-chip manufacturing facility. On Thursday, it announced it will acquire HRL Laboratories, which brings in complementary research on the fundamental units of quantum computing, called qubits. In conventional chip manufacturing, IBM continues to do pioneering research. It recently showed off what it calls the world’s first sub-nanometer chip technology—although demand for this architecture is unclear.
IBM has also sunk $5 billion into a project called Lightwell, which uses AI to find and help fix vulnerabilities in open-source software. With powerful AI models that can hack into systems rapidly proliferating, this, too, could be a growth opportunity for the company.
In 1985, IBM was, briefly, the world’s most valuable company. Then came the PC. Since then, it’s been slow-growing at best. It isn’t clear which of the company’s bets will pay off. But tech companies are spending trillions on AI that has yet to benefit end customers with appreciable returns. So perhaps IBM is the tortoise in this race.
Krishna himself is, naturally, bullish on the future of his company. He believes quantum computing will begin to power IBM’s growth in a matter of years, even if critics say it could be more like decades. The company’s first-mover advantage in quantum computing could, he believes, boost its fortunes the way being a first mover in GPUs did for Nvidia.
When it comes to the total size of the opportunity for quantum computing, “I have actually upped my estimate,” says Krishna. “I think quantum will be a trilliondollar value-adder by the end of the ’30s.”
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In India, Protesters Keep Heat on Modi
BY TRIPTI LAHIRI AND KRISHNA POKHAREL
The Wall Street Journal
Jul 25, 2026
NEW DELHI—The leaders of India’s “Cockroach” protests said their supporters wouldn’t retreat even after an activist who galvanized the demonstrations ended a hunger strike Friday after winning concessions from the government.
“We will not step back,” said Abhijeet Dipke, whose Cockroach Janta Party movement has channeled anger over a broken university entrance exam and lack of jobs into the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in years.
Hunger striker Sonam Wangchuk, a 59-year-old activist, lost 20 pounds during his 26-day protest. Police forcibly took him to the hospital days before he was set to lead a protest march Monday in the Indian capital.
Police banned the march but thousands turned out, in some cases clashing with police who responded with batons and tear gas. Protest leaders said dozens of demonstrators were injured. Police said nearly 120 officers and paramilitary personnel were hurt.
On social media, Wangchuk said he decided to end his fast after government officials met him at the hospital and pledged to refrain from bringing police complaints against protesters over the clashes.
A video posted by Wangchuk showed government officials lined up along his hospital bed as India’s health minister promised compensation for students who took their lives in connection with a botched undergraduate medical school exam this year, and to hold “threadbare discussions” in Parliament on exam-paper leaks.
In India, competitive exams are the path for millions to subsidized college spots or government jobs, amid a shortage of well-paying private jobs. Many exams, however, are canceled because of cheating allegations. Some families pay thousands of dollars for access to exam papers in advance, a lucrative business for cheating gangs.
This year’s undergraduate medical exam was taken by two million people in May, who then had to take the test again in June because of leaks.
Anger over the exams—and a sense that the economy doesn’t offer enough economic opportunity—is striking a chord across India.
On Thursday, Modi made a flurry of public remarks on the issue. In a social-media message, he pledged to set up fast-track courts to try exam-cheating cases, and said the well-being of India’s young people is a priority for him.
“Friends, I know that paper leak isn’t a minor issue; it’s very painful for millions of students and their guardians,” he said in a separate video.
The government didn’t send senior ministers to talk with protest leaders earlier, and so is now in a bind as they dig in on their demand that India’s education minister resign, said Bhaskar Pant, partner at Policy Monks, a New Delhi-based policy group.
“Conceding a minister’s resignation looks like weakness, refusing it looks like contempt,” Pant said. “The longer that choice is deferred, the more the demand shifts from the minister to the man above him.”
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