Zuckerberg rejects AI slowdown; UC Merced and Fresno County use Meta tools
Meta’s CEO pushed back on calls for a coordinated AI slowdown, saying labs should police themselves. Valley campuses and county services already run tools built on Meta models.
Zuckerberg rejects AI slowdown; UC Merced and Fresno County use Meta tools
Key Takeaways
- Mark Zuckerberg said AI labs should handle safety themselves, rejecting a coordinated slowdown proposal.
- UC Merced lists Zoom’s AI Companion as using Meta’s Llama 2 alongside OpenAI and Anthropic.
- Fresno County bought Spanish generative AI for call summaries in 2025, showing local government deployment.
- The slowdown idea came from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and drew support from Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
What Zuckerberg said
Mark Zuckerberg drew a line this week. In a social post, the Meta CEO said every AI lab should “move at the pace required to train its models safely,” separating himself from industry peers who want a coordinated slowdown on advanced systems. He added that Meta delayed its Muse AI agent for safety checks, but “We didn’t call for everyone else to do this before we would.”
The comments followed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s three-step plan that includes companies and governments syncing up to slow development. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk voiced support for the idea, which has widened a divide inside the sector over whether voluntary coordination or firm-by-firm responsibility will do more for safety.
Why it matters in the Valley
UC Merced’s IT office tells students and staff that Zoom’s AI Companion uses multiple large language models, including Meta’s Llama 2. That means changes in Meta’s posture can ripple into campus tools that ride on top of those models. Point taken.
Local government is already buying AI too. Fresno County approved up to $446,452 for Spanish-language generative AI to summarize call-center interactions last year, a nuts-and-bolts example of how agencies adopt what big labs release. If major firms had agreed to a cross-company pause, feature rollouts into tools like these could have slowed for everyone who depends on them.
It was 84 degrees and sunny in Merced on Thursday afternoon.
The split over a slowdown
Supporters of coordination argue safety work needs time to catch up. Amodei has warned of near-term risks from powerful systems, while the United Nations chief urged companies and countries to avoid a “race to the bottom on AI safety.” The push has met political and industry resistance in the U.S., and now, open skepticism from one of the most influential platform owners.
Zuckerberg’s stance is clear: focus compute on products that serve people today, not on building systems that teach themselves to get stronger without human checks, a concept known as recursive self-improvement. For Valley readers, that likely means Meta won’t join a coordinated pause that could limit or delay upgrades flowing into classroom and county tools.
"We didn’t call for everyone else to do this before we would."
Central Valley AI is produced by the CVAI Newsdesk team and developed by Kaweah Tech, a regional firm that builds, deploys, and integrates AI solutions for businesses across California's Central Valley.