Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees to "buckle up" for an "intense" year ahead and addressed several recent policy changes in a company all-hands meeting on Thursday.
Zuckerberg opened the all-hands meeting by emphasizing a sense of urgency for the year ahead. He told staff he expects to have a clearer sense of the company's trajectory by the end of 2025 and that AI will be top of mind this year. He also addressed recent policy changes related to fact-checking and programs for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
"This is a marathon, not a sprint," he said in a recording reviewed by Business Insider. "But honestly, this year feels a little more like a sprint to me."
Meta declined to comment.
In a wide-ranging opening monologue, Zuckerberg predicted that 2025 would be the year a "highly intelligent and personalized" digital assistant would reach a billion users.
"I think whoever gets there first is going to have a long-term, durable advantage towards building one of the most important products in history," Zuckerberg said in a recording reviewed by BI.
Zuckerberg also reiterated his belief that this will be the year Meta starts seeing AI agents take on work, including writing software. Asked whether this would lead to job cuts, Zuckerberg said it was "hard to know" and that while it may lead to some roles becoming redundant, it could lead to hiring more engineers who can harness AI to be more productive.
"The nature of what engineering is in the future will be different than it is today," he said.
Zuckerberg touched on several flashpoints from inside the company that have taken place in recent weeks, including the announcement that it will move away from third-party fact checks to a community note system like that used by Elon Musk's X.
Zuckerberg told staff to wait and see how the new system gets implemented.
"I'm actually quite optimistic that this is going to end up being a better system," he said.
Zuckerberg also said this would be a year for "resetting" Meta's relationship with governments worldwide.
"After the last several years, we now have an opportunity to have a productive partnership with the United States government, and we're going to take that," said Zuckerberg. "I think it's the right thing to do because there are several areas, even if we don't agree on everything, where we have common cause for things that are going to make it so that we can serve our community better, and we can advance the interests of our country together, " he said, adding that Meta would do so in ways that don't compromise its "principles or values."
The Meta chief also addressed the company's recent changes in its stance on DEI policies and the rollback of those programs in response to shifting legal and regulatory landscapes under the Trump administration.
"The way to think about this is we're in the middle of a pretty rapidly changing policy and regulatory landscape that increasingly views any policy that might advantage any one group of people over another as something that is unlawful, and because of that, we need to adjust, or else we'll just be out of alignment with what the law is saying," Zuckerberg said.
He reaffirmed that his view on DEI is that Meta views diversity as a strength, adding, "Historically, we've had a handful of specific programs that were very focused on certain underrepresented groups, and I think the direction of the policy and regulatory and legal direction on a lot of the stuff is that you can't do things that advantage, specific groups even if you're trying to make up for other things."
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