Mark Zuckerberg is buying Meta a seat at the AI table. Does he know what to do with it?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted an AI manifesto to his company’s website in August. The 6,537-word missive resembled similar proclamations from CEOs such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. Unlike theirs, however, it argued that the power of future AI models should be put directly in the hands of as many people as possible, in the form of “personal superintelligence” that would benefit everyone from small-business owners to 8-year-olds like Zuckerberg’s own daughter. “Rather than centralizing superintelligence, we should distribute it widely and give every person the ability to direct it,” he wrote. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.” Nine months earlier, during a Meta earnings call, Zuckerberg had foreshadowed how he would make this possible: “I’m very focused on establishing Meta as the leading frontier AI lab.” Even by Zuckerbergian standards, this is a stretch goal. It would require Meta to leapfrog—at a bare minimum—Anthropic and OpenAI, and maybe Google. Over…