You only have to look at the recent emergence of China’s DeepSeek AI sending shockwaves through the American tech industry to see artificial intelligence will be the battleground that future wars are fought on.

While there are fears that AI will lead to a loss of jobs or even eradicate the entire human race as it gains sentience, that hasn’t stopped the tech giants from trying to get in on the ground floor.

Whether it’s Meta, OpenAI, or Tesla it seems everyone wants a slice of the AI pie, with some willing to do anything to ensure they get the biggest.

Now, Meta overlord Mark Zuckerberg has given his chilling prediction of where things are heading. Speaking during leaked meeting audio (shared via Business Insider), Zuckerberg warned staff to ‘buckle up’ for what’s described as an ‘intense’ year at Meta.

During a lengthy opening monologue, Zuckerberg suggested that Meta will be betting big on AI in 2025. Notably, Meta’s ‘highly intelligent and personalized’ digital assistant hopes to reach one billion users by the end of the year. This aligns with Meta’s recent push to flood its platforms with AI-controlled accounts.

Referring to business as sometimes being a marathon and sometimes a sprint, Zuckerberg reiterated that 2025 will fall into the ‘sprint’ category: “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.”

As for the looming idea that AI overtaking will lead to a loss of jobs, Zuckerberg admitted it’s ‘hard to know’. Addressing the idea of robots taking over from humans, he added: “The nature of what engineering is in the future will be different than it is today.”

His critics are sure to raise the fact that he’s already teased a slew of job cuts and their potential replacement by AI software.

Although Zuckerberg dodged the $25 million elephant in the room where Meta has agreed to pay President Donald Trump for suspending his Facebook account, he claims he has to be careful what he says. Discussing spies within Meta, he claimed: “Everything I say leaks. And it sucks, right?”

Speaking of the POTUS, Zuckerberg sees this year as one for ‘resetting’ its relationship with the government: “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.”

“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.”

There have also been worries about Meta removing its third-party fact-checkers and heading toward a community note system similar to X. Even though Zuckerberg has promised it won’t compromise Meta’s ‘principles or values’, there are obvious skeptics.

Some have already vowed to delete their accounts due to recent guideline changes, and while concerns about the tech industry’s growing ties to President Trump continue to grow, it doesn’t sound like Zuckerberg is veering from the path toward this AI future.