Mr. Zuckerberg made his comments about the hypothetical artificial intelligence as Meta posted a 36 percent quarterly increase in profit and a 22 percent jump in revenue.

In many ways, we’re living in the world that Mark Zuckerberg built. No other person is as responsible for social media ’s rapid ascendance into ubiquity over the last two decade. The platforms he runs — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp — see more than 3 billion users total every day, and create billions in quarterly profit for corporate parent Meta.