Mark Zuckerberg said AI companies don't need an industry-wide agreement to slow development when safety concerns emerge.

In a post on X on Tuesday, the Meta CEO argued that market pressure will make alignment, meaning ensuring that AI systems follow their users' intentions, a competitive advantage.

"Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely," Zuckerberg said.

"My view is that trust and alignment are quickly becoming the most important capabilities that will differentiate agents and models," Zuckerberg added. "Any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind."

Zuckerberg pointed to Meta's decision to delay its Muse model for several months to strengthen its safety and security.

"We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would," Zuckerberg said. "We just did it."

Zuckerberg's comments land amid an escalating debate over whether frontier AI development should be slowed through coordinated, verifiable safeguards. Anthropic has called for government regulations and mechanisms that would allow leading labs to pause if warning signs emerge, but other tech leaders, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, have said they favor independent evaluations and individual liability for AI companies.

Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang echoed Zuckerberg with his own post later on Tuesday, saying labs need strong governance, external evaluators, and independent oversight of model launches.

"Racing on recursive self-improvement is one of the riskiest pathways for potential loss of control to powerful models," Wang said.

"Meta is committing the significant majority of our compute towards serving people rather than racing on RSI, and other labs can choose to do the same," Wang added. "AI is a very powerful technology, and there is immense responsibility in developing it safely alongside the right checks and balances."