For a few months now, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled several ambitious AI -based projects, describing this technology as the key to unlocking the Metaverse . In a presentation broadcast live on Facebook (now renamed Meta), Zuckerberg created a basic virtual world that includes an island, several trees, and a beach, using the Builder Bot feature, built entirely on AI parameters.
A technological boost for a company in decline
In another presentation, Zuckerberg also announced a plan to build a universal voice translator: “The ability to communicate with anyone in any language is a superpower dreamed of by mankind since the beginning of time,” he said. Builder Bot was part of Meta’s CAIRaoke project to enhance AI assistants and enable AI to record the world from the human experience itself, as people experience virtual reality through special headsets or glasses, Zuckerberg said. .
Meta’s CEO also promised that the artificial intelligence systems that manage the social network’s virtual worlds would preserve privacy and be fully transparent and accountable. The latter is something that is of particular concern to the company, since its huge reputational crisis stems from Facebook’s permissiveness with fake news and misinformation.
Facebook has been investing in artificial intelligence for the last 10 years and has one of the world’s leading experts, Yann LeCun, as project manager. In January it announced that it had built a new supercomputer that aims to be the world’s fastest when completed in mid-2022.
However, the company had to change its corporate name to Meta in October, following revelations by a company employee about the permissiveness of false news and the spread of hoaxes by the company. At the time, Zuckerberg spoke of a powerful Metaverse, accessible through virtual reality headsets, like Meta Quest, formerly Oculus, where people could work, play and chat. A project that has not been successful so far and for which Meta plans to hire 10,000 people in Europe alone to help build it.
Too much advertising, few expectations
But critics have questioned whether large corporations should be allowed to dominate the creation of such worlds, and have questioned whether they can protect users’ privacy and data. One of Facebook’s early investors, Roger McNamee, said the company must be prevented from creating a dystopian Metaverse, as Facebook failed to keep user data private and prevent misinformation and hate speech.
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth admitted that Metaverse would be much more difficult to moderate than existing digital platforms, especially given its long-term goal of having many companies interact in the same space. Still, he promised to allow users to fully control their experience in the metaverse.
