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Mark Zuckerberg has used his keynote speech at the start of Facebook’s two-day developer conference look to the future – which he sees as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
Mark Zuckerberg – At our F8 conference this morning I laid… | Facebook
The technology entrepreneur covered a host of interesting topics in his 30 minutes or so on-stage. Here are the highlights.
The keynote began with Zuckerberg discussing how the world is a better place when everyone connects and is part of one community. However, in what appeared to be a veiled attack on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has suggested building a wall between the US and Mexico and banning Muslims from travelling to the US.
“Choosing hope over fear takes courage,” he said. “This is why our work is so important – to give people a voice. Instead of building walls we can help build bridges.”
The big centrepiece of Zuckerberg’s talk was the much expected roll out of so-called ‘chatbots’ to developers through Messenger Platform.
In short, this will turn Messenger into not just a space to casually speak to friends, but also interact with businesses. Using artificial intelligence, users will be able to complete various transactions – ordering flowers, getting updates on a flight’s status or the latest news stories first thing in the morning.
Facebook has designed the platform so that users could message a hotel asking “can I book a room tonight?” and that serves as a booking request. Web pages of products can be viewed in conversations, and orders placed from there too. Your Uber will message you to tell you its on the way, while you can discuss delivery dates with Amazon.
It’s the future of messaging and interaction, so says Facebook.
Facebook Live has now been rolled out globally, but the social network went a step further than that during the F8 keynote.
A Live video API was announced – meaning the software would be open to developers to apply to their apps, bringing Facebook Live to potentially any device.
The social media giant was keen to stress how big it thinks Live video could be, citing stats that suggest it is already ten times more likely to be commented on than normal video.
Zuckerberg spoke of his desire to be able to share his daughter’s first steps in 360-video, live.
As part of the “ten year roadmap” that was laid out, the plan for connecting the whole world was also laid out in more detail.
The first stage is drones, or high-flying planes. Aquila, the first of these machines with a wing-span bigger than that of a 737, is set to launch in the coming months. Able to fly at 60,000 feet and solar powered, it will stay in the air for months at a time.
Zuckerberg also spoke about breaching the issue of affordability and awareness when it comes to getting online – including a scheme that reduces data so web access becomes cheaper in the first place, as well as something called Free Basics, a version of the internet that is free to access and that Facebook is encouraging more businesses to join.
As well as using artificial intelligence to power Messenger Platform, Facebook is also applying it in other areas, for example to images on the site, which the software can then read and describe for the benefit of visually impaired users.
Being the company that owns Oculus, Facebook naturally sees plenty of potential in virtual reality. But Mark Zuckerberg went as far as to predict that in around ten years time, both virtual and augmented reality could be at a stage where they can be housed in a normal pair of glasses – enabling users to share photos and interact virtually without the need for smartphones at all.
The future sounds quite fun.
