Meta's new empire: VR, AR and AI - Sync #486
I hope you enjoy this free post. If you do, please like ❤️ or share it, for example by forwarding this email to a friend or colleague. Writing this post took around eight hours to write. Liking or sharing it takes less than eight seconds and makes a huge difference. Thank you! Meta's new empire: VR, AR and AI - Sync #486Plus: Mira Murati leaves OpenAI; Microsoft to revive a nuclear plant for its AI data centre; bioengineered trees that capture more carbon; stem cell therapy for diabetes; and more!Hello and welcome to Sync #486! This week, Meta held its Connect event, where Mark Zuckerberg took the stage to share what the engineers and designers at Meta have been working on and the new features coming to Meta products. We will take a closer look at what Zuckerberg has presented and how these announcements are a step towards turning Meta from a social media empire to a VR, AR, and AI empire. Meanwhile, OpenAI served another episode of their drama. This time, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati leaves the company alongside two other executives who also announced their resignations, joining a growing list of departures from the company over the past year. All this is happening while the company is reportedly in the final stages of a massive funding round, which could potentially shift OpenAI from a non-profit to a for-profit entity. There are also reports that Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, might receive a 7% stake in the company. Elsewhere in AI, Microsoft plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to power its AI data centre, DeepMind’s text-to-video model is coming to YouTube Shorts, and Sam Altman present his optimistic vision of the future. Over in robotics, Zipline outlined their plans for a next-gen drone delivery system, and researchers have created a flying cart. We also have bioengineered trees that capture more carbon than normal trees, “golden lettuce” packed with vitamins, and a 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes who can now produce her own insulin after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells. All this and more in this week’s issue of Sync. Enjoy! Meta's new empire: VR, AR and AIQuest 3S and Ray-Ban Meta smart glassesThe first thing Zuckerberg announced on stage of Connect 2024 was the new Quest 3S VR and mixed reality headset. The Quest 3S is a more affordable version of the Quest 3, priced at $299 for the 128GB model and $399 for the 256GB version. Following the launch of Quest 3S in mid October, the Quest 3 will drop in price from $649 to $499. Meta also announced that the Quest 2 and Quest Pro will be discontinued, with sales continuing only while supplies last. Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses also got an upgrade. The glasses—which Zuckerberg described as “a new category of AI devices”—now feature real-time AI video processing, allowing users to ask questions based on what the glasses see. They will include smartphone-like reminders, live language translation between English and French, Italian, or Spanish, and full integration with music streaming services like Amazon Music, Audible, and iHeartRadio. Meta AINew changes are also coming to Meta AI, Meta’s AI-powered chatbot available in Facebook, Whatsapp, Messenger and Instagram apps. Zuckerberg claims that Meta AI is on track to become the world’s most used AI assistant with over 500 million monthly users. Probably the biggest new addition to Meta AI is the ability to have voice interactions with Meta’s chatbot, allowing for a more natural way of using the assistant. In a live demo, Zuckerberg showcased how quickly the new Meta AI can understand what he is saying. It can even be interrupted, just like we saw earlier this year in May with OpenAI’s GPT-4o. Meta AI can use one of many voices, including voices from well-known people such as Awkwafina, Dame Judi Dench, John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, and Kristen Bell. Creators are also getting new tools through Meta AI Studio. Launched to all US creators in July this year, Meta Studio AI offers creators to create their own digital replicas in form of chatbots to interact with their audience. So far, these chatbots could only interact via text but Meta is planning to add audio and video, too. Together with Don Allen Stevenson III, Zuckerberg showed how these new chatbots can interact with the audience by mimicking the creator. The creator chatbots are planned to be released year next year in the US first. Another interesting feature presented was automatic translation coming soon to Instagram Reels. Currently limited to translating between English and Spanish, this new tool can not only translate captions but also create a translated dub and even adjust the movement of the lips accordingly to match the dub. Llama 3.2Llama, Meta’s popular open AI models, got a new addition to the family in the form of four new models. Llama 3.2 1B and 3B are two small, lightweight models designed to run on devices like smartphones and edge devices. With the multimodal Llama 3.2 11B and 90B models, Llama gains the ability to process images as input. According to benchmark results from Meta, the new models are close to, if not better than, competitors like Gemma 2 or Phi-3.5 in the lightweight category, and Claude 3 Haiku or GPT-4o-mini for vision models. I’m sure AI developers will be eager to try out the new models and see what they can build with them. However, Llama 3.2 11B and 90B can’t be accessed in Europe due to the EU’s recent AI laws. OrionThe last thing that Zuckerberg presented was a glimpse into the future of AR in the form of Orion, prototype AR glasses, and they are quite impressive. Orion looks like normal (albeit a bit bulky) glasses with holographic images layered over the real world being projected on the lenses. This allows for a field of view of 70 degrees, which is larger than competing devices like Microsoft’s Hololens 2 and Magic Leap One. When it comes to controlling the glasses, Orion supports voice commands, hand- and eye-tracking, as well as through a neural interface in a form of wristbands which look very close to what CTRL-Labs was developing before they were acquired by Meta five years ago. Orion is still a prototype and you can see this in its design, with thick frame and arms packing the battery and electronics. It will take some time to refine the design and the technology, as well as bring down the price from $10,000 for a pair to something much more affordable. For now, only 1000 Orion glasses will be made to be used internally inside Meta and to share with a selected group of external partners for software development. If you want to learn more about Orion, Tested sat down with Meta’s CTO, Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, to discuss the glasses, what it took to build them, what technology is inside them and what they can tell us about the future of AR and technology. Their video goes much deeper than what was presented during the keynote. This year’s Meta Connect shows where Meta is heading. Meta has already built a social media empire, serving billions of people every day through Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp and Instagram. Now, the company’s focus is on the next big thing—AI, AR, and VR. And with Orion, Meta is joining the race to define what comes after smartphones. During his keynote, Zuckerberg wore a shirt saying “Act Zuck aut nihil,” which says “either Zuck or nothing” in Latin. Zuckerberg is already the Emperor of Social Media, and maybe, in the long term, he will become the Emperor of VR, AR, and AI as well. If you enjoy this post, please click the ❤️ button or share it. Do you like my work? Consider becoming a paying subscriber to support it For those who prefer to make a one-off donation, you can 'buy me a coffee' via Ko-fi. Every coffee bought is a generous support towards the work put into this newsletter. Your support, in any form, is deeply appreciated and goes a long way in keeping this newsletter alive and thriving. 🦾 More than a humanMaking Eggs Without Ovaries Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes — a world first 🧠 Artificial IntelligenceOpenAI CTO Mira Murati says she’s leaving the company OpenAI Discusses Giving Altman 7% Stake in For-Profit Shift Microsoft deal propels Three Mile Island restart, with key permits still needed Generative AI startup Runway inks deal with a major Hollywood studio Jony Ive is working on an AI device startup with OpenAI The Intelligence Age YouTube Shorts to integrate Veo, Google’s AI video model The United Nations Wants to Treat AI With the Same Urgency as Climate Change Forget ChatGPT: why researchers now run small AIs on their laptops My AI Lover Cheated on Me If you're enjoying the insights and perspectives shared in the Humanity Redefined newsletter, why not spread the word? 🤖 Robotics▶️ 2024 Behind the Scenes with Zipline (11:50) Zipline, probably the most successful drone delivery company in the world, shows in this video Platform 2, their next-gen drone delivery system. It’s been well over a year since the company announced Platform 2, and it is planning to launch delivery services in selected cities in the US, starting with Dallas-Fort Worth soon. Researchers from South Korea present Patterone Cart—a flying cart designed for human-robot interaction-based aerial cargo transportation. It is essentially a giant drone that can carry cargo and be operated like a normal, wheeled cart. Automatic takeoffs are coming for passenger jets and they’re going to redraw the map of the sky 🧬 BiotechnologyLiving Carbon: Photosynthesis-Enhanced Trees "Golden Lettuce" genetically engineered to pack 30 times more vitamins Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post, please click the ❤️ button or share it. Humanity Redefined sheds light on the bleeding edge of technology and how advancements in AI, robotics, and biotech can usher in abundance, expand humanity's horizons, and redefine what it means to be human. A big thank you to my paid subscribers, to my Patrons: whmr, Florian, dux, Eric, Preppikoma and Andrew, and to everyone who supports my work on Ko-Fi. Thank you for the support! My DMs are open to all subscribers. Feel free to drop me a message, share feedback, or just say "hi!" |
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