Years after Google attempted to introduce Glass, smart glasses are finally gaining traction, with several companies producing some of the best smart glasses we've seen to date. And now, Mark Zuckerberg says that in the future, you'll be left behind if you don't have a set.
During this week's Meta earnings call (via TechCrunch), CEO and founder Zuckerberg presented financial figures for the last fiscal quarter, alongside the company's outlook for the future.
With the company's recent spending spree, unsurprisingly, that means a lot of AI, with Zuckerberg proclaiming that AI superintelligence is "now in sight." During the call, he also spoke about AI glasses with a new Oakley partnership bringing more Meta-based glasses to the market.
"I continue to think that glasses are basically going to be the ideal form factor for AI, because you can let an AI see what you see throughout the day, hear what you hear, talk to you,” Zuckerberg said during the call.
He went on to say that adding a display will add more value to the glasses, whether it's something in daily wear like the Ray Ban Metas or the holographic Meta Orion AR glasses.
"I think in the future, if you don’t have glasses that have AI, or some way to interact with AI, I think you’re kind of similarly probably be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people,” Zuckerberg went on to say.
The Reality Labs investment
According to Zuckerberg, the Reality Labs division at Meta's main focus has been smart glasses for the last "five to ten years."
It's not entirely surprising that Zuckerberg would promote the Meta glasses and Reality Labs to investors. The division has been a money sink with operating losses of $4.53 billion this year and $4.88 billion last year, this in spite of the $20 billion Meta made in profit."
"I think we're just several years ahead on building out glasses," Zuckerberg said. "And I think that's something we're excited to keep on investing in heavily because I think it's going to be a really important part of the future."
Between the Ray Ban and Oakley glasses, they can connect to the Meta AI app, which gives them access to an AI assistant, photos and some web browsing.
Whether or not people will be cognitively disadvantaged without smart glasses is debatable. Recent studies from Microsoft and MIT released this year have reported that habitual AI users may experience declines in critical thinking, creativity and problem-solving skills.
Outlook
Beyond that, it's a nebulous and hard-to-quantify claim, but Zuckerberg's statement isn't for us; it's for investors he's trying to convince to keep putting their dollars into Meta's coffers.
Still, my colleague Kate Kozuch enjoyed the new Oakleys, describing them as "epic," although she found them less fashionable than the already available Ray-Bans, which offer more styles and lenses to choose from.
And the true selling point of smart glasses is their convenience over pulling out your phone.
Of course, he also threw in a brief shoutout to the still existing Metaverse.
"The other thing that’s awesome about glasses is they are going to be the ideal way to blend the physical and digital worlds together,” he said. “So the whole Metaverse vision, I think, is going to end up being extremely important, too, and AI is going to accelerate that.”
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