Meta bets big on wearable AI, new AI agent as Zuckerberg pushes back against AI doom

Meta is going all in on a consumer-friendly AI agent and pushing forward with AI-powered wearable devices during a moment in the industry when its CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged it is a “wild time to be building.” At the company’s annual Connect conference on Wednesday, Zuckerberg opened his keynote address by saying “it’s no secret that people in the industry have a wide range of views about how the future is going to go.” But at Meta, he said, “we are optimists because we believe in people.” Zuckerberg has distanced himself and Meta from recent calls by rival companies for a coordinated slowdown in the development of advanced artificial intelligence, arguing that individual labs can and should ensure their technology is safe. “We believe that the best way to create a positive future for everyone is to put power in people’s hands,” he said. “We believe that empowering people is the source of prosperity in the world, that the highest purpose of superintelligence is creation and invention — not automation — and that the path to a safe future is to distribute this technology widely and create the right checks and balances, rather than concentrating it in the hands of just a few.” Zuckerberg has long said he believes wearable AI will eventually replace smartphones as the primary way people interact with technology.

At the conference, the company unveiled a slew of updates to its smart glasses and virtual reality goggles, which let people control their interface using their voice, eyes and hand and finger movements. AI agent Muse is the ‘centerpiece’ of Meta’s vision Zuckerberg said that Meta’s recently launched agent Muse is the “centerpiece” of Meta’s hopeful outlook for the future of AI. Having an AI agent, which goes beyond chatbots in that it can act and perform tasks on a person’s behalf, has been a “sign of someone who is completely AI-pilled,” Meta’s chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said at the conference.

With Muse, Wang said, Meta is making agents more accessible and bringing “personal superintelligence” to everyone. With the help of a mascot for the agent that looks like a plush toy, Wang and senior leadership at Meta demonstrated different uses for the agent in everyday life. Users will be able to have real-time voice conversations and video chats with their version of the agent, which can also be customized to look and sound unique.