The problem is, the Quest Pro isn’t very good. It’s a device seemingly launched without plan or purpose, highlighting VR’s persistent drawbacks without making good use of its strengths — and topped off with some irredeemably bad software. We might be seeing a roadmap for where Meta is going, but right now, it’s not a particularly fun place to be. And if Meta lingers there much longer, its metaverse is in trouble.
Nearly $2bn (£1.75bn) has been spent on virtual land in the past 12 months, as people and companies race to get a foothold in the metaverse, research shows.
But we are years away from the metaverse emerging as a single immersive space online where people can live, work and play in virtual reality. So is the land grab one big gamble?
Despite some dubious recent claims—for example, the ex-Google engineer who claimed a chatbot had gained sentience before being fired—we’re pretty far off from that reality. Instead, one of the biggest barriers to a robot overlord situation is the simple fact that compared to animals and humans, current AI and machine learning systems are lacking in reason, a concept essential to the development of “autonomous” machine intelligence systems—that is, AI that can learn on the fly, directly from observations of the real world, rather than lengthy training sessions to perform a specific task.
Image Credits: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile / Getty Images
“To reflect who we are and what we hope to build, I am proud to announce that starting today, our company is now Meta. Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and our brands — they’re not changing either,” Zuckerberg said.
Well, it turns out that’s not so true. In a lengthy Facebook post, CTO-in-waiting Andrew Bosworth detailed about 15 minutes later following the completion of the keynote that as part of the new rebrand, they will be killing off the Oculus brand.
Facebook employees unveil a new logo and the name ‘Meta’ on the sign in front of Facebook headquarters on Oct. 28 in Menlo Park, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“From now on, we’re going to be the metaverse first. Not Facebook first,” Zuckerberg said at Connect, the company’s annual event focused on virtual and augmented reality. “Facebook is one of the most-used products in the world. But increasingly, it doesn’t encompass everything that we do. Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we are doing.”
The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. A spokesperson for Facebook declined to comment for this story.
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23951498/VRG_Illo_STK169_L_Normand_MarkZuckerburg_Positive.jpg)