Facebook opening an Artificial Intelligence research lab in Paris this past June should let everyone know how serious the Silicon Valley tech company is about advancing in A.I.
On Wednesday, while conducting a Town Hall Q&A at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, the Facebook CEO expounded on the companies goals and advances with A.I. and the future of Artificial Intelligence as a whole.
"A.I. is a really exciting area of development. We have this goal in five to 10 years, we want to build computer systems, which can be better at main human senses than people are — can see better, recognize people or things in the world, can kind of track as we travel through the world, can hear better, can translate language better, can understand the language, right? All these things are basic human senses," Zuckerberg explained to a pack crowd.
Despite the ambitious goals, Zuckerberg doesn't think computers' intelligence will replace that of humans' in the near future.
"That does not mean that we're going to have computers that are smarter than people any time soon," he continued. "For a long time we've been able to build computers that can do specific tasks better than people, but I still think we are very, very far off from having computers that are more intelligent in any way. This is one step in the path of delivering great services."
As for what people can expect regarding A.I. advances with Facebook, Zuckerberg said it's less going to be about completely new products and more about increasing intelligence in the things they do.
He cited two examples.
The first was an accessibility feature on Facebook. He explained for blind users how Facebook "can have our A.I. look at the photo and figure out what's in it," before reading an explanation of the picture's contents.
He also mentioned using A.I. in safety checks during natural disasters such as an earthquake.
"In the future, it's going to be possible with satellites to identify who's in an area and who needs help," he said. "Is that the type of thing that a computer can do better than people in the future? Probably."
While its A.I. advances aren't 100 percent as of yet, Zuckerberg said he fully expects Facebook to keep improving in the area.
