Bill Gates once said that people “overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years.” Individual accomplishments tend to accumulate in a non-linear fashion until the future suddenly comes into focus. As the old saying goes, it happens in two ways: Gradually then suddenly. As we wrap up a wild 12 months of technological progress, I think it's fair to say that 2023 has been a “surprise” year.
Last month we celebrated the 10th anniversary of FAIR, our core AI research laboratory. When we launched in 2013, there was tremendous excitement across the industry about the role AI would play in the future, and early machine learning applications were already playing a central role across Facebook. Few could have imagined at the time how impressive the progress would be. In fact, even just two years ago many might have doubted it.
As we look forward to 2024, there's another big milestone coming: It will be 10 years since Meta began working on Reality Labs' future computing platform. These two emerging technologies – artificial intelligence and the metaverse – represent Meta's biggest bets for the long-term future. In 2023, we begin to see the intersection of these two technological paths in the form of products accessible to large numbers of people.
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One of the highlights of the year was seeing the route Llama and llama 2 It has been embraced by the developer community, with over 100 million downloads and continuous improvements coming from organizations around the world as it iterates. In India, Geo Adjust it quickly To build a new tool to serve more than half a billion customers. And face hugging Open the LLM Leaderboard It's filled with great projects based on Llama 2 that are leading the way. These are just a few of the more than 13,000 species of llamas hosted there.
Like any new technology, AI will have its greatest impact when it is available to everyone. It wasn't that long ago that the ability to create beautiful images using text prompts was not available to most people. But today we are Add tools like Create collaborative images, conversational assistants, writing assistants, and intelligent photo editors in products already used by billions of people around the world.
Platform transformation
The shift we've seen over the past year suggests there's a path for AI to become the primary way people interact with machines. The way has been paved for new types of devices that can perceive, understand, and interact with the world around us in ways never before possible.
Ray-Ban Meta's AI-powered sunglasses show one such path. The new Meta AI Assistant combines vision and language understanding to see the world from your perspective and work with you to understand it. We are testing new multimedia AI capabilities on glasses. With this enabled, they can translate a foreign language you're trying to read, or come up with a funny caption for a photo you've taken. They can do it all hands-free, without having to pull out a phone or launch an app.
We believe one of the most powerful manifestations of cutting-edge AI will be assistants that can understand the world around you and help you throughout your day, ultimately without requiring a request. Glasses are the perfect form factor for this – they can see and hear the world from your perspective, are actually socially acceptable, can be worn all day, and allow you to stay fully present in the moment.
At Reality Labs, we've invested years of research into the technologies needed to enhance this – things like ultra-low-power, always-on sensors and machine perception systems capable of understanding your context. We're not just creating a new kind of device here, we're going to be pushing it forward for years to come.
Mixed reality and spatial computing represent another way forward. These aren't just incremental improvements to the personal computing model that has dominated the past 50 years. It represents a fundamental shift in focus that is just beginning.
Making these new technologies available to as many people as possible has been a top priority for Reality Labs for many years now Launching the first mass-market mixed reality headset September of this year was another highlight of 2023 for us.
Within months of Meta Quest 3's launch, seven of the top 20 apps are mixed reality apps. We're seeing strong signals that people really value these experiences. There are literally hundreds of mixed reality apps in our store with the majority of users having experienced the mixed reality features. Seeing what happens when so many people get their hands on new technology like this has been fun:
We'll see this progress accelerate in 2024 as more people have access to mixed reality and developers learn how to harness its power. Whether it's immersive NBA viewing on Xtadium or a whole new approach to learning music on Pianovision, we're already seeing MR deliver experiences that would be impossible on any other type of device.
The long view
Making long-term bets on emerging technologies is not easy. It's not guaranteed to work, and it's certainly not cheap. It's also one of the most valuable things a tech company can do, and the only way to stay relevant in the long term. Seeing Meta's two biggest long-term technology bets mature and intersect this year has been a very strong reminder of the importance of maintaining a healthy investment in future technologies. It has given us a clearer vision of the innovation we need to deliver over the next decade.
In AI, this means going all in on what's next: What comes after today's generation of LLM holders and generative AI? Most researchers agree that there is still plenty of opportunity to build bigger and better models of language, images, and video using the technologies we have today. But there are still fundamental breakthroughs and entirely new architectures to be discovered, and our AI research teams at Meta are on the right track to discover them.
This means continued research into areas such as embodied artificial intelligence, which aims to build models that experience the world the way humans do. Our researchers believe that the path to human-level AI will require artificially intelligent systems A deeper understanding of how the world worksAnd our difference as well Already making progress On this, with years of work still to come.
And at Reality Labs, we have Researchers are moving forward with some promising technologies that will make the next computing platform possible. Over the years, this research has led to breakthroughs like flat lenses in the Quest Pro and Quest 3 and the amazing prototype Codec Avatars that Try Mark Zuckerberg and Lex Friedman this year. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and Reality Labs' research breakthroughs will enable us to launch a series of industry-first products over the coming years.
But of all the things I've mentioned here, the most valuable technologies are those that are in people's hands today. Progress in 2023 means generative AI is making its way into the heart of the world's most popular apps, mixed reality is now at the heart of mass-market headsets, and smart glasses will allow AI to see the world from our perspective for the world. First time. This is a very exciting time to build the future. Most importantly, it's a great time to be in.
