Everything Tech and Social

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Facebook CTO - Mike Schroepfer</td></tr>
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"We're here to talk about the future."

That's how Facebook CTO Mike
 Schroepfer introduced his second-day keynote presentation at this 
week's F8 conference, where he revealed cutting-edge products like 
high-flying drones and artificial intelligence that can learn, and gave a
 real explanation for where the Oculus Rift fits into the social 
network.

Schroepfer laid out three core priorities for the company over the next several years:

Virtual reality: Schroepfer demonstrated how far 
virtual reality has come, comparing Battlezone for the Atari 2600 from 
1980 with a demo of EVE Valkyrie, an intense spaceship simulator coming 
to the Oculus Rift.

"What the heck does this have to do with Facebook?" Schroepfer asked 
himself, voicing the question that's been on everybody's mind since <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-palmer-luckey-spent-the-year-after-facebook-bought-oculus-for-2-billion-2015-3?op=1" sl-processed="1">Facebook bought Oculus</a> back in early 2014.

But for Facebook, he says, virtual reality is just another way to 
connect with people. Sometimes, you're across the country from loved 
ones. Sometimes, parents can't be with your kids. Sometimes, friends 
can't make it for a birthday party.

"I wish everybody could have been teleported to this moment," Schroepfer said.

Connectivity: Getting people online is really hard, Schroepfer
 said. Telecommunications companies amortize the costs over years of 
contracted services, eventually making back the money they spent getting
 people on the grid in the first place. In the developing world, there 
just isn't enough return on investment to warrant their coming in and 
laying down cable.

"This basically mean going to the sky," Schroepfer says.

He showed off the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-is-building-a-fleet-of-giant-solar-powered-drones-2015-3" sl-processed="1">Aquila</a>,
 an Internet-connected unmanned drone with the wingspan of a 737 and the
 "mass of a small car." It would fly over regions of the developing 
world, sprinkling Internet access like so much rain. Schroepfer said the company will have more information to share on Aquila later this year.

Artificial intelligence: As for those better interfaces, Schroepfer said
 that the company's issue is that there's just so much new digital 
picture and video content in the world, with more and more coming every 
single day.

Artificial intelligence is generally accepted as the way 
forward, helping companies like Facebook index and archive all of that 
data in a way that a human would find useful.

"You can start to build a deeper understanding of what's in the content," Schroepfer says.

The problem is that a computer still isn't as a good at identifying what's in a picture as Schroepfer's three-year-old son.

Facebook researchers are hard at work building new AI 
systems that can really learn and be trained and solve basic logical 
problems, all with the end of helping keep track of this deluge of 
videos and content.

So there you have it. Facebook has a lot on its plate, with lots of really advanced science going on behind the scenes.

"That's our goal over the next 10 years," Schroepfer concluded. "I think it's going to be fun." 
 
Credit: businessinsider.com

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Facebook CTO - Mike Schroepfer "We're here to talk about the future." That's how Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer int...