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Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Meta is making a frightening foray into military technology
Under CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Meta is plunging headfirst into the world of military technology. Literally. Last month, in a joint statement, the social media and technology giant announced it's working with defense contractor Anduril to develop virtual reality devices that will deploy artificial intelligence to train military service members. According to The Wall Street Journal, which interviewed Anduril founder, Palmer Luckey, the devices include "new rugged helmets, glasses and other wearables that provide a virtual-reality or augmented-reality experience." The outlet reported: The system, called EagleEye, will carry sensors that enhance soldiers' hearing and vision — detecting drones flying miles away or sighting hidden targets, for instance. It will also let soldiers operate and interact with AI-powered weapon systems. Anduril's autonomy software and Meta's AI models will underpin the devices. But the deal, and Meta's apparent eagerness to wet its beak under the seemingly endless spigot of U.S. defense spending, raises a question for all to consider. That is: Should a company that's been tied to various disinformation scandals, even admitting at one point that its platform was used by violent extremists to promote genocidal propaganda, be given such access and influence when it comes to training the American military? In comments to Bloomberg last week, Meta's chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, described a "silent majority" within the tech industry eager to pursue such projects: Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth said that the 'tides have turned' in Silicon Valley and made it more palatable for the tech industry to support the US military's efforts. There's long existed a 'silent majority' who wanted to pursue defense projects, Bosworth said during an interview at the Bloomberg Tech summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. 'There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning than I think people give Silicon Valley credit for,' he said. Silicon Valley was founded on military development and 'there's really a long history here that we are kind of hoping to return to, but it is not even day one,' Bosworth added. For the record, that history Bosworth speaks of — which includes Silicon Valley's development of nuclear weapons — isn't as glowing as he suggests. In fact, journalist Malcom Harris' book, 'Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World,' helps chronicle the death and plunder that have historically undergirded the relationship between Silicon Valley and the defense industry. And Meta itself has repeatedly been used as a tool to promote propaganda and misinformation. In 2018, the company publicly acknowledged that its executives didn't do enough to prevent the spread of hate speech that helped fuel the genocide of the Rohingya people living in Myanmar. And in 2019, a bipartisan Senate report concluded that various social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, had been used by Russian officials to suppress the Black vote in 2016 to benefit Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The fact that Meta is currently facing Senate scrutiny over allegations it sought to develop censorship tools for China's autocratic regime in the past certainly doesn't inspire confidence that patriotism is its guiding light. A Meta spokesperson downplayed the company's development of those tools in comments to The Washington Post, saying the news had been "widely reported beginning a decade ago" and that the company "ultimately opted not to go through with the ideas we'd explored, which Mark Zuckerberg announced in 2019.' Nonetheless, one could say Meta has a blemished record of upholding human and civil rights that makes its foray into defense technology for an antidemocratic Trump administration all the more unnerving. It's not hard to imagine any number of horrifying things a virtual reality military helmet could train its users to do in the hands of a Trump administration led by a man who A) brazenly uses political propaganda against his perceived enemies, foreign and domestic, B) opposes efforts to root discriminatory bias out of artificial intelligence tools, and C) has threatened to deploy the armed forces against American citizens. In lieu of much needed regulation designed to rein in artificial intelligence, Americans ought to keep close watch of this Meta partnership, perhaps to ensure it isn't deployed in ways that undermine human rights and civil society — just as our previous president warned AI, in the wrong hands, could do. This article was originally published on
Business Insider
07-06-2025
- Business Insider
Meta's tech chief says smart glasses will be the next smartphone — just don't expect it soon
Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth said smart glasses won't replace smartphones just yet. Bosworth said people are still used to using their smartphones because they are convenient. He said Apple made a "rookie mistake" with the Vision Pro when they made it too heavy to wear. "That's ways off. Smartphones are incredible and it's not just they are great devices and they are convenient. We are used to them," he said during an interview at the Bloomberg Tech summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. Bosworth said that smartphones benefit from having an "incredibly entangled ecosystem of software connected to the rest of the world around us." This makes it slower and harder for people to switch over to smart glasses, he added. "So I think that will take a longer journey. The good news is they work really well in concerts," he said. Bosworth praised Apple's Vision Pro headset during his interview with Bloomberg, but said the company made a "rookie mistake" when they made the device too heavy to wear. "So from an engineering standpoint, it's wonderful and congratulations to that team. From a product standpoint, you can tell it's their first offering in the space," he said. "First generation products are hard. It's not until the second or third generation that you really figure out and hone the thing, and they made a lot of mistakes in that in terms of weight and where the weight was," he continued. Bosworth isn't the only Meta executive who thinks smartphones won't be displaced by smart glasses. The social media giant's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said in a podcast with The Verge in September that he didn't think "people are getting rid of phones anytime soon." "It's not like we're going to throw away our phones, but I think what's going to happen is that, slowly, we're just going to start doing more things with our glasses and leaving our phones in our pockets more," Zuckerberg said. In January, Zuckerberg said during Meta's earnings that 2025 will be a "defining year" to see whether smart glasses will become "the next computing platform" or if it is "just going to be a longer grind." "Our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses are a real hit, and this will be the year when we understand the trajectory for AI glasses as a category. Many breakout products in the history of consumer electronics have sold 5-10 million units in their third generation," Zuckerberg said. EssilorLuxottica, which produces the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, said in February that it has sold 2 million pairs of the glasses since 2023. EssilorLuxottica's CEO and chairman, Francesco Milleri said the company is targeting to produce 10 million smart glasses for Meta every year by the end of 2026.
Business Insider
07-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Meta's tech chief says smart glasses will be the next smartphone — just don't expect it soon
Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth said he doesn't think smart glasses will be able to replace smartphones in the near future. "That's ways off. Smartphones are incredible and it's not just they are great devices and they are convenient. We are used to them," he said during an interview at the Bloomberg Tech summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. Bosworth said that smartphones benefit from having an "incredibly entangled ecosystem of software connected to the rest of the world around us." This makes it slower and harder for people to switch over to smart glasses, he added. "So I think that will take a longer journey. The good news is they work really well in concerts," he said. Bosworth praised Apple's Vision Pro headset during his interview with Bloomberg, but said the company made a "rookie mistake" when they made the device too heavy to wear. "So from an engineering standpoint, it's wonderful and congratulations to that team. From a product standpoint, you can tell it's their first offering in the space," he said. "First generation products are hard. It's not until the second or third generation that you really figure out and hone the thing, and they made a lot of mistakes in that in terms of weight and where the weight was," he continued. Bosworth isn't the only Meta executive who thinks smartphones won't be displaced by smart glasses. The social media giant's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said in a podcast with The Verge in September that he didn't think "people are getting rid of phones anytime soon." "It's not like we're going to throw away our phones, but I think what's going to happen is that, slowly, we're just going to start doing more things with our glasses and leaving our phones in our pockets more," Zuckerberg said. In January, Zuckerberg said during Meta's earnings that 2025 will be a "defining year" to see whether smart glasses will become "the next computing platform" or if it is "just going to be a longer grind." "Our Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses are a real hit, and this will be the year when we understand the trajectory for AI glasses as a category. Many breakout products in the history of consumer electronics have sold 5-10 million units in their third generation," Zuckerberg said. EssilorLuxottica, which produces the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, said in February that it has sold 2 million pairs of the glasses since 2023. EssilorLuxottica's CEO and chairman, Francesco Milleri said the company is targeting to produce 10 million smart glasses for Meta every year by the end of 2026.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Uber CEO Wants Customers Using More Than One Product
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi talks about adding the company's first chief operating officer since 2019 and trying to get customers to use more than one product. "People who use multiple products on Uber tend to transact with us much one of the reasons I wanted to get an experienced operating executive to really focus on the overall relationship with the customer rather than, you know, separate P&Ls," he told Bloomberg's Tom Giles at the Bloomberg Tech summit in San Francisco. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Uber CEO Wants Customers Using More Than One Product
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi talks about adding the company's first chief operating officer since 2019 and trying to get customers to use more than one product. "People who use multiple products on Uber tend to transact with us much one of the reasons I wanted to get an experienced operating executive to really focus on the overall relationship with the customer rather than, you know, separate P&Ls," he told Bloomberg's Tom Giles at the Bloomberg Tech summit in San Francisco.
