Facebook CEO Zuckerberg touts artificial intelligence and virtual reality 'in the next 10 years'

'Our goal is to build AI systems that are better than humans at our primary senses' - Zuckerberg

Facebook is working on artificial intelligence and virtual reality, ostensibly to improve the company's services and to automate more and more functions.

That is the message of its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "We're working on AI because we think more intelligent services will be much more useful for you," wrote Zuckerberg in a Q&A session on the company's own website.

"If we could build computers that could understand what's in an image and could tell a blind person who otherwise couldn't see that image, that would be pretty amazing as well. This is all within our reach and I hope we can deliver it in the next 10 years," he added.

Like Google, Facebook is using a chunk of its surplus cash on ostensibly blue-sky research projects, which might be used to improve or expand services in the future - if they ever emerge from the labs.

"Our goal is to build AI systems that are better than humans at our primary senses: vision, listening, etc. For vision, we're building systems that can recognise everything that's in an image or a video. This includes people, objects, scenes, etc. These systems need to understand the context of the images and videos as well as whatever is in them.

"For listening and language, we're focusing on translating speech to text, text between any languages, and also being able to answer any natural language question you ask."

Such technologies, however, may also undermine privacy.

Facebook is also working on virtual reality, most notably since its acquisition of Israeli virtual reality company Oculus Rift, as a means of enhancing communications.

"We're working on VR because I think it's the next major computing and communication platform after phones," said Zuckerberg.

"In the future we'll probably still carry phones in our pockets, but I think we'll also have glasses on our faces that can help us out throughout the day and give us the ability to share our experiences with those we love in completely immersive and new ways that aren't possible today."

He also suggested that VR might have a role to play in publishing. "We're seeing more and more rich content online. Instead of just text and photos, we're now seeing more and more videos. This will continue into the future and we'll see more immersive content like VR," he added.