Facebook's Zuckerberg believes AI will 'become better than humans at core senses'

Computers will be better than people at seeing, hearing and language in five to 10 years, says Zuckerberg

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg believes that artificial intelligence (AI) will become 'better' at basic senses than humans.

On an earnings call, after Facebook announced that its profits had almost tripled in the first quarter of 2016, Zuckerberg said that the social media company is focusing on AI as a concept.

"The biggest thing we're focused on with AI is building computer services that have better perception than people, the basic human senses like seeing, hearing, language, core things that we do," he said.

"I think it's possible to get to the point in the next five to 10 years where we have computer systems that are better than people at each of those things."

During the call, Zuckerberg also touched on virtual reality (VR) and the firm's recently launched Oculus Rift headset, saying that, while he expects growth to be slow, he has no doubt about its potential for the future.

"We've got a lot of great content with more than 50 games and apps built for Rift. And again, this is very early and we don't expect VR to take off as a mainstream success right away," he said.

"I really want to emphasise that; most Rift early adopters are gamers and developers. But eventually we believe that VR is going to be the next big computing platform, and we're making the investments necessary to lead the way."

The initial impact of the launch of Rift headsets on Facebook revenues was minimal, and chief financial officer David Wehner said that the firm doesn't expect VR to have any "material impact on revenue in 2016".

But Facebook's quarterely results were hugely successful; profits tripled in the first quarter of 2016 to $1.5bn, up from $512m in the same period last year.

This was generated from a rise in revenue from $3.5bn to $5.3bn, led by a major increase in advertising revenue, which accounted for $5.2bn of the total income.

Underpinning this success is the impressive growth in active users on Facebook to 1.09 billion every day as of March, up 16 per cent year on year.

Mobile use saw an even bigger increase; average daily users reached 989 million during March, up 24 per cent year on year.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed during an earnings call to discuss the results that the average daily mobile user has now passed one billion.

"In recent weeks, we're consistently seeing more than one billion people using Facebook on mobile every day," he said.

This is clearly central to Facebook's success, as mobile ad revenue reached $4.2bn in the quarter, representing around 82 per cent of all advertising revenue for the firm.

Zuckerberg also touted the potential for video content, which he believes is an area that is only just starting to be explored.

"We're at the beginning of a golden age of online video. Video isn't just a single kind of content. We think it's a medium that allows people to interact in a lot of new ways," he said.