Another humiliation for Mark Zuckerberg

A presentation of the capabilities of its new “smart” glasses quickly turned into a nightmare for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Meta Connect conference in September.

Meta’s CEO had an embarrassing moment at the annual Meta Connect conference. As he presented the new “smart” artificial intelligence-assisted glasses, the demonstration turned into a nightmare.

The device, which was supposed to guide a chef through the preparation of a “Korean-inspired” sauce, multiplied errors, giving incoherent instructions. He had to repeat questions several times, to no avail.

Zuckerberg then attempted to show a video call via the glasses and a neural bracelet, but the connection failed, forcing him to make awkward gestures on stage.

To explain these setbacks, Meta cited a poor Wi-Fi connection. Zuckerberg tried to lighten the mood with a joke, while CTO Andrew Bosworth promised to investigate the source of the problems.

This incident, widely mocked on social networks, underlines Meta’s persistent challenges in its AI race and highlights the fragility of technologies that are still far from infallible.

Mark Zuckerberg recently said, according to CNN, that people who don’t wear smart glasses incorporating artificial intelligence could, in the near future, find themselves at a “cognitive disadvantage”.

“And I think in the future, if you don’t have glasses that have AI, or some way to interact with AI, I think you’re kinda (…) probably be at a pretty significant cognitive disadvantage compared to other people,” he said at the time.

According to him, these devices will become the ideal bridge between the physical and digital worlds, capable of seeing, hearing and reasoning alongside their user. The demonstration, with its many technical missteps, offers a striking contrast between the promise of an “indispensable” future and the still-fragile reality of the technology, which puts Meta in an uncomfortable position.

Zuckerberg has been working on his connected glasses since late 2017, with a first model launching in 2021 and a stated ambition for over 7 years to make them the must-have AI device. But if Zuckerberg wanted to prove that “smart” glasses will soon be indispensable… for now, they’ve mostly proved that they embarrass him at every turn.