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The head of Meta, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, imagines 2022 as the beginning of a new era of metareality and human collaboration with artificial intelligence. Trends has collected visionary predictions about our near future
First Steps to the Metaverse
In the summer of 2021, the founder of the social network Facebook Mark Zuckerberg said that he was working on a metaverse that would allow you to physically feel the presence of other people through space. It will be designed for virtual reality headsets, mobile devices and game consoles. The creation of the metaverse, according to the entrepreneur, will take five years, but the first important steps will be taken as early as 2022.
Already in October 2021, Facebook was renamed Meta, and Zuckerberg officially presented its new product – Metaverse (metaverse). It will be possible to create avatars, furnish houses, bring objects from real life in digital form. In 2022, the company will release a new Project Cambria VR helmet that will allow you to control life in the metaverse with gestures and voice, and in the future, with the power of thought. The headset will reflect the facial expressions of a person through his avatar and will allow you to control digital objects.
Meta is also testing the first VR remote work app, Horizon Workrooms, where users of Oculus Quest 2 headsets can meet as avatars. The official release is scheduled for 2022. VR headsets have already received the updates necessary to fully work in the application.
In addition, Zuckerberg announced the start of a partnership with Microsoft, which is working on its version of the Teams virtual enterprise platform. Teams video conferencing will now be available to Workplace users, and Workplace content will be available in the Teams app. Thus, the metaverse will be cross-platform.
At the same time, Meta is opening free access to the Horizon Worlds VR world for residents of the US and Canada. It has been tested since 2020. Horizon Worlds allows Oculus Quest 2 users to play, exercise, create art, and explore together. In 2022, access to the application may be expanded and even extended to the whole world.
Zuckerberg himself sees the metaverse as follows: “Interactions will be much richer, they will feel like real. In the future, instead of just talking on the phone, you can sit like a hologram on my couch, or I can sit like a hologram on your couch, even if we’re in different states or hundreds of miles apart.”
Remote work and hybrid offices
In June 2021, the CEO of Facebook (Meta) announced that the company will allow all full-time employees to work from home as long as they can perform their duties remotely. Initially, the company adhered to a more stringent policy regarding remote work. However, now Zuckerberg himself intends to spend at least the first half of 2022 at home, and for his company he is preparing hybrid offices with the option of remote work. More than half of the company’s employees, and this is about 60 thousand people, will be able to work in this mode for ten years.
“Over the past year, we’ve learned that you can work well anywhere, and I’m even more optimistic about the possibility of large-scale remote work, especially as remote video and virtual reality continue to improve,” Zuckerberg shared his thoughts.
In 2021, Facebook launched a campaign to encourage employees to move to other countries. So, she offers to move from the US to Canada, as well as from any European country to the UK. As early as January 2022, Meta will allow employees to permanently move between seven countries in Europe, the Middle East or Africa, having previously requested a work permit from another country. True, at the same time, their salaries can be adjusted downward if the region turns out to be cheaper to live in. Zuckerberg promises that he will allow all employees to work remotely even after the pandemic. He predicts that “remote” employees could make up to half of the company’s workforce in the next five to ten years.
Zuckerberg himself liked the remote experience: “I found that working remotely gave me more opportunities for long-term thinking and helped me spend more time with my family, which made me happier and more productive at work.”
Smart watch with cameras
Zuckerberg is gearing up to release an entire line of wearable electronics to boost Meta’s competitiveness in this market. In 2021, Facebook and Ray-Ban already presented smart glasses that look like ordinary ones, but are equipped with cameras and allow you to share footage, listen to music and receive calls.
In the summer of 2022, Meta plans to release a smartwatch with two cameras built into the display. The device will receive support for LTE. The front camera will be built into the screen and can be used for video calls. The main one will be designed for photos and videos, and it, along with the display, can be removed from the gadget’s body and used offline. Also, the watch will receive fitness functions, including a heart rate monitor. The device will be able to support instant messengers and applications. Apparently, it will use a special version of the Android OS from Google. The cost of new items is about $400.
Visualization of diseases
Zuckerberg has announced that his charitable foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, will open a science center in 2022 that will focus on technologies that help understand the human body. “Imagine being able to apply artificial intelligence to biological imaging to reveal how cells and tissues function. Or understand how interactions between cancer cells, tissues, and the immune system promote or prevent tumor growth. Or learn how the brain and body interact to regulate physiological and emotional states. Having these dynamic and integrated insights into human biology would accelerate progress in the treatment, prevention, or management of all diseases,” he writes.
The center will promote new imaging technologies that will allow us to observe the inner workings of the human body in action. They are developed by experts from different fields such as biology, physics, engineering and mathematics.
In addition, the Zuckerberg Foundation next year will expand the already existing Chan Zuckerberg Biohub project, which brings together scientists, engineers and doctors in interdisciplinary research. Thanks to him, tools have already appeared for studying infectious diseases, including for identifying global outbreaks of the incidence of various viruses, as well as cell atlases of the human body.
The Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network will also launch in 2022. The idea of the project is to unite the leading scientific and technical institutes, which are located in close proximity to each other, and together solve “grand scientific tasks” on the 10-15-year horizon. From the beginning of 2022, universities and institutions will be able to submit their project ideas, and by the end of the year, the most important and promising of them will be selected, which will be included in the Biohub network in 2023.
The new role of AI in medicine and biology
In 2022, Zuckerberg will open the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University. Institute specialists will explore the potential of AI in areas such as biology and medicine. “By bringing together artificial intelligence and biomedicine with experts in computer science, applied mathematics, neuroscience, cognitive science, statistics and mathematics… we could open up a whole new set of tools to help scientists and doctors understand the human body,” notes the visionary.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that the past year was a lesson for him: “Looking back, it’s amazing to realize that none of these events were inevitable. After all, the future doesn’t just happen. This is what we first believe in, and then we build together. This is how progress begins. Not as a sure or predetermined conclusion, but as a choice made with hope by people who believe that a better future is indeed possible. We will carry this lesson over to 2022. We hope you do too.”