SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 25 – Facebook’s parent company Meta announced yesterday that it will launch one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to boost its data-processing ability, despite ongoing controversies over privacy and misinformation.
The US tech giant said its suite of machines can process images and video up to 20 times faster than its current systems.
The supercomputer, built from thousands of processors, will be used “to seamlessly analyze text, images and video together; develop new tools for augmented reality;” the company said in a blog post written by two AI researchers.
They plan to develop artificial intelligence tools that will, among other things, allow people who speak several different languages to understand each other in real time.
Meta said the device, known as the AI Research SuperCluster (RSC), was already among the top five supercomputers and will become the world’s fastest artificial intelligence machine when fully built in the coming months.
Platforms like Facebook and Google have always been criticized for the way they handle and use the data they collect from their users.
The two companies are currently facing lawsuits across the European Union alleging that transfers of block data to the United States are illegal.
Artificial intelligence algorithms that direct Facebook users to share posts have been criticized for helping fuel misinformation and hate speech.
Hopes of “Metaverse”
Facebook has repeatedly apologized for the harmful effects of its algorithms and has long announced its investment in content moderators and other measures to combat problematic posts.
Yesterday, the blog highlighted the removal of malicious content as one of the “critical use cases” of AI development.
The researchers wrote that high-resolution video creates a growing demand for processing power as the company squeezes AI tools based on billions of examples.
“We hope that RSC will help us build entirely new artificial intelligence systems that can, for example, provide real-time voice translations to large groups of people, each speaking a different language, so they can collaborate in a meaningful way seamlessly on a research project. Or play a game. AR Together, the researchers wrote.
“Ultimately, the work done with RSC will pave the way for the creation of technologies for the next major computing platform – the Metaverse, where AI-based applications and products will play an important role.”
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has pushed harder than his tech rivals to develop the idea for Metaverse, which envisions an immersive 3D internet enabled by virtual reality headsets and sensors.
Facebook has yet to confirm the location of its supercomputer, telling AFP that the information is classified. – ETX studio
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