‘Don’t know what to tell you’: Mark Zuckerberg plagued by tech fails at Meta’s Connect showcase
Mark Zuckerberg was forced to push through awkward laughs from a live audience after two separate tech fails threatened to derail Meta’s annual showcase.
Mark Zuckerberg has had to wrestle with a series of tech fails during Meta’s annual Connect showcase this week.
The billionaire was left fumbling through the company’s event - which unveils its latest tech to a live, in-person and online audience - when two separate issues derailed plans.
The first fail took place during a demonstration of the latest version of Meta’s Ray Ban glasses, which include a built-in camera and offer music playback and voice interactions with the company’s AI.
Zuckerberg crossed to food Youtuber Jack Mancuso who appeared on the big screen in a kitchen ready to showcase how AI can help in everyday meal prep.
Wearing his smart glasses, Mancuso asked for help to create a Korean style sauce for his steak. As the AI began listing ingredients, he cut it off and instead asked, “what do I do first?”.
A long, awkward pause followed before Mancuso tried the same question again.
“You’ve already combined the base ingredients, so now grate a pear to add to the sauce,” the AI responded to the content creator’s dismay.
Smiling awkwardly, he repeated the question a third time, drawing laughs from the audience, before blaming a Wi-Fi issue and throwing back to Zuckerberg.
“It’s all good!” Zuckerberg said, “The irony of the whole thing is that you spend years making technology and then the Wi-Fi at the day catches you.”
It caught him again later in the showcase when debuting Meta’s Ray-Ban Display smart glasses - a more advanced pair of glasses which have built-in screens that allow wearers to see messages, photos etc, as though they’re looking at a smartphone screen.
They’re billed as Meta’s most advanced AI glasses, and come with sensor-packed bracelets called neural bands that let the user control the eyewear with subtle finger movements.
Zuckerberg attempted to showcase the features of the neural band by making a video call - only to find it wouldn’t connect.
“That’s too bad, I don’t know what happened,” he said and instead tried to pick up a video call only to have that fail too.
“I don’t know what to tell you guys,” he said after yet another failed attempt to connect the call, “We’re just gonna go to the next thing that I wanted to show and hope that will work.”
Meta is continuing to bank on smart glasses with Zuckerberg saying, “Our goal is to build great-looking glasses that deliver personal superintelligence and a feeling of presence using realistic holograms.”
He has predicted that AI-infused smart glasses will be the “next major computing platform,” and will eventually replace the smartphone.
- With AFP
