Technologies

Facebook’s AI research could spur smarter AR glasses and robots

Rummaging through drawers to find your keys could become a thing of the past.

Facebook envisions a future in which you’ll learn to play the drums or whip up a new recipe while wearing augmented reality glasses or other devices powered by artificial intelligence. To make that future a reality, the social network needs its AI systems to see through your eyes.

«This is the world where we’d have wearable devices that could benefit you and me in our daily life through providing information at the right moment or helping us fetch memories,» said Kristen Grauman, a lead research scientist at Facebook. The technology could eventually be used to analyze our activities, she said, to help us find misplaced items, like our keys.

That future is still a ways off, as evidenced by Facebook’s Ray-Ban branded smart glasses, which debuted in September without AR effects. Part of the challenge is training AI systems to better understand photos and videos people capture from their perspective so that the AI can help people remember important information.

Facebook said it teamed up with 13 universities and labs that recruited 750 people to capture more than 2,200 hours of first-person video over two years. The participants, who lived in the UK, Italy, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the US, Rwanda and Colombia, shot videos of themselves engaging in everyday activities such as playing sports, shopping, gazing at their pets or gardening. They used a variety of wearable devices, including GoPro cameras, Vuzix Blade smart glasses and ZShades video recording sunglasses.

Starting next month, Facebook researchers will be able to request access to this trove of data, which the social network said is the world’s largest collection of first-person unscripted videos. The new project, called Ego4D, provides a glimpse into how a tech company could improve technologies like AR, virtual reality and robotics so they play a bigger role in our daily lives.

The company’s work comes during a tumultuous period for Facebook. The social network has faced scrutiny from lawmakers, advocacy groups and the public after The Wall Street Journal published a series of stories about how the company’s internal research showed it knew about the platform’s harms even as it downplayed them publicly. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower, testified before Congress last week about the contents of thousands of pages of confidential documents she took before leaving the company in May. She’s scheduled to testify in the UK and meet with Facebook’s semi-independent oversight board in the near future.

Even before Haugen’s revelations, Facebook’s smart glasses sparked concerns from critics who worry the device could be used to secretly record people. During its research into first-person video, the social network said it addressed privacy concerns. Camera wearers could view and delete their videos, and the company blurred the faces of bystanders and license plates that were captured.

Fueling more AI research

As part of the new project, Facebook said, it created five benchmark challenges for researchers. The benchmarks include episodic memory, so you know what happened when; forecasting, so computers know what you’re likely to do next; and hand and object manipulation, to understand what a person is doing in a video. The last two benchmarks are understanding who said what, and when, in a video, and who the partners are in the interaction.

«This sets up a bar just to get it started,» Grauman said. «This usually is quite powerful because now you’ll have a systematic way to evaluate data.»

Helping AI understand first-person video can be challenging because computers typically learn from images that are shot from the third-person perspective of a spectator. Challenges such as motion blur and footage from different angles come into play when you record yourself kicking a soccer ball or riding a roller coaster.

Facebook said it’s looking at expanding the project to other countries. The company said diversifying the video footage is important because if AR glasses are helping a person cook curry or do laundry, the AI assistant needs to understand that those activities can look different in various regions of the world.

Facebook said the video dataset includes a diverse range of activities shot in 73 locations across nine countries. The participants included people of different ages, genders and professions.

The COVID-19 pandemic also created limitations for the research. For example, more footage in the data set is of stay-at-home activities such as cooking or crafting rather than public events.

Some of the universities that partnered with Facebook include the University of Bristol in the UK, Georgia Tech in the US, the University of Tokyo in Japan and Universidad de los Andes in Colombia.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for June 8, #728

Here are some hints and the answers for Connections for June 8, #728.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle could be tricky. The purple category is one of those «sounds like» groups, that can be really tough to figure out. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Keep at it.

Green group hint: Think Wall Street animals.

Blue group hint: Online encyclopedia subheads.

Purple group hint: $$$.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Persist.

Green group: Animal metaphors in economics.

Blue group: Sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page.

Purple group: Homophones of slang for money.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is persist. The four answers are hold, last, stand and stay.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is animal metaphors in economics. The four answers are bear, bull, dove and hawk.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is sidebar info on a person’s Wikipedia page. The four answers are born, education, occupation and spouse.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is homophones of slang for money. The four answers are bred, cache, doe and lute.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for June 8, #1450

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,450 for June 8.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle isn’t too tough, especially if your first guesses are heavy on vowels. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There are two vowels in today’s Wordle answer, but one is the repeated letter, so you’ll see it twice.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with L.

Wordle hint No. 4: Ending

Today’s Wordle answer ends with a vowel.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer refers to a contract where someone is given the right to use something for a specific time and payment.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is LEASE.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, June 7, No. 1449 was REUSE.

Recent Wordle answers

June 3, No. 1445: ADMIN

June 4, No. 1446: CEASE

June 5, No. 1447: DATUM

June 6, No. 1448: EDIFY

Technologies

Resident Evil Requiem Revealed, but Where’s Leon Kennedy?

The Resident Evil 9 trailer showed off a new character, but not the much-rumored return of Leon.

After a fake-out earlier in Summer Game Fest on Friday, Resident Evil Requiem, or Resident Evil 9, was shown for the first time.

The new title is the first mainline entry since Capcom released Resident Evil Village in 2021, and is rumored to feature series stalwart Leon Kennedy. In the trailer, the only person we saw was a character named Grace Ashcroft, who works for the FBI and appears to have ties to Raccoon City.

For the most hardcore Resident Evil fans, the name Ashcroft will ring a bell. Alyssa Ashcroft was one of the survivors of the online-only title, Resident Evil Outbreak for the PS2. Alyssa was a journalist who was trapped in Raccoon City during the events of Resident Evil 2, and she, along with other survivors, had to escape the city before it was destroyed.

Grace is Alyssa’s daughter, and in the trailer, she is going to visit the Remwood Hotel, where Alyssa was murdered. Later in the trailer, images from what appears to be the remnants of a destroyed Raccoon City are shown — including the police department from RE2 — so it appears Resident Evil 9 will return to where the series started.

Leon’s (rumored) return is a big deal for the series, which has made some of its best games with him in the starring role. He first showed up as a rookie cop in Resident Evil 2, which built on the original game’s success with more story and improved monsters and level design.

He showed up again in Resident Evil 4, which took the series in a new direction by introducing an over-the-shoulder perspective, instead of the usual static camera angles and tank controls. Leon was also one of several playable protagonists in Resident Evil 6, a game that seemed to forget about its survival horror roots. We mostly don’t talk about that one.

But the 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2 was an excellent return to form, bringing RE4’s gameplay and much better graphics to a fan-favorite entry. The RE4 remake was a similar success.

Resident Evil Requiem is set to drop Feb. 27, 2026, for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, but we’re hoping to get our hands on it this weekend. If you want to catch up on older Resident Evil games, Capcom is having a sale that includes basically all the games, including Village and the three remakes.