Facebook plans to build smart digital assistant with ‘common sense’

A new report suggests that Facebook is planning to release new artificial intelligence chips to power a virtual assistant similar to Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa and provide it ‘common sense’ to help moderate information.

As per the Financial Times, Facebook is hoping to join Amazon, Apple and Google by building AI chips that will make an assistant that will be smarter than others and can help it make more conversational and monitor content in real time.

CNBC reported, a niche AI chip can help in Facebook’s content moderation race where it will help finding and removing abusive content across the platform more accurately. Also, it can enhance the firm’s growing hardware division that launched the first Facebook-branded home device, Portal, last year.

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LeCun said that Facebook aims to give AI ‘common sense’. They want Facebook’s digital assistant to be more human-like and understand ‘what will happen when the world respond to [its] interactions with it’.

“In terms of new uses, one thing Facebook would be interested in is offering smart digital assistants — something that has a level of common sense,” Facebook’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun told Financial Times. “They have background knowledge and you can have a discussion with them on any topic.”

The company has already announced a partnership with Intel last month to develop more specialized and powerful AI chips. “If there’s any stone unturned, we’re going to work on it,” LeCun said.