At the Connect developer conference today, Meta officially unveiled its next generation of smart glasses built with Essilor Luxottica, essentially confirming yesterday’s big leak, which includes the long-rumored pair with a single heads-up display.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off three new base models during the Connect keynote, which includes a curious switcheroo on the naming scheme for its most expensive yet, the ‘Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses’.
That name change isn’t coming to the rest of the lineup, as the company additionally announced the sport-focused Oakley Meta Vanguard and new Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 glasses, which were hyped alongside the previously released Oakley Meta HSTN released back in July.
Here’s everything we know about the new Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses announced today:
Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses – $799
Priced at $799, Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses include all of the usuals: voice control, photo/video capture, capture LED, five microphones, dual off-ear speakers, and 12MP camera. It’s also running the same chipset as Ray-Ban Meta and the rest of the new lineup, the Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1.
For the first time though, Meta’s smart glasses are adding in a full-color monocular display in the right eye that leverages onboard AI in new and interesting ways beyond the audio chats of previous generations.
Meta says the 600 × 600 pixel display serves up a 20-degree field of view (FOV) at 42 pixels per degree (PPD). The display is clocked at 90Hz refresh, with content refreshing at 30Hz. Brightness is said to range from 30 – 5,000 nits, and includes UV detection to automatically know when to turn up the display.
Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses | Image courtesy Meta
The display is also private, allowing for less than 2% light leakage, Meta says, meaning people probably won’t be able to see what you’re looking at.
And with the included surface electromyography (sEMG)-based ‘Meta Neural Band’, they probably won’t know what app you’re using either. The Meta Neural band is supposed to provide all-day wear, with up to 18 hours of battery life and an IPX7 water rating, and do things that optical sensor-based hand tracking simply can’t—haptic feedback included.
Using sEMG, the Neural Band can detect the faint electrical signals from the muscles in your forearm as you move your fingers and hands, letting you do things like swipe left and right with your thumb to navigate music, or pinch your fingers and rotate your wrist to turn the volume. Meta says it’s also currently working on an update to allow for EMG-based handwriting.
Meta Neural Band | Image courtesy Meta
Combining visual and hand input unlocks a host of new abilities, Meta says, like being able to privately view and reply to messages from Whatsapp, Messenger, and Instagram, as well as native messaging on iOS and Android. That includes live video calls too, so you can see the other person while they catch a stream of your POV.
It also unlocks turn-by-turn walking directions with a visual map of the area shown on the in-lens display, which Meta says will be available in beta across select cities, with more added over time.
Turn-by-turn Directions in Meta Ray-Ban Display | Image courtesy Meta
What’s more, the display also works as a viewfinder for the glasses’ 12MP camera with 3× digital zoom, letting you preview shots before you take them, capture images and videos and review and share right from the glasses. The device’s photo capture default is 3,024 × 4,032 pixels, while videos capture is 1080p at 30fps (1,440 × 1,920 pixels).
Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses also boast the ability to display real-time captions and foreign language translation, essentially providing subtitles to any conversation.
Live Captions in Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses | Image courtesy Meta
The glasses are set to include transitions lenses by default, and are said to last up to six hours of mixed-use battery life, and up to 30 hours of battery life total thanks to the portable charging case, which is also collapsible. Meta says users can charge the glasses to 50% in just 20 minutes while in the case.
It also supports prescriptions ranging from -4.00 to +4.00, although the company hasn’t detailed precisely how at this point. We’re still learning about Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses, and we’ll fill you in as soon as we know.
Meta is pitching its display glasses and the included Neural Band in two colorways: Shiny Black and Shiny Sand. Two frame sizes will also be available, standard and large, with the Neural Band arriving in three sizes.
Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses (Sand) | Image courtesy Meta
Since users will need to be fitted for both the glasses and wristband, they’re initially only set to be available for purchase in-person at limited brick-and-mortar retailers in the US, starting September 30th.
Those physical retailers include Best Buy, Lenscrafters, Sunglass Hut, and Ray-Ban stores. Select Verizon stores in the US will follow soon after, Meta says.
Global expansion is however set for Canada, France, Italy, and the UK for early 2026, although Meta says they’ll expand more buying options over time.
We’re currently at Meta Connect this week, and are reporting on all things XR, so make sure to check back soon.
The newly announced Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, and the ‘Neural Band’ input device that comes with them, are still far from proper augmented reality. But Meta has made several clever design choices that will pay dividends once their true AR glasses are ready for the masses.
The Ray-Ban Display glasses are a new category for Meta. Previous products communicated to the user purely through audio. Now, a small, static monocular display adds quite a bit of functionality to the glasses. Check out the full announcement of the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses here for all the details, and read on for my hands-on impressions of the device.
A Small Display Makes a Big Difference
Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses | Image courtesy Meta
A 20° monocular display isn’t remotely sufficient for proper AR (where virtual content floats in the world around you), but it adds a lot of new functionality to Meta’s smart glasses.
For instance, imagine you want to ask Meta AI for a recipe for teriyaki chicken. On the non-display models, you could definitely ask the question and get a response. But after the AI reads it out to you, how do you continue to reference the recipe? Well, you could either keep asking the glasses over and-over, or you could pull your phone out of your pocket and use the Meta AI companion app (at which point, why not just pull the recipe up on your phone in the first place?).
Now with the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, you can actually see the recipe instructions as text in a small heads-up display, and glance at them whenever you need.
In the same way, almost everything you could previously do with the non-display Meta Ray-Ban glasses is enhanced by having a display.
Now you can see a whole thread of messages instead of just hearing one read through your ear. And when you reply you can actually read the input as it appears in real-time to make sure it’s correct instead of needing to simply hear it played back to you.
When capturing photos and videos you now see a real-time viewfinder to ensure you’re framing the scene exactly as you want it. Want to check your texts without needing to talk out loud to your glasses? Easy peasy.
And the real-time translation feature becomes more useful too. In current Meta glasses you have to listen to two overlapping audio streams at once. The first is the voice of the speaker and the second is the voice in your ear translating into your language, which can make it harder to focus on the translation. With the Ray-Ban Display glasses, now the translation can appear as a stream of text, which is much easier to process while listening to the person speaking in the background.
It should be noted that Meta has designed the screen in the Ray-Ban Display glasses to be off most of the time. The screen is set off and to the right of your central vision, making it more of a glanceable display than something that’s right in the middle of your field-of-view. At any time you can turn the display on or off with a double-tap of your thumb and middle finger.
Technically, the display is a 0.36MP (600 × 600) full-color LCoS display with a reflective waveguide. Even though the resolution is “low,” it’s plenty sharp across the small 20° field-of-view. Because it’s monocular, it does have a ghostly look to it (because only one eye can see it). This doesn’t hamper the functionality of the glasses, but aesthetically it’s not ideal.
Meta hasn’t said if they designed the waveguide in-house or are working with a partner. I suspect the latter, and if I had to guess, Lumus would be the likely supplier. Meta says the display can output up to 5,000 nits brightness, which is enough to make the display readily usable even in full daylight (the included Transitions also help).
From the outside, the waveguide is hardly visible in the lens. The most prominent feature is some small diagonal markings toward the temple-side of the headset.
Photo by Road to VR
Meanwhile, the final output structures are very transparent. Even when the display is turned on, it’s nearly impossible to see a glint from the display in a normally lit room. Meta said the outward light-leakage is around 2%, which I am very impressed by.
The waveguide is extremely subtle within the lens | Photo by Road to VR
Aside from the glasses being a little chonkier than normal glasses, the social acceptability here is very high—even more so because you don’t need to constantly talk to the glasses to use them, or even hold your hand up to tap the temple. Instead, the so-called Neural Band (based on EMG sensing), allows you to make subtle inputs while your hand is down at your side.
The Neural Band is an Essential Piece to the Input Puzzle
Photo by Road to VR
The included Neural Band is just as important to these new glasses as the display itself—and it’s clear that this will be equally important to future AR glasses.
To date, controlling XR devices has been done with controllers, hand-tracking, or voice input. All of these have their pros and cons, but none are particularly fitting for glasses that you’d wear around in public; controllers are too cumbersome, hand-tracking requires line of sight which means you need to hold your hands awkwardly out in front of you, and voice is problematic both for privacy and certain social settings where talking isn’t appropriate.
The Neural Band, on the other hand, feels like the perfect input device for all-day wearable glasses. Because it’s detecting muscle activity (instead of visually looking for your fingers) no line-of-sight is needed. You can have your arm completely to your side (or even behind your back) and you’ll still be able to control the content on the display.
The Neural Band offers several ways to navigate the UI of the Ray-Ban Display glasses. You can pinch your thumb and index finger together to ‘select’; pinch your thumb and middle finger to ‘go back’; and swipe your thumb across the side of your finger to make up, down, left, and right selections. There are a few other inputs too, like double-tapping fingers or pinching and rotating your hand.
As of now, you navigate the Ray-Ban Display glasses mostly by swiping around the interface and selecting. In the future, having eye-tracking on-board will make navigation even more seamless, by allowing you to simply look and pinch to select what you want. The look-and-pinch method, combined with eye-tracking, already works great on Vision Pro. But it still misses your pinches sometimes if your hand isn’t in the right spot, because the cameras can’t always see your hands at quite the right angle. If I could use the Neural Band for pinch detection on Vision Pro, I absolutely would—that’s how well it seems to work already.
While it’s easy enough to swipe and select your way around the Ray-Ban Display interface, the Neural Band has the same downside that all the aforementioned input methods have: text input. But maybe not for long.
In my hands-on with the Ray-Ban Display, the device was still limited to dictation input. So replying to a message or searching for a point of interest still means talking out loud to the headset.
However, Meta showed me a demo (that I didn’t get to try myself) of being able to ‘write’ using your finger against a surface like a table or your leg. It’s not going to be nearly as fast as a keyboard (or dictation, for that matter), but private text input is an important feature. After all, if you’re out in public, you probably don’t want to be speaking all of your message replies out loud.
The ‘writing’ input method is said to be a forthcoming feature, though I didn’t catch whether they expected it to be available at launch or sometime after.
On the whole, the Neural Band seems like a real win for Meta. Not just for making the Ray-Ban display more useful, but it seems like the ideal input method for future glasses with full input capabilities.
Photo by Road to VR
And it’s easy to see a future where the Neural Band becomes even more useful by evolving to include smartwatch and fitness tracking functions. I already wear a smartwatch most of the day anyway… making it my input device for a pair of smart glasses (or AR glasses in the future) is a smart approach.
Little Details Add Up
One thing I was not expecting to be impressed by was the charging case of the Ray-Ban Display glasses. Compared to the bulky charging cases of all of Meta’s other smart glasses, this clever origami-like case folds down flat to take up less space when you aren’t using it. It goes from being big enough to accommodate a charging battery and the glasses themselves, down to something that can easily go in a back pocket or slide into a small pocket in a bag.
This might not seem directly relevant to augmented reality, but it’s actually more important than you might think. It’s not like Meta invented a folding glasses case, but it shows that the company is really thinking about how this kind of device will fit into people’s lives. An analog to this for their MR headsets would be including a charging dock with every headset—something they’ve yet to do.
Now with a display on-board, Meta is also repurposing the real-time translation feature as a sort of ‘closed captioning’. Instead of translating to another language, you can turn on the feature and see a real-time text stream of the person in front of you, even if they’re already speaking your native language. That’s an awesome capability for those that are hard-of-hearing.
Live Captions in Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses | Image courtesy Meta
And even for those that aren’t, you might still find it useful… Meta says the beam-forming microphones in the Ray-Ban Display can focus on the person you’re looking at while ignoring other nearby voices. They showed me a demo of this in action in a room with one person speaking to me and three others having a conversation nearby to my left. It worked relatively well, but it remains to be seen if it will work in louder environments like a noisy restaurant or a club with thumping music.
Meta wants to eventually pack full AR capabilities into glasses of a similar size. And even if they aren’t there yet, getting something out the door like the Ray-Ban Display gives them the opportunity to explore, iterate—and hopefully perfect—many of the key ‘lifestyle’ factors that need to be in place for AR glasses to really take off.
Disclosure: Meta covered lodging for one Road to VR correspondent to attend an event where information for this article was gathered.
Text on display for illustration only (not an actual photo)
WeAct Display FS is an inexpensive 0.96-inch USB display dongle designed to add an information display or a tiny secondary display to your computer or SBC.
We’ve seen this type of information display with products such as the Turing Smart Screen, a larger 3.5-inch color display, or small OLEDs integrated into cases such as the Pironman 5 Max to disable text. The WeAct Display FS V1 may be tiny, but it’s also a full-color 160×80 resolution display that can be customized with software provided by WeAct.
Text and image on display for illustration only. Not an actual photo, as I could not find any with the display connected to a host
WeAct Display FS V1 specifications:
Display – 0.96-inch RGB565 display with 160×80 resolution
Host interface – “Reversible” USB 2.0 Type-A Full Speed (FS) port showing as a CDC device
Dimensions – 43 x 14.5 mm
Since you wouldn’t want to get a display only for it to face the wrong direction, for instance, the desk or the wall, the company made the USB-A port reversible, and the user only needs to install one of the two provided pads on the unused side of the port to avoid short circuits.
WeAct provides two programs for it. The first one is the WeAct Studio System Monitor based on a fork of Matthieu Houdebine’s Turing Smart Screen Python project. This allows users to create UIs/themes with text, images, weather, and other features… WeAct says the little device only works on Windows, but the open-source project is supposed to also work on macOS, Linux (including Raspberry Pi OS), and essentially any operating system with support for Python 3.9+.
WeAct Studio System Monitor
The second program is called WeAct Studio Screen Projection, and as I understand it, it emulates an actual display, so you could move any window/program to the USB display. I’m just not sure how a desktop OS like Windows will handle a tiny 160×80 “monitor”… I suppose it could be used to play a full-screen YouTube video or display photos for whatever reason. That one only works on Windows, and there’s no source code.
Luxury conglomerate LVMH has partnered with financial technology platform Adyen, with the aim of unifying payment systems across all of its brands.
The system aims to allow LVMH to leverage its most effective initiatives at scale, while also preserving the unique identity of each of its separate brands.
Adyen says it can provide a “high end customer experience” thanks to its frictionless payments in store with mobile terminals and tap-to-pay technology.
LVMH will roll out the technology to more than 1,000 stores worldwide, giving all geographies and methods a single payment partner.
“This project is part of our broader ambition to deliver a flawless customer experience, reflecting the quality of our products and the craftsmanship of our Maisons,” says Arnaud Bodzon, Group Payment Director at LVMH.
“This applies not only to end customers but also to the sales advisors using the solutions. They can now focus fully on their core role - advising and supporting our clients - without having to worry about payment processing.
“Hands-on support is a key success factor when managing integration projects in a group like LVMH. Adyen’s expertise has enabled them to meet and adapt to our specific needs.”
Adyen says the unification will provide an “elegant, efficient, and truly global” payment experience.
“Our partnership with LVMH reflects a shared vision: creating meaningful and effortless experiences for customers in the world of high-end retail," adds Ethan Tandowsky, CFO at Adyen.
"Beyond facilitating Financial services, we’re working together to elevate every touchpoint across LVMH’s Maisons to make sure shoppers have an experience which matches the luxury goods they are purchasing. I cannot wait to see what we can achieve together with LVMH in this next chapter."
The news follows shortly after Adyen partnered with Dobbies Garden Centres on a project covering payments in-store and online, supporting retail, restaurants and experiences.
The awards. which are now open for entries, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.
Our 2024 hall of fame entrants were revealed during an event which took place at RIBA’s 66 Portland Place HQ in Central London on 21st November, and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by comedian Lucy Porter.
In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “The event is now into its sixth year and what a journey it has been. The awards started life as an online only affair during the Covid outbreak, before launching as a small scale in real life event and growing year on year to the point where we’re now selling out this fine, historic venue.”
He added: “Congratulations to all of our finalists. Many submissions did not make it through to the final stage, and getting to this point is no mean feat. Checkout-free stores, automated supply chains, immersive experiences, on-demand delivery, next generation loyalty offerings, inclusive retail, green technology. We’ve got all the cool stuff covered this evening.”
“But just importantly we’ve got lots of great examples of companies taking innovative tech and making it usable in everyday operations - resulting in more efficiency and profitability in all areas.”
Congratulations to our 2024 winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Lucy Porter, and all those who attended November's gathering.
For further information on the 2025 RTIH Innovation Awards, please fill in the below form and we will get back to you asap.
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New Black, a contextual commerce platform, has won the Best Seamless Unified Retail award at NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show Europe, which is taking place this week in Paris.
The event is the European edition of the National Retail Federation’s flagship New York gathering. Its awards highlight international retail innovation across eight categories, with 100+ candidates competing this year.
“We don’t build for trophies, so this feels like a meaningful signal and appreciation for what we have done as a company,” comments Lub Ten Napel, Chief Information Officer at New Black.
“It is recognition for holding our line and vision of choosing the best of technology over complex best-of-breed architectures. From our founding until today, we have believed that legacy systems are holding retail back, preventing it from becoming adaptive to change.”
New Black’s EVA platform was recognised for streamlining consumer engagement by combining pricing, inventory, tax, loyalty, returns, OMS, PoS, in-store operations and more functions within a single platform.
EVA also allows in store and digital teams to tailor experiences, creating the best possible customer experience.
“That is why our approach is different,” adds Pim Vijftigschild, CCO at New Black. “We don’t believe in selling the next piece of software. We work together with our customers to rethink their architecture, helping them embrace a transformative mindset.”
The awards. which are now open for entries, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.
Our 2024 hall of fame entrants were revealed during an event which took place at RIBA’s 66 Portland Place HQ in Central London on 21st November, and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by comedian Lucy Porter.
In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “The event is now into its sixth year and what a journey it has been. The awards started life as an online only affair during the Covid outbreak, before launching as a small scale in real life event and growing year on year to the point where we’re now selling out this fine, historic venue.”
He added: “Congratulations to all of our finalists. Many submissions did not make it through to the final stage, and getting to this point is no mean feat. Checkout-free stores, automated supply chains, immersive experiences, on-demand delivery, next generation loyalty offerings, inclusive retail, green technology. We’ve got all the cool stuff covered this evening.”
“But just importantly we’ve got lots of great examples of companies taking innovative tech and making it usable in everyday operations - resulting in more efficiency and profitability in all areas.”
Congratulations to our 2024 winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Lucy Porter, and all those who attended November's gathering.
For further information on the 2025 RTIH Innovation Awards, please fill in the below form and we will get back to you asap.
Name
*
First Name
Last Name
Email
*
Subject
*
Message
*
À l'occasion du NRF 2025 Retail Big Show Europe, KPMG en France et la Fédération de l'e-commerce et de la vente à distance (Fevad) ont publié la 9e édition de leur étude sur l'innovation dans le secteur de l'e-commerce. Intitulée "L'ère de l'hyperpersonnalisation : transformation de l'expérience client dans l'e-commerce", cette étude souligne une croissance solide du secteur en 2024, tout en plaçant l'hyperpersonnalisation au coeur de l'avenir du commerce en ligne.
Just a short note today. I’m in the middle of my trip, which will end in Eindhoven next week (see notice at the end of this article), when I heard that Meta had leaked a video on YouTube of its Monocular AR glasses, which are expected to be disclosed at Meta Connect tomorrow, September 17th at 5 PM PST, at Mark Zuckerberg’s Keynote. Although the original leaked video on YouTube has been removed, multiple copies were captured before it was taken down.
This blog reported on May 11, 2025, that it was likely that Meta was using a Lumus waveguide for their upcoming AR glasses product codenamed Hypernova (see: Meta’s Hypernova Optics – Likely a Lumus Z-Lens Variant). While the codename for the AR glasses was Hypernova, the product is expected to be named Celest. Bloomberg has reported that the Celest AR glasses are supposed to cost about $800 for the base model without prescription correction.
Evidence of Lumus Z-Like Waveguide in the Video
Below left is a still frame I captured from the video, which shows the diagonal “slats” that form part of Lumus 2-D pupil expansion. This video appears to be a rotating 3-D model, so I was a bit surprised that they showed the slate details.
The 3-D model makes them appear much more visible than they appear in real life. On May 21, 2025, I identified similar pupil expansion slats in Rivet’s AR glasses in “Exclusive: Rivet Industries Using Lumus Waveguides for Military & Industrial AR.” The images above, middle and far right, compare the Rivet AR glasses to a Lumus Z-Lens waveguide. There is clear evidence that Lumus is being utilized in both Meta’s first AR consumer product and Rivet’s military AR glasses.
In Closing: Be Looking for the Lumus Waveguide in Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Connect Keynote
I’m likely to be able to see when Zuckerberg gives his live presentation on the 17th. It is assumed that he will showcase the Celest glasses. Hopefully, you will be able to spot the Lumus waveguides when he puts the glasses on.
MicroLED-AR/VR Connect In Eindhoven, Netherlands, September 23-25
I’ve been asked to speak at and partner with the joint MicroLED and AR/VR Connect conference and exhibition in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, on September 23-25, 2025. The Conference operates like a single conference with two tracks, so attendees attend presentations from both. The first day, September 23, is Master Classes and Tours of some Local Labs. The conference proper is on September 24-25th. I’m speaking at 5:20 PM on the 24th.
MicroLED and AR/VR Connect have a 12-month pass program that offers a “Virtual Pass,” which allows attendees unlimited 12-month access to recorded presentations at both the virtual (March) and physical (September) conferences, as well as other materials outlined below. The “Hybrid Pass” includes everything from the Virtual Pass, plus attending the physical Conference in person. The lists below outline the two passes in more detail:
MicroLED and AR/VR Connect Hybrid Annual Pass
Admission to the full Conference and exhibition MicroLED Connect event in Eindhoven (Netherlands), including food & beverages
On-site drinks & networking receptions
All online MicroLED Connect events or online versions of onsite events for 12 months
Entire online masterclass portfolio for 12 months (optional)
Year-round platform, including networking and business development tools, for 12 months
A growing library of microLED Connect on-demand library of content for 12 months
Virtual Annual Pass
All online MicroLED Connect events or online versions of onsite events
Entire online masterclass portfolio
Year-round platform, including networking and business development tools
A growing library of on-demand content
Upgrade to an on-site/hybrid pass, offsetting the remaining credit
Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to meet more readers in Eindhoven in September (please send meeting requests to meet@kgontech.com).
Trois espaces dédiés à l'innovation dans le retail, des start-ups en nombre et des parcours d'initiation aux grands sujets de rupture actuels dans l'industrie. La NRF Europe met cette année l'accent sur l'innovation dans le retail.
A new viral video shows a kickboxing humanoid robot shrugging off a flying dropkick from a human being.
“OK, should we start worrying?” one user asked on the r/singularity subreddit in response to the video.
“It looks like it doesn’t like falling,” another user added.
The research behind the stunt was conducted by scientists at the Active Intelligent Systems (ACT) Lab at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China, using Unitree’s popular G1 robot.
The robot’s incredible agility highlights how far the tech has come in a matter of years. Chinese robot manufacturer Unitree’s G1, in particular, has quickly turned into a popular test bed for reinforcement learning techniques, allowing it to pick up new skills very quickly.
In fact, the only thing that even came close to defeating the robot in the video was a loose tile that tripped it up — and even in that case, it made an impressive recovery, jumping right back up to fight some more in less than a second.
Testing Humanoid Robots to the Limit
Professor He Kong's team from the Active Intelligent Systems (ACT) Lab at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China, has released a video showcasing a "violence test" designed to challenge the limits of… https://t.co/B01K1ez8g6pic.twitter.com/97161kcnHh
We’ve already seen the G1 show off its martial arts prowess several times, from punching the air and delivering a swooping roundhouse kick to two of the bots facing off in a kickboxing showdown event at the World AI Conference in Shanghai last month.
However, things can still go off the rails — with alarming results. A video of a failed test run by robot combat company REK in July showed a G1 flailing its arms and legs, seemingly trying to break free of a harness.
Others are using the robot for dramatically different purposes as well. Case in point, a cowboy hat-toting bipedal robot, dubbed “Jake the Rizzbot,” has been wandering the streets of several US cities this summer, turning heads and flinging compliments — instead of punches and kicks — at passersby.
Patterns of use can also be thought of in terms of Asking, Doing, and Expressing. About half of messages (49%) are “Asking,” a growing and highly rated category that shows people value ChatGPT most as an advisor rather than only for task completion. Doing (40% of usage, including about one third of use for work) encompasses task-oriented interactions such as drafting text, planning, or programming, where the model is enlisted to generate outputs or complete practical work. Expressing (11% of usage) captures uses that are neither asking nor doing, usually involving personal reflection, exploration, and play.
A relatively small percentage is for programming and even less for data analysis. Writing and how-to queries take the majority, which I can only assume is mostly for LinkedIn posts.
Plus d'un quart de siècle après la naissance du e-commerce, les standards de paiement web ne se sont toujours pas imposés sur le marché, laissant place à des mécanismes qui certes fonctionnent mais ne sont pas optimaux. Les ténors de l'intelligence artificielle veulent éviter la même erreur, quitte à tomber dans la précipitation : Google dévoile donc un protocole de paiement pour agents intelligents.
Le géant du web revendique la paternité de la spécification, publiée sous licence libre, mais il n'a pas travaillé seul. Une soixantaine de partenaires ont contribué au chantier, parmi lesquels figurent naturellement, outre quelques-uns des acteurs mondiaux du commerce en ligne et diverses entreprises technologiques, tous les grands noms des paiements – American Express, Ant International, Checkout.com, Mastercard, PayPal, Union Pay, Worldline… – à l'exception notable de Visa, toutefois.
C'est que celle-ci n'est pas la première initiative dans ce domaine. Quelques pionniers ont notamment exploré la possibilité d'exploiter les travaux du W3C que j'évoquais en introduction. La nouvelle venue choisit cependant une approche différente. Ainsi, il n'est pas question d'adapter un modèle imaginé pour un contexte historique de transactions via internet mais d'inventer un système nativement conçu pour un futur monde piloté par l'IA, même s'il s'appuie sur les normes de fait existant dans cet univers.
Il est vrai que les scénarios dans lesquels une personne confie à son compagnon virtuel des tâches impliquant un règlement – composer un voyage complet pour un budget prédéterminé, acheter un ticket de concert dès l'ouverture des guichets… – créent des contraintes spécifiques. En conséquence, le protocole AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) inclut des capacités de délégation d'autorisation, de contrôle d'authenticité et de responsabilité, assortis de fonctions de gestion de preuve à tous les niveaux.
L'objectif recherché consiste à instiller la confiance chez toutes les parties prenantes : le fournisseur de l'agent intelligent, le marchand, l'intermédiaire de paiement et le client. Par exemple, la demande formulée par ce dernier constitue une intention dûment consignée, assortie de conditions dans le cas d'un mandat sans validation humaine, tandis que le vendeur fait signer une confirmation de commande, à l'utilisateur s'il est sollicité ou à l'agent s'il en a l'autorisation, dont il fournit alors tous les détails.
L'engouement universel autour de l'IA agentique et ses promesses de simplification des interactions avec toutes sortes de services rend inévitable la mise en place rapide de fonctions de paiement. On peut toutefois s'inquiéter d'une telle réactivité de l'industrie, alors que les risques de fraudes'avèrent extrêmement élevés avec les solutions disponibles aujourd'hui, ceux-ci n'étant (logiquement) pas pris en considération par le protocole proposé par Google, autrement qu'à travers l'assurance de savoir assigner sans ambiguïté la responsabilité des incidents à un des participants.
Alors que la NRF Retail's Big Show Europe 2025 bat son plein à Paris, Blue Yonder révèle une étude mondiale inédite : deux tiers des consommateurs réduisent leurs achats face au durcissement des politiques de retour. Un signal fort pour les détaillants, sommés de trouver l'équilibre entre satisfaction client, coûts logistiques et durabilité.
On pensait les salles américaines engourdies, ne se réveillant que pour des rendez-vous horrifiques tels que Évanouis et Conjuring. C'était sans compter sur Demon Slayer : La Forteresse Infinie, et la grosse communauté de fans d'anime qui se sont rués en salles ce week-end. Résultat : le film a explosé les attentes et s'offre un lancement historique...
L'armée russe a publié la vidéo d'un test de missile hypersonique en mer de Barents. Une démonstration de force, au nord de la Norvège, qui suscite l'inquiétude des pays membres de l'OTAN, moins d'une semaine après l'incursion de drones russe dans le ciel polonais.
As someone who writes about the AI industry relatively frequently for this site, there is one question that I find myself constantly asking and being asked in turn, in some form or another: What do you actually use large language models for?
Today, OpenAI's Economic Research Team went a long way toward answering that question, on a population level, releasing a first-of-its-kind National Bureau of Economic Research working paper (in association with Harvard economist David Denning) detailing how people end up using ChatGPT across time and tasks. While other research has sought to estimate this kind of usage data using self-reported surveys, this is the first such paper with direct access to OpenAI's internal user data. As such, it gives us an unprecedented direct window into reliable usage stats for what is still the most popular application of LLMs by far.
After digging through the dense 65-page paper, here are seven of the most interesting and/or surprising things we discovered about how people are using OpenAI today.
You don’t have to look far to find reports of people who have used VR headsets and then felt ‘off’ after removing them. While motion sickness is surely the most well-known post-VR symptom, a subset of people say they have experienced feelings of being ‘stuck in VR’ after taking off their headsets. It’s tempting to brush off such reports as someone having seen The Matrix (1999) one too many times, but it turns out there is a clear scientific basis for the sensation.
I’ve been professionally reporting on the XR industry for nearly 15 years, and along the way I’ve come across many reports of users who described some vague sensation of still being in virtual reality after removing their headset. I queried my social media community recently and was surprised at the response. Across more than 100 replies, people shared their experiences with the feeling. Here’s a sampling:
It happened to me when I was new to VR and had just played Boneworks for hours. Looking down at my body, my hands didn’t feel like they belonged to me. I was trying to grab a knife and fork for dinner and that required a huge concentrated effort, where I was staring at my hands. – @Edward1370
After my first session with Gorilla Tag. Movement felt strange, like my legs weren’t there. Surreal experience, loved it. – @greenlig
In the early days I used DK1 on my Mac and there was a crazy latency. After using it for 2 hours my brain fully adapted to the latency. Taking off the headset was surreal. It was as if the real world had “tracking” issues. – @robinhuse
It’s only happened to me once. After I wore the vision pro for around 24 hours. Super weird feeling, but fascinating as well. – @RoberJALA
In a sense yes, but more so I went upstairs to eat after a longer VR session when I first got the Quest 1 in 2019 and I stopped myself suddenly because I thought my boundary lines were going to show up. Then I realized I was irl. – @OpalStar3
I played 2 hours of Walkabout Mini Golf just before going to a real Mini Golf course with my friends. Standing on the hole gave me a weird feeling that I was in the game. It did also help me to comfortably win. It was strange though. My eyes kept pixelating the course. – @TheNeoism
Yeah, my hands felt fake for a couple of days but it passed pretty quick, like the brain adapted to the perspective change. – @OneMoreBenjamin
It happens from time to time, where things feels “off” when I’m out of VR, like the body feels sluggish, not my own or out of place for a while. – @KathielRayna
Many struggle to articulate the feeling, but clear themes emerge: an altered perception—a vague sense that the real world, or their own body, doesn’t seem quite as ‘real’ as usual.
The phenomenon may be rare, but it’s certainly real. Fortunately it’s also temporary, as far as we can tell.
The primary cause of feeling ‘stuck in VR’ relates to proprioception. Proprioception is your brain’s model of where your body is in space. The model is essentially an intuition that’s constructed through visual and tactile feedback. And it can be thought of as a ‘real-time’ model that’s constantly updating itself as new feedback is observed.
The proprioceptive model lets you close your eyes and still touch your nose, elbows, or knees with high accuracy. You maintain a remarkably precise sense of your body relative to itself and the world, even with no visual feedback.
VR headsets might be incredibly good at convincing us that we’re standing in another reality, but the simulation is imperfect.
Consider VR motion controllers: they track quickly and accurately, yet there is always some latency and inaccuracy. Many experiences even manipulate controller position deliberately to boost immersion.
These inaccuracies (inherent or intentional) tend to fluctuate throughout the course of using the headset, but they are largely hidden because instead of seeing your real hands, you only see your virtual hands. And since your brain perceives the virtual hands as your own, it starts to incorporate the inaccuracies into its proprioceptive model.
For instance, if you’ve ever played Beat Saber, you’ll know it’s a high-motion game that requires accurately swinging your hands to cut blocks. If you play the game on a system with twice the latency of another headset, you’d expect to be thrown off; however, with practice most people compensate as the brain updates its model to match the imperfect world it sees.
This isn’t limited to controllers. Headsets themselves also have imperfect tracking and a certain degree of latency. That can cause your brain to think that turning your head just takes a little longer than you’re used to.
Or consider the case of a VR game that makes you one foot taller than you are in real life. And what about a game that makes your arms twice as long as normal? At first it would feel very strange and it would be hard to accurately grab things.
With enough time, your brain feels as if you really are that tall—or that your arms are that long—because that’s the reality you see inside the headset. Your brain incorporates the new information in order to make you feel ‘normal’.
Then, when removing the headset, the very same thing happens. Your brain gets new feedback (ie: you’re a different height and your arms are different length than when you were in virtual reality). So now the real you (and by extension, the real world) feel ‘weird’, until you get used to the real world again.
If your arms felt longer a moment ago, your sense of reaching may suddenly feel shorter than expected, forcing more conscious effort to grasp objects—like snagging a coffee cup from the peripheral vision—making the real world feel slightly off.. like somehow you’re still in VR.
I tend to call this weird feeling (as it pertains to perception and VR) ‘proprioceptive-disconnect’, and it’s the root of the feeling of ‘being stuck in VR’. The broader phenomenon that this sensation falls under is called depersonalization-derealization disorder, though it is not exclusive to VR.
Ironically, this feeling of ‘being stuck in VR’ after removing the headset comes from a combination of modern headsets being able to fool our visual system so effectively, while at the same time still having imperfections like tracking latency and inaccuracy. We also have the impressive ability of our brains to adapt to new feedback to thank.
Fortunately the feeling of proprioceptive-disconnect is temporary and generally fades away in an hour or two. Some people are more sensitive to this feeling, and whether or not it will happen to you can equally depend on the capabilities of the VR hardware you are using, and even the specific VR game or app you’re using.
Note: For completeness it’s worth mentioning that there are other factors which can contribute to the feeling of being ‘stuck in VR’ after taking off a headset; two major ones are mismatched IPD setting of the headset (leading to a change in the sense of scale) and the vergence-accommodation conflict (an eye-related artifact caused by modern VR headsets lacking varifocal displays).
Researchers have actually studied and quantified the phenomenon of VR-related proprioceptive-disconnect.
Our brain’s plasticity rapidly adapts our senses in VR, a phenomenon leveraged by techniques such as redirected walking, hand redirection, etc. However, while most of HCI is interested in how users adapt to VR, we turn our attention to how users need to adapt their senses when returning to the real-world. We report cases where, even after leaving VR, users experience unintended, lingering side-effects: distortions in proprioception or memory that may pose safety or usability risks.
To investigate, we conducted two studies examining (1) proprioceptive side-effects from altered hand movements (retargeting), and (2) memory distortions arising from spatial mismatches between the virtual and real-world locations of the same object.
In one part of the study, the researchers intentionally exaggerated the position of the hand-tracking (unbeknownst to the subjects of the experiments), a common technique used in VR design called hand retargeting. After the users removed the headset they were asked to perform pointing tasks, which allowed the researchers to quantify how the use of VR impacted the users’ real-life motions after removing the headset.
The researchers found that, “after leaving VR, participants’ hands remained [inaccurate in pointing tasks] by up to 2.75 inches (7 cm), indicating residual proprioceptive distortion.”
In another part of the study, the researchers showed that peripheral awareness of a virtual environment could alter a person’s memory of that environment.
For this experiment the researchers placed a handful of objects in a room, including a seemingly irrelevant fire extinguisher that was placed off to the side. The researchers cleverly began the experiment by asking the subjects to collect a number of pre-positioned balls in the room, which gave the subjects a peripheral awareness of the seemingly irrelevant objects in the room.
Then the subjects were placed in a VR headset which showed a virtual replica of the room. But in the virtual replica, some of the objects were altered (unbeknownst to the subjects); for instance, the position of the fire extinguisher was moved to the other side of the room.
The virtual recreation of the study room was almost identical, but with some objects intentionally repositioned | Image courtesy Antonin Cheymol & Pedro Lopes
Now in the virtual replica of the room, subjects were asked to repeat the same ball-gathering task as before. After leaving the room and then removing the headset, the subjects were asked to recall where various objects were in the room. The researchers found that a significant portion of subjects misremembered the position of the real fire extinguisher, and instead remembered the location of the virtual fire extinguisher.
While the study didn’t directly address the feeling of being ‘stuck in VR’, it quantified how the use of virtual reality can indeed have lingering side effects that can temporarily alter a person’s proprioception and memory.
The paper’s authors, Antonin Cheymol and Pedro Lopes, stress that these seemingly small effects could lead to potentially dangerous edge-cases.
Consider the use of VR for training emergency personnel using virtual replicas of real spaces. The intent of the training is to familiarize the trainee with emergency procedures, but if the virtual replica that’s used isn’t a careful copy of the real situation that’s being trained for, it could lead to costly mistakes.
While potential dangers from these VR side-effects are definitely edge-cases, such edge-cases will definitely occur once a sufficient number of people are using VR headsets.
The authors emphasize the need for more study in this area, especially considering there’s already millions of headsets out in the world.
While our work suggests that VR can induce side-effects in relatively unconstrained scenarios, more research should follow to broaden our understanding and better assess their risks. First, in this study, we only focused on a limited subset of the large variety of perceptual manipulations that can be presented to a VR user. Therefore, future work should investigate the potential of VR side-effects of other perceptual manipulations, such as walking curvature, speed alteration, or alteration of one’s virtual body structure are likely to reveal similar to the side-effects induced by hand retargeting that we observed in our studies. Altering the perception of an object’s physical properties (e.g., its weight, its tangibility, etc.) could also lead users to adopt mis-adapted, potentially dangerous, behaviors (especially if they incorrectly learn to interact with a fragile or harmful object). Moreover, as previously mentioned, more factors might be hiding at play. For example, the duration of exposure in VR, should be investigated, as it might impact a side-effect’s magnitude and lingering duration. Moreover, the intensity of perceptual qualia, such as presence or embodiment might be interesting predictors to the emergence of VR side-effects.
Depuis que l’intelligence artificielle est sortie des laboratoires pour entrer dans les organisations, on assiste à des discussions assez schizophrènes sur son impact sur l’emploi entre fascination pour la technologie et destruction massive d’emplois.
A l’opposé de ces discours parfois anxiogènes le dernier 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometerde PWC se veut plutôt rassurant. Selon lui l’IA, loin de détruire le travail, en créerait davantage, le rendrait plus productif, mieux rémunéré, et plus qualifié.
Mais que vaut vraiment ce constat ? Est-ce une tendance forte ou, encore une fois, un récit marketing parfaitement calibré pour réussir à vendre des missions d’accompagnement à la transformation ? En effet, si l’étude est pleine de chiffres intéressants, parfois même impressionnants, elle évite avec soin certains sujets qui mériteraient, à mon sens, un peu d’attention. Parce le vrai sujet ici est à mon avis autant la transformation de l’emploi que la manière dont on pense la gouvernance du travail à l’ère des agents IA.
En bref :
L’étude de PWC affirme que l’IA génère une croissance économique et salariale dans les secteurs les plus exposés, sans détruire massivement l’emploi, mais cette dynamique reste limitée à certains domaines et ne reflète pas l’économie dans son ensemble.
L’IA transforme les métiers en déplaçant la complexité plutôt qu’en remplaçant les travailleurs, mais cette transformation exige des efforts importants en formation, organisation et gouvernance, souvent sous-estimés ou invisibles.
La création d’emplois dans les secteurs exposés à l’IA est plus lente que dans les autres, ce que l’étude présente comme un atout dans un contexte de déclin démographique, mais cela soulève des questions sur le sens réel de cette évolution.
La montée en puissance des compétences au détriment des diplômes est présentée comme une démocratisation, mais elle pose de vrais défis aux fonctions RH en matière de pilotage, d’anticipation et de gouvernance des compétences.
La vision promue par le rapport repose sur des conditions rarement réunies dans les organisations actuelles, et ignore largement les effets humains de l’IA sur le travail, comme le stress, l’isolement ou le sentiment d’injustice.
Une productivité dopée à l’IA mais pas pour tout le monde
Le message fort du baromètre est que les secteurs les plus exposés à l’IA (software, finance, services professionnels) enregistrent une croissance 3 fois plus forte de leur chiffre d’affaires par salarié que les moins exposés. Les salaires y progressent également 2 fois plus vite, y compris dans les métiers les plus automatisables. A cela s’ajoute le fait que tous les secteurs, y compris la construction ou l’agriculture, augmentent leur usage de l’IA.
Autrement dit, l’IA ne détruit pas massivement les emplois mais les transforme. Ceci dit, quand on y regarde de plus près, cette dynamique de croissance reste concentrée, géographiquement et sectoriellement. L’étude mesure donc plutôt l’exposition potentielle à l’IA, pas son adoption réelle dont on sait qu’elle est beaucoup plus nuancée. Ce n’est donc pas un reflet objectif de l’économie dans son ensemble mais plutôt une photographie des secteurs les plus numérisables.
Augmentation ou déplacement du travail ?
Le rapport met en scène deux personas: Amina, analyste augmentée par des agents IA, et John, agent de support client dont les tâches simples ont été automatisées. Dans les deux cas, l’IA libère du temps pour se concentrer sur des activités plus complexes. Le message est clair : l’IA ne remplace pas, elle augmente à défaut de transformer (IA en entreprise : aller au delà de l’augmentation pour enfin transformer).
Mais ce storytelling assez consensuel passe sous silence une réalité à laquelle toutes les entreprises qui ont emprunté cette voie ont été confrontées : ce travail d’augmentation ne va pas de soi. Il faut former, réorganiser, coordonner, expliquer. De plus les compétences requises évoluent 66 % plus vite dans les métiers exposés à l’IA que dans les autres et ce sont les métiers les plus automatisables qui subissent les plus fortes secousses.
La question n’est donc pas tant de savoir si l’IA supprime des emplois mais plutôt de se demander où se déplace la complexité du travail. Superviser un agent IA, reformuler un prompt, ajuster une décision automatisée : tout cela est du travail, souvent invisible, mais à l’ampleur largement sous estimée. Mais cette partie de la transformation s’opère le plus souvent de manière implicite, sans cadre clair ni reconnaissance.
Une création d’emplois ralentie mais socialement acceptable
L’étude se veut rassurante : le nombre d’emplois augmente dans presque tous les métiers exposés à l’IA. Mais elle précise tout de même que cette croissance est nettement plus faible que dans les métiers non exposés et tente de l’expliquer par un argument démographique : dans un monde où la population active décline, une croissance molle de l’emploi exposé à l’IA serait plutôt une bonne nouvelle pour éviter les tensions sur le marché du travail.
C’est là que le raisonnement prête à discussion car on ne parle plus d’opportunité mais demoindre mal. D’un seul coup on ne parle plus d’IA comme levier de propérité mais comme palliatif au vieillissement démographique. Cela mérite d’être noté car on assiste quand même à un changement de paradigme : moins d’emplois, mais potentiellement mieux payés, mieux outillés, plus qualifiés. Tout cela, bien sûr, à condition d’être du bon côté de la transition.
Fin du diplôme et triomphe de la compétence
Un autre point rarement évoqué dans les études et les médias est que dans les métiers exposés à l’IA, la demande de diplômes recule plus vite que dans les autres. Ce qui compte désormais, c’est la capacité à apprendre, s’adapter, collaborer avec des agents, penser en système. L’étude y voit une démocratisation de l’expertise mais elle oublie se demander qui accompagne cette transition.
Pour les fonctions RH l’enjeu est pourtant de taille. Piloter en temps réel des plans de montée en compétence alors que les cycles de transformation s’accélèrent (on parle désormais de 12 à 18 mois de durée de vie d’une compétence clé). Le triptyque « Buy, Build or Bot » (embaucher, faire monter en compétences ou s’appuyer sur la technologie) semble pertinent sur le papier, mais reste illusoire sans gouvernance des compétences ni cartographie dynamique des rôles.
Une vision séduisante mais hors-sol ?
La grande promesse du rapport, c’est l’avènement d’une force de travail numérique orchestrée par des agents IA coopérants, capables de planifier, exécuter, apprendre et interagir. En théorie, cela ressemble à un rêve rendu possible par les algorithmes mais en pratique, cela suppose :
des données de qualité,
des plateformes interopérables,
une architecture ouverte,
une coordination métier/IT fluide,
une gouvernance claire.
Déjà le rapport n’est pas clair par rapport au fait de savoir qui orchestre. L’IA, des humains, un mix des deux ? Même sentiment de vague quant à savoir comment cela se passe et sur la gouvernance nécessaire. Un peu le même flou d’ailleurs que chez Moderna (RH/IT et réalité du travail chez Moderna : les non dits d’une réorganisation).
Mais pour en revenir à ces prérequis il faut avoir la lucidité de reconnaitre qu’aujourd’hui très peu d’organisations sont en capacité de les réunir. La transformation vers une IA agentique à l’échelle est un sujet beaucoup plus organisationnel que technologique. Sans architecture solide ni vision transverse, les entreprises risquent de multiplier les cas d’usage isolés, sans jamais transformer la chaîne de valeur.
Pire encore, on ne sait pas mesurer aujourd’hui l’impact de l’asymétrie potentielle entre les efforts faits pour s’occuper des IA comme si c’était des salariés à part entière et le fait, qu’en contrepartie, on délaisse les collaborateurs humains (L’IT devient les RH des machines mais qui s’occupe des humains ?).
La zone grise des choses que le baromètre ne mesure pas
Si je devais reprocher une autre chose au rapport c’est son silence sur ce l’impact sur la vie des salariés. Rien de la charge cognitive potentiellement induite par l’IA, ni des effets de bord : dilution des responsabilités, flou sur le rôle humain, accroissement des exigences sans les moyens pour les satisfaire. Loin d’augmenter tous les travailleurs, l’IA peut aussi les rendre plus seuls, plus exposés, plus stressés.
Le rapport parle de valeur mais pas de sentiment de justice ou, plutôt, d’injustice. Il parle de revenus mais pas de reconnaissance, de compétences mais pas de conditions de travail et met en avant les gains de productivité mais sans dire pour qui ni à quel prix.
C’est tout de même surprenant de faire un baromètre sur les emplois en éludant autant la dimension humaine de la transformation à moins qu’il ne s’agisse d’un message implicite.
Conclusion
PWC conclut en appelant à « concevoir intentionnellement » le futur du travail avec l’IA. Un point sur lequel on ne peut qu’être d’accord car la question n’est pas de savoir si on va adopter l’IA mais pour quelles finalités, avec quels garde-fous, dans quelle organisation du travail, et au service de quelle vision du progrès.
Face à une technologie aussi puissante que rapide, les choix à faire sont politiques, pas techniques. Il ne suffit pas d’équiper les salariés mais il faut aussi outiller le collectif, redonner du sens au travail et construire les conditions de la confiance (Employees Won’t Trust AI If They Don’t Trust Their Leader).
Sans cela l’IA risque de n’être qu’un miroir aux alouettes de plus, dans une longue série de transformations promises, mais jamais vraiment accomplies.
Crédit visuel : Image générée par intelligence artificielle via ChatGPT (OpenAI)
It seems Meta has a new generation of smart glasses to show off at Connect this week, and it appears we’ve just got an eye-full of the long-rumored version with a built-in display, previously codenamed ‘Hypernova’.
As first reported by UploadVR, Meta seems to have leaked the next slate of smart glasses built in collaboration with Essilor Luxottica.
The video below, which was reposted by XR analyst Brad Lynch, was unlisted on Meta’s YouTube channel before being deleted.
New Meta smartglasses with display leaked via an unlisted video on their own YouTube channel
Along with their EMG wristband, and other smartglass models they plan to show off this week at Meta Connect pic.twitter.com/8tTlmaeQ0a
The video shows off four main models: the recently released Oakley Meta HSTN, the rumored Oakley Meta Sphaera model, what appears to be the next gen version of Ray-Ban Meta, and the rumored variant with display, which also comes with an electromyography (EMG) based wristband for input.
Meta also showed off a few use cases for the new display-clad smart glasses: typing on the back of a laptop to send a message, following turn-by-turn directions, identifying an object using AI, and real-time text translation.
Image courtesy Brad Lynch
Notably, prior to its unintentional unveiling, it was thought the display model would not be built in collaboration with Essilor Luxottica, and instead be marketed under the Meta name, owing to its ‘Celeste’ branding seen in previous leaks. It appears however the company is coopting a slightly larger Ray-Ban Wayfarer design and appending the name ‘Display’.
What’s more, the new smart glasses with heads-up display are also shown with the previously reported EMG wristband, which is meant to control the device’s UI. Meta has previously shown the wristband input device working with its prototype Orion AR glasses, which picks up movement in the wrist without needing line of sight to camera sensors, like Meta Quest 3 does.
There’s no confirmed pricing info yet, however a previous report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman maintains the display model and EMG wristband controller could cost “about $800.”
Meta Connect kicks off September 17th – 18th, where we expect to learn more about release dates and pricing for all of the company’s newest smart glasses.
Update (11:30 AM ET): A previous version of this article listed Brad Lynch as the source of the information, however UploadVR initially broke the story. We’ve edited the body of the article to reflect this distinction.
We will be at Meta Connect this week, so make sure to check back soon for all of the latest in Meta’s XR hardware and software.
People often ask, "What's the difference between science and engineering?" Having studied engineering but always loved science, I've come across a few perspectives I find useful to understand the two.
In England at least, studying science usually comes first. In fact, you can't really study engineering until you head off to University. So discussing science and engineering together never came up when I was at school. Engineering seemed to be machines and buildings and projects and design and technology, and science seemed to be everything else. But what really makes science science and engineering engineering?
Science vs Engineering: Five perspectives
Here are five simple ways people have described science and engineering.
Theodore Von Kármán on Scientists and Engineers
Aerospace engineer Theodore Von Kármán said:
Scientists discover the world that exists; Engineers create the world that never was.
"In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it.
In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it."
— Richard Hamming
Hamming also points out that there's a lot of science in engineering and a lot of engineering in science: "Much of present science rests on engineering tools, and as time goes on, engineering seems to involve more and more of the science part."
For example, dealing with huge amounts of data, of the sort generated by weather sensors or particle colliders, requires exceptional engineering techniques. And engineering new displays or ever smaller processing chips requires a lot of scientific knowledge. The two are intertwined: science enables engineering to push forward, and engineering opens new doors for science.
Richard Feynman on Computer Science
Physicist Richard Feynman, in a talk on quantum computers at Bell Labs (video excerpt), said:
"I don't believe in Computer Science. To me, science is the study of the behavior of nature. And engineering or applied things is the behavior of things we make.
You need to know how Nature works in order to make the things, and so you use science in engineering, but you're doing it for a human purpose."
— Richard Feynman
Mythbusters' Adam Savage on Science vs Screwing Around
Adam Savage, Mythbusters host, shared:
"Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down."
Adam said that the quote was actually from the ballistics expert on a shoot, Alex Jason. It doesn’t quite get to the heart of science versus engineering, but it’s a great reminder of good practice.
Why, How, What's Next?
A reader shared this framing with me:
Science asks “Why”
Engineering asks “How”
And together, they answer, “What’s next?”
And finally, my own phrasing in the first draft for the sketch used:
Science: Study of the world
Engineering: Doing things with what we've learned about the world
So while there probably isn't a single neat answer to the question of what’s the difference between science and engineering, maybe these give some food for thought.
If you know of other interesting framings for science and engineering, please let me know.
Tilly Lockey is living proof that the future of prosthetics is already here. At just 19, this amputee rights advocate showed off her incredibly advanced 3D-printed bionic arms on Good Morning Britain. These aren’t your average prosthetics: they’re powered by her muscles, quick as lightning, super strong, and so advanced they can even move when they’re not attached.
Tilly, who lost both forearms to meningitis as a baby, teamed up with Open Bionics to bring these marvels of tech to life. And she’s not stopping there! She just launched a podcast, Tilly Talks Tech, where every view helps fund more accessibility to prosthetics for others who need them.
Je relisais dernièrement une étude IBM sur l’IA agentique qui promet un avenir où les opérations de l’entreprise seront pilotées par des agents autonomes, disponibles 24h/24, capables de prédire, d’optimiser, d’agir sans supervision (Orchestrating agentic AI for intelligent business operations).
Une promesse d’efficacité algorithmique qui laisse percevoir un potentiel plus qu’intéressant mais qui pose de nombreuses questions car derrière cette vision technologique, se cachent des défis qui eux sont bien humains entre pilotage, gouvernance, sens du travail et réalité opérationnelle.
En bref :
L’IA agentique promet une automatisation fluide et autonome des opérations, en orchestrant des processus complets plutôt qu’en se limitant à des tâches isolées.
Cette vision repose sur des hypothèses fragiles, notamment la stabilité et l’interconnexion des environnements, qui sont rarement réunies dans la réalité opérationnelle.
L’automatisation déplace une charge cognitive importante vers les salariés (supervision, correction, interprétation), souvent ignorée ou sous-estimée.
La réussite de ces systèmes dépend moins de leur puissance technique que de la maturité organisationnelle : qualité des données, gouvernance, compétences humaines.
L’IA ne peut améliorer le travail que si les salariés sont pleinement impliqués dans sa conception et son déploiement, dans une logique d’apprentissage collectif et de sens partagé.
Une promesse d’automatisation sans couture
Dans cette étude IBM remet au goût du jour une ambition que la transformation digitale n’a jamais vraiment concrétisée à savoir celle d’une automatisation fluide, continue et auto-apprenante. L’IA agentique, définie comme la capacité d’agents à agir de manière autonome pour atteindre des objectifs métiers, marque une nouvelle étape dans le l’application de l’IA aux opérations.
Les chiffres avancés sont ambitieux : 75 % des dirigeants pensent que ces agents prendront en charge les processus transactionnels d’ici deux ans, 85 % prévoient qu’ils collaboreront en continu avec les humains, et 90 % anticipent une exploitation accrue des analytics temps réel. L’idée derrière tout cela est ne plus seulement automatiser des tâches, mais orchestrer des processus entiers, d’un bout à l’autre de la chaîne.
Cette vision d’ensemble repose sur l‘hypothèse implicite d’un environnement opérationnel suffisamment stable, normé et interconnecté pour permettre à des agents d’évoluer librement. Une hypothèse qui ne ne se se vérifie que rarement dans la réalité.
Derrière le vernis de l’autonomie, le déploiement d’agents suppose en effet :
une contextualisation fine des situations,
une capacité à résoudre les cas déviants ou ambigus,
et une coordination entre systèmes, humains et règles implicites.
Or ces dimensions sont souvent les plus complexes à modéliser, et les moins visibles dans les feuilles de route technologiques.
La charge de travail cachée de l’automatisation
L’étude évoque le repositionnement des collaborateurs vers des tâches à plus forte valeur : stratégie, créativité, accompagnement client mais elle passe sous silence un phénomène bien connu, à savoir la charge mentale de supervision et d’ajustement.
Superviser un agent, interpréter ses choix, corriger ses biais, réintégrer les cas limites : tout cela demande un effort cognitif que l’automatisation ne fait pas disparaître, mais qu’elle déplace vers les salariés. Un effort rarement reconnu comme du travail, encore moins comme une compétence à développer.
Une promesse de fluidité qui ne dit rien de son pilotage
IBM insiste sur la capacité des agents à améliorer la performance opérationnelle. Mais pour y parvenir, encore faut-il que les conditions de succès soient réunies : qualité des données, alignement des processus, gouvernance robuste, sécurité, supervision éthique.
Or ce sont précisément les zones les plus fragiles dans la plupart des organisations. L’étude elle-même reconnaît que 68 % des dirigeants évoquent un manque de compétences comme frein à la transformation, et que plus de 80 % jugent difficile l’interconnexion avec les partenaires. Les vieux démons ont la vie dure (Digital workplace, IA et intéropérabilité : un problème qui reste entier).
Le problème n’est donc pas celui de la puissance de l’IA, mais celui de la maturité organisationnelle pour en tirer parti.
La face cachée de l’expérience employé
L’expérience employé (EX) est mentionnée à plusieurs reprises comme bénéfice collatéral : assistants RH personnalisés, montée en compétences, gain de temps mais jamais l’étude ne pose la question l’effet structurel de l’automatisation sur le vécu du travail :
perte de contrôle sur les processus,
atomisation des responsabilités,
standardisation des interactions,
pilotage algorithmique déconnecté du sens métier.
Derrière les promesses de personnalisation, c’est souvent une logique de modularisation et de fragmentation du travail qui s’installe.
Agentic AI ou People-Centric Operations ?
L’étude d’IBM oppose implicitement deux modèles : celui d’un travail orchestré par des agents intelligents, et celui d’un travail régulé par des humains augmentés. Ces deux modèles ne sont pas incompatibles, mais leur articulation demande une condition préalable rarement remplie : impliquer les salariés dans la conception, le cadrage et l’amélioration continue des systèmes.
C’est ici qu’une approche de type People-Centric Operations prend tout son sens : considérer les opérateurs comme des architectes du système, pas comme des exécutants du pilotage par les algorithmes (People Centric Operations 2.0 : comment l’IA réinvente le travail du savoir à l’échelle). L’IA peut améliorer le travail si elle s’insère dans une logique d’appropriation, d’alignement collectif et d’apprentissage partagé.
Conclusion
L’IA agentique ouvre des perspectives passionnantes mais elle ne changera rien si elle ne s’intègre pas dans un système organisationnel repensé : gouvernance distribuée, responsabilité partagée, pilotage éthique, hybridation des compétences.
La question n’est pas et ne doit pas être « l’agent peut-il le faire à ma place ? » mais « »dans quelle mesure ce qu’il fait renforce ma capacité à comprendre, décider, collaborer ? ».
Crédit visuel : Image générée par intelligence artificielle via ChatGPT (OpenAI)
C’est un deal qui fera date : ASML, le géant néerlandais de la lithographie, s’apprête à investir près de 1,5 milliard de dollars (1,3 milliard d’euros) dans la pépite française Mistral AI, selon Reuters. Cette levée de fonds, estimée à 1,7 milliard d’euros au total, valorise Mistral à 10 milliards d’euros (pré-money) et propulse la […]
Des chercheurs danois ont trouvé une manière étonnante de transformer un problème environnemental en solution climatique. Le plastique jeté pourrait bientôt jouer un rôle actif dans la lutte...
Forget high-tech gadgets, flying cars, or AI overlords: true innovation has finally arrived… in the form of a grumpy octopus that lives in a box and tells you to mind your own business.
The Octopus Useless Box is the kind of invention that proves humanity has peaked. You press a lever, it pops open, and out comes a cranky little cephalopod who slams it shut again, sometimes throwing a tantrum, sometimes giving you the stink-eye, always making sure you know who’s boss. It’s useless, it’s adorable, and it’s probably judging you harder than your cat ever has. Check it out!
While we’re still far from a definitive conclusion about current or ancient life on Mars, it was an exciting finding, with a sampled rock containing minerals closely associated with Earth-based microbial life.
The only problem? The Trump administration has made it clear that it’s not interested in returning the samples taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover back to Earth for laboratory analysis.
In other words, as much as Duffy glazes Trump publicly, in reality, Trump is our planet’s number one obstacle to following up on NASA’s blockbuster findings about life on Mars.
As Ars Technica reports, Duffy had very little to add when needled by reporters this week about the Trump administration’s commitment to returning the Mars samples, clumsily avoiding making any promises.
“What we’re going to do is look at our budget, so we look at our timing, and you know, how do we spend money better?” he told one reporter. “And you know, what technology do we have to get samples back more quickly? And so that’s a current analysis that’s happening right now.”
Duffy also reiterated that the Trump administration was pouring all of its resources into sending “our boots to the Moon and to Mars” — efforts that would be far more complex, expensive, and time-intensive than a sample return mission. (And that’s if sending astronauts to the Red Planet is even feasible in the first place.)
To experts, canceling the Mars Sample Return mission would be an enormous and costly mistake.
“Our understanding of Mars has gotten to the point that the questions we’re asking can best be addressed with returned samples,” University of Colorado Boulder senior research scientist Bruce Jakosky told Space.com earlier this year.
“To decide not to return them, or to put it off to an indefinite future time with human missions would be to take a major step back in exploring the solar system and the universe and in continuing to develop our scientific understanding of the world around us,” he added.
Jakosky also explained that such a mission could lay important groundwork for future crewed missions to the Red Planet, and “allow us to solve important problems in planetary protection so that we don’t put the Earth at risk from possible Martian microbes.”
Instead, the Trump administration wants to award the private space industry $1 billion to send the first humans to Mars.
What that plan looks like remains uncertain as ever — but considering the president’s complicated relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, there’s a chance NASA will attempt to tap the space firm’s interplanetary Starship spacecraft for such a journey.
But if Musk’s abysmal track record when it comes to timelines is anything to go by, sending a crew to Mars could take a very long time. The company has encountered major headwinds in its efforts to turn its Starship super heavy launch platform into a reality.
And considering the major steps China has taken in its efforts to explore the Moon and Mars, there’s a good chance the United States could be beaten to the punch. China is hoping to launch its own Mars sample return as soon as 2028.
During this week’s press conference, Ars senior space reporter Eric Berger asked Duffy whether he was comfortable with losing such a key achievement to its geopolitical rival.
Duffy was seemingly unprepared, falling far short of making any commitments.
“We’re making the right calls for America and for our partners,” the former TV host assured. “And again, we lead, and we are going to continue to lead, but it’s always important that we keep pushing. We have to push because we are in another space race.”
Barrier-grid animations (also called scanimations) are a thing most people would recognize on sight, even if they didn’t know what they were called. Move a set of opaque strips over a pattern, and watch as different slices of that image are alternately hidden and revealed, resulting in a simple animation. The tricky part is designing the whole thing — but researchers at MIT designed FabObscura as a design tool capable not only of creating the patterned sheets, but doing so in a way that allows for complex designs.
The barrier grid need not consist of simple straight lines, and movement of the grid can just as easily be a rotation instead of a slide. The system simply takes in the desired frames, a mathematical function describing how the display should behave, and creates the necessary design automatically.
The paper (PDF) has more details, and while it is possible to make highly complex animations with this system, the more frames and the more complex the design, the more prominent the barrier grid and therefore the harder it is to see what’s going on. Still, there are some very nice results, such as the example in the image up top, which shows a coaster that can represent three different drink orders.
We recommend checking out the video (embedded below) which shows off other possibilities like a clock that looks like a hamster wheel, complete with running rodent. It’s reminiscent of this incredibly clever clock that uses a Moiré pattern (a kind of interference pattern between two elements) to reveal numerals as time passes.
We couldn’t find any online demo or repository for FabObscura, but if you know of one, please share it in the comments.
Check out this informative list of nouns for various animal collectives such as a cackle of hyenas or a murder of crows. Unfortunately, the name for a group of pugs isn’t there: A grumble of pugs!
In May, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders to facilitate the construction of nuclear reactors and the development of nuclear energy technology; the orders aim to cut red tape, ease approval processes, and reshape the role of the main regulatory agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC. These moves, the administration said, were part of an effort to achieve American independence from foreign power providers by way of a “nuclear energy renaissance.”
Self-reliance isn’t the only factor motivating nuclear power proponents outside of the administration: Following a decades-long trend away from nuclear energy, in part due to safety concerns and high costs, the technology has emerged as a potential option to try to mitigate climate change. Through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split to release energy, reactors don’t emit any greenhouse gases.
The Trump administration wants to quadruple the nuclear sector’s domestic energy production, with the goal of producing 400 gigawatts by 2050. To help achieve that goal, scientific institutions like the Idaho National Laboratory, a leading research institute in nuclear energy, are pushing forward innovations such as more efficient types of fuel. Companies are also investing millions of dollars to develop their own nuclear reactor designs, a move from industry that was previously unheard of in the nuclear sector. For example, Westinghouse, a Pennsylvania-based nuclear power company, plans to build 10 new large reactors to help achieve the 2050 goal.
In a major change in tune, Google has admitted that the "open web is already in rapid decline" — despite being adamant for months that the "web is thriving."
As first spotted by The Verge, the tech giant attempted to dissuade regulators from breaking up its advertising tech business, arguing that doing so would harm publishers who rely on advertising revenue.
Google argued that splitting up its ad business would "only accelerate" the open web's disintegration ahead of an antitrust trial in a DC court.
It's a peculiar admission, especially considering it's in Google's best interest to downplay the sizable role it plays in the traditional ecosystem of the web. The company has been caught up in several antitrust lawsuits, with regulators finding that it was behaving anti-competitively, using its influence to assume an unprecedented level of control over the open web.
Earlier this year, the US Department of Justice won a separate antitrust case against Google, finding that the company had been operating a monopoly in the adtech business. In August 2024, a judge also ruled that Google had illegally exploited its dominance on the web to stifle innovation and squash competition.
It's worth noting that the search giant is pushing back; a spokesperson told the Verge that the "rapid decline" statement was "cherry-picked," misrepresenting the filing.
"We are pointing out the obvious: that investments in non-open web display advertising like connected TV and retail media are growing at the expense of those in open web display advertising," the spokesperson said.
Cherrypicked or not, Google's choice of words tells a damning story about the situation countless digital publishers find themselves in. Many of them have become highly susceptible to changes in the company's algorithms, seeing traffic, and therefore display ad revenues plummet, practically overnight, earlier this year, as Google makes changes behind the scenes.
Adding insult to injury is Google's embrace of AI, putting its error-laden AI Overviews feature on top of search results to disincentivize users from clicking on links, for instance. Research has shown that Google users are far less likely to visit actual sites when presented with AI-generated summaries.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai attempted to argue the company has played no part in the major drop in internet traffic, telling the Verge earlier this year that it's "definitely sending traffic to a wider range of sources and publishers" thanks to its AI search tools.
Besides Google accelerating the demise of ad revenue-reliant publishers, users have also found that the quality of Google search results has significantly deteriorated as AI slop continues to flood the open web, often exploiting the company's algorithms to float to the top of search rankings.
In short, Google is stuck between a rock and a hard place: it played a mammoth role in the evolution of the modern internet — but with AI now remaking that landscape, it finds its search results flooded by low-quality AI content at the same time that it's forced to integrate AI in ways that feel embarrassing for an entity of its stature.
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