The second day of F8, our annual developer conference, began with Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer, Mike Schroepfer, delivering a keynote on the next generation of technology that Facebook is building to connect the world.

In the talk, Schroepfer gave several updates on our long-term technology investments:

Core Infrastructure

We announced that the iOS version of React Native — a framework for native environments — is open and available on GitHub. React Native allows developers to build first-class iOS and Android user interfaces with no browser/WebView involved. React Native for Android will be coming soon. In our infrastructure efforts, we’ve built our stack from scratch by redesigning it with efficiency, flexibility, and scale in mind. We’ve open-sourced many of these designs, as well — putting our designs in the open means a wider community can help spur innovation.

Connectivity Lab

Today, we announced that we’ve successfully conducted the first test flight of our UAV platform, which will one day help connect people living in the world’s most remote communities.

Facebook AI Research

Some of the leading minds in AI research are working at Facebook to build intelligent machines, and they’ve already published a number of influential papers. One of the group’s more recent advances is a technology called Memory Networks, which enables a machine to perform relatively sophisticated question answering, as in this example of a machine answering questions about a Lord of the Rings synopsis.

Oculus

The team at Oculus is working to better understand human perception in an effort to create virtual, shared experiences that will completely change the way we communicate and collaborate. Michael Abrash — chief scientist at Oculus — discussed how the shift to virtual reality is going to bring huge changes to the world and to almost everything about how we live.

We have a chance to connect everyone in the world. Facebook can build systems that are more human, more personalized, and more intelligent than anything that has come before. The technologies that were discussed today will help build tools and services that better serve people and move the world forward.

Watch the keynote in its entirety here: