As part of his intentions to create a virtual metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg has stated that his social media company is creating what he claims is the world's fastest artificial intelligence supercomputer.

The metaverse, a concept that mixes the physical and digital worlds via virtual and augmented reality, will require "enormous" computing power, according to the Facebook creator in a blog post.

According to Zuckerberg's Meta business, the AI supercomputer, dubbed AI Research SuperCluster (RSC), is already the fifth fastest in the world.

“The experiences we’re building for the metaverse require enormous compute [sic] power (quintillions of operations/second!) and RSC will enable new AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, understand hundreds of languages, and more," Zuckerberg added.

The RSC, according to Meta researchers, will be the fastest computer of its kind when it is finished in the summer.

AI is a computer program that mimics the brain's fundamental architecture and is capable of processing and finding patterns in massive volumes of data.

Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and the WhatsApp messaging service, collects a lot of data from its 2.8 billion daily users.

Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it was fined $5 billion for privacy violations, and former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen has cautioned that the business is focusing on development into new sectors when it should be devoting "more resources on really fundamental safety systems."

Furthermore, after publicly promising to deal with the issue, Facebook acknowledged in internal documents obtained by The Associated Press (AP) that it was “under-enforcing on confirmed abusive activity” that saw Filipina maids complaining on Facebook of being abused.

Separately, the UK's data watchdog has asked Meta for clarification on parental controls on its popular virtual reality headset, the Oculus Quest 2, after a campaign group's investigation found many instances of abuse on VRChat, a top-selling social app for Oculus users. Separately, the UK's data watchdog has asked Meta for clarification on parental controls on its popular virtual reality headset, the Oculus Quest 2, after a campaign group's investigation found many instances of abuse on VRChat, a top-selling social app for Oculus users.