The Forecast: Would you wear AI glasses?

Welcome back to The Forecast from Bloomberg Weekend, where we help you think about the future — from next week to next decade.

This weekend we're looking at whether anyone wants Meta's AI glasses, a rough quarter for prediction markets, bars getting quieter and more.

Would You Wear AI Glasses?

Way back in 2013, right before Mark Zuckerberg took his social-networking company public, the Facebook CEO tried to build a phone.

Codenamed "Buffy," Facebook's phone project evolved over time from an ambitious all-in-one smartphone into something much more pedestrian: a software layer built on top of an HTC device. Dubbed the "Facebook Phone" and unveiled at a major press event at the company's headquarters, the project was ultimately a flop.

But the motivations behind Buffy never went away. Zuckerberg has long struggled with a lack of control over the distribution of his company's products. For Facebook and Instagram to reach consumers, Zuckerberg must rely on smartphones powered by Apple and Google, two competitors who certainly don't make Meta a key consideration when building their mobile operating systems. "We would be a lot more profitable, our business would be bigger, if we hadn't gotten all these random taxes or rules that the mobile platforms have put on us," Zuckerberg told Bloomberg last summer.

For years, that lack of leverage has left Zuckerberg searching for a solution. In AI-powered smart glasses, he hopes that he's found one.

Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses 2nd generation at a Meta Platforms event in San Francisco, California, US, on Sept. 18, 2023. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Meta has spent years building its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which have become one of Zuckerberg's favorite things to talk about on earnings calls, and he frequently wears them himself. Just this week, Meta invested $3.5 billion into EssilorLuxottica, a global eyewear manufacturer and parent company of Ray-Ban. It's a sign of Zuckerberg's belief that AI-powered smart glasses may one day replace your smartphone. Instead of walking around with a supercomputer in your pocket, you'll be wearing one on your face — and if all goes well, Meta will have built it.

What remains unclear is whether this is the future that consumers want. Are there enough people out there eager to take pictures and videos with glasses, or to speak out loud to an AI assistant while walking down the sidewalk? Are people who don't need to even willing to wear glasses all the time? Unlike a smartphone, smart glasses are also a fashion statement.

So far, early results sound promising. Meta sold 1 million pairs of its Ray-Ban glasses last year, Zuckerberg told employees in January. In April, he told investors that sales had tripled and monthly active users had quadrupled over the past year.

But jumping from 1 million to 10 million or 100 million could take a long time — if it happens at all — and Meta is staring down the prospect of stiffer competition. As Zuckerberg told employees in January, "We basically invented the category and our competitors haven't really shown up yet." That's about to change in a big way as Apple is planning its own AI glasses debut in 2026.

Apple's arrival validates Zuckerberg's investment. It also poses a major challenge to his vision.

— Kurt Wagner, Bloomberg Tech

Would you wear AI glasses? Email us your thoughts: [email protected]

Predictions

AI regulation is coming in the US: "A California lawmaker introduced a bill this week that would require top AI companies to release safety and security protocols. In New York, legislators recently passed a bill that would make AI developers liable for threats to public safety." — Shirin Ghaffary, Bloomberg Tech

So are bans on lab-grown meat: "Texas became the seventh state to prohibit food products cultured from animal cells [and] six more states are proposing similar prohibitions on cultured meat." — Helen Ramsbottom, BloombergNEF

Hong Kong is in line for some significant IPOs: Fast-fashion retailer Shein reportedly filed there, a switch from its original plan to file in London. Meanwhile, OpenAI challenger Zhipu "is considering shifting its planned initial public offering to Hong Kong instead of mainland China." — Bloomberg News

Trade wars will be a boon for trade schools. Some enrollees believe that knowledge work has become "oversaturated." — Robb Mandelbaum, Bloomberg Businessweek

Manhattan rents will keep climbing: "Manhattan rents hit a record high for the fourth time in the past five months — and there's no relief in sight." — Paulina Cachero, Bloomberg News

Heat domes remain fatally unpredictable. They're the cause of recent record-breaking temperatures and a menace to the public. But they're still very difficult to forecast. — Brian K. Sullivan, Bloomberg Green

Bars could soon get quieter: Many claim "the rising licensing costs [for music] have become overwhelming, and some question whether it's even worth playing music at all." — Ashley Carman and Aruni Soni, Bloomberg News

The "humanization of pets" will continue, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. And sales in the global pet industry could rise as much as 38% to nearly half a trillion dollars by the end of the decade. — Bloomberg Intelligence (Terminal subscribers only)

What Are the Chances...

Plausible-But-Unlikely Stuff Keeps Happening

There is a meme in forecasting circles that nothing ever happens: It means that as the news highlights this or that new possibility, the smart money is often betting that things stay the same. But sometimes stuff really does happen!

Every quarter we check back on the prediction markets cited in this newsletter, and last quarter we reported that nearly every market we'd cited that had resolved one way or the other had ended up at least leaning in the right direction. If it said over 50% chances, the event in question usually happened, and vice versa.

But last quarter the markets didn't perform as well. As of this writing, 22 of the markets we cited have resolved — and only 14 leaned toward the actual outcome. Some of the misses were so bad that if you score the markets using a classic measure of accuracy, the average prediction was barely better than a coin flip.

What's interesting is that the errors don't seem random (yes, very small sample size, but hear me out). Events that the markets thought were really unlikely seldom happened; those they thought were coin flips happened about half the time. Those they thought were likely usually happened, too.

You can see in the chart below one category where most of the misses clustered: Half of events that forecasters thought were plausible but unlikely — maybe a one-in-three chance — ended up occurring.

The list of plausible-but-unlikely events that happened all involve either tariffs or attacks on Iran. The lesson? Stuff does happen. Especially when it involves Donald Trump.

How Markets Have Shifted

That's the recap of markets that have resolved, but what about the ones that are still open? Here are a few that have shifted since we last checked in:

The chance of a bird flu pandemic in 2025 has fallen to just 7%, from 10% at the end of Q1 and 24% in early January.
The chance of a "DOGE dividend" is down to 4%, from 20% at the end of Q1 and 30% when we first cited it in February.
The chance of a Google breakup is down to 28% from 45% in late April.
The chance of a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire or peace deal is down to 12% on the RAND Forecasting Initiative, from 26% in mid-May. Interestingly, Polymarket, which once put the chances higher, has converged toward the mostly-unpaid forecasters on RAND's platform.

All forecast updates are as of the morning of Friday, July 11, 2025.

— Walter Frick, Bloomberg Weekend

Week Ahead

America's biggest banks report earnings this week, with their trading businesses likely to have benefited from recent volatility.

Monday: India and Argentina report CPI; China reports trade data; EU trade ministers meet in Brussels; the Bloomberg Green conference begins in Seattle.

Tuesday: The US and Canada report CPI; China reports GDP; JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Blackrock report earnings.

Wednesday: The UK and Italy report inflation data; Bank Indonesia is expected to hold interest rates; the Fed releases its Beige Book of economic conditions; Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and ASML report earnings.

Thursday: The UK reports jobs data; the Eurozone reports CPI; Netflix, TSMC, United Airlines and Pepsi report earnings.

Friday: Japan reports CPI; the University of Michigan publishes its US consumer sentiment index.