Metaverse

Secondary markets also benefit from AI and Metaverse

Secondary markets also benefit from AI and Metaverse

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Following Elon Musk's announcement that his AI startup will rely on processors from Nvidia, the shares of the graphics processor manufacturer from Santa Clara, USA, are soaring.

The Nvidia share reaches the highest closing price of the past 12 months on 4/18-23. Similar to Nvidia are the gains at quite a few smaller and larger suppliers in the industry. This shows that we are dealing with a multi-billion market in AI and Metaverse, even beyond the generally visible companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, etc.

Cloud and communications technology in particular play an extremely important role. If you don't have the right partners on board early on and can scale in time, you won't be able to serve the newly emerging markets.
AI hype and the metaverse are very closely related. AI will give the metaverse the momentum it needs to scale and adapt dynamically to new business models.

This is not about the AI-based animation of an avatar in the Metaverse, which then conducts training sessions as a 3D chatbot. No, it is about nothing less than the organic further development of the Metaverse itself. The traditional business of developing virtual spaces will be completely transformed. Instead, we are talking about dynamic platforms that, based on AI, can create requirement-specific virtual worlds at the push of a button in just a few seconds, which can be changed and adapted again just as quickly at any time.

Empathy in the metaverse in times of ChatGPT

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A lot has been written about the topic of empathy in the metaverse in the past time. Primarily it was about the question whether empathy can be experienced or felt in the metaverse. I am firmly convinced that this is possible and that it happens consciously or unconsciously when working in the metaverse.

However, this question takes on a new quality with the increasing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI). Can an AI be empathic, and what impact does this have on virtual encounters in the metaverse. Specifically, the issue is whether in a situation where one avatar is a natural person and the opposite is an avatar controlled by an AI. One can approach this issue on two levels. One is a purely neurological approach. The other approach is more an ethical one. This question was already raised by John Wheeler (1) in his consideration. The prerequisite for the existence of empathy is not only the biochemical process, but also depends very much on our "I" understanding as a human being.

The question now arises whether the use of AI-controlled avatars in the metaverse creates a completely new situation? Basically, one has to say that superficially nothing changes in the basic statement. However, in the metaverse and the use of photorealistic avatars, further components are added. Through the immersion, i.e. the mental "immersion" in the virtual world, and the possibly objectively natural behavior of an AI-controlled avatar, something like a "mock empathy" can be conveyed. This is also the conclusion of Andrew McStay (2) in his article published in October 22 ("It from Bit") on the moral problem of an AI-controlled avatar. His conclusion is that while AI is able to provide large parts of empathy, it is incomplete in significant parts. Aspects such as responsibility, solidarity, community, etc. are missing.

In my opinion, these aspects must be taken into account when we think about ChatGPT and similar systems and their use in the metaverse. Basically, this development offers huge opportunities and the potential to create free space for areas where direct human-to-human interaction is necessary. But in the ethical evaluation of the development, we are just at the beginning, and we should conduct this discussion at least as forcefully as we think about new business models with AI.

(1) Wheeler, J.: Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links. Proceedings of the 3rd international symposium on the founda- tions of quantum mechanics, Tokyo. https://philpapers.org/archi ve/WHEIPQ.pdf. Accessed 3 Oct 2022, (1989)
(2) McStay, A. Replica in the Metaverse: the moral problem with empathy in 'It from Bit'. AI Ethics (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-022-00252-7

Less bandwidth and better graphics through texture baking

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When we talk about cloud-based metaverse applications like T-Systems' Magenta Metaverse, interactivity and immersion are key!

Bandwidth and GPU-powered cloud data centers are technical basics.
But almost more important are the architecture and design of the spaces. Here we can learn a lot from the gaming industry.

👉 One of the most common techniques is the so-called "texture baking".

In simple terms, this means that you transfer the high-resolution textures of a static 3D model to a game-ready model with fewer polygons.
The result is a high-quality but interactive object with less computational and bandwidth overhead.

As a first demonstrator, we tried this out with amazing results at our #virtualinnovationcenter! (Above without and below with texture baking) 🚀

It is very important to optimize industry cases to ensure maximum customer experience without specific client hardware.

Empathy in the metaverse through haptic feedback

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Empathy in the metaverse is a very important topic when we focus on social interaction and mental health.

There are typically 5 senses that allow us to receive empathy:

  1. Acoustic stimuli
  2. Visual stimuli
  3. Smell stimuli
  4. Taste stimuli
  5. Haptic stimuli

1 and 2 can be transferred to the metaverse without any problems.

👉 Now, California-based startup emerge.io is launching a tabletop device that envelops virtual objects and interactions with ultrasonic waves in the air.

Technologies like these will provide groundbreaking support for "haptic stimuli" and open up a broad field of new empathy-driven applications in the metaverse.

#NewWork #MentalHealth #Empathy #DigitalHealth #Metainnovator