Failure to develop meaningful policies now-on an international basis-will mean we did not learn the lesson of multiple decades of internet exploitation by a handful of companies, and how the companies write their own rules at the expense of the public interest. Ignoring its obvious risks-or leaving them to the companies to resolve-as digital history has demonstrated, can only make those risks worse. We are told the metaverse is years away, giving us time to figure out how to deal with its ill effects while encouraging its positive features.
Since we have yet to successfully deal with the problems created by the current digital platforms, it is even more pressing to rectify the new genre of potential abuses that are arising. At the same time, it imports the problems associated with the current digital platforms, while creating a host of new issues. The metaverse is an immersive experience in which real-world people, problems, and patterns come to life in an AI-defined and AI-driven world.Īs the advertisements proclaim, the metaverse brings the promise of new tools for education, entertainment, medicine, and commerce. The internet platforms that we have experienced thus far have been an observational experience that principally harnessed text and video. This is no game, however, but personally identifiable avatars interacting with each other under the control of advanced AI systems. The metaverse (a term combining “meta,” meaning “transcending,” and “universe”) creates a video game-like pseudo-world. While, indeed, there will be many new and wonderful advantages it will create, the effort to establish a warm and fuzzy vision obscures the threat the metaverse holds to be the next generation of privacy-violating, competition-thwarting, and truth-killing platforms. While our attention is focused elsewhere, the company formerly known as Facebook-now known as Meta Platforms-continues its multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to shape a good image for the metaverse. Just because the metaverse has disappeared from public consciousness does not mean it should disappear from public concern. Every use of the term “metaverse” should be read as “AI-enabled metaverse.” The metaverse is a creature of AI in that much of what happens in the metaverse is determined by AI algorithms. The Wall Street Journal went so far as to proclaim, “The Metaverse is Quickly Turning Into the Meh-taverse.” 1įar from it. Yesterday’s tech flavor of the month-the metaverse-has been chased from the headlines by ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) models.
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