You could feel real-life pain in the metaverse thanks to Japanese start-up
A Sony-backed Japanese start-up company called H2L Technologies is working on creating real-life pain experiences for the metaverse.
The start-up is working on a metaverse wristband to be used alongside a VR headset.
The wristband aims to allow users to move around in the virtual world but feel sensations like pain and the weight of objects.
It works by electrically stimulating a wearer’s arm muscles.
A user is said to be able to feel sensations like their skin being pinched or a weight in their hands. ...
By 2029, she hopes to “release humans from any sort of constraint in terms of space, body and time”. ...
See the full story here: https://nypost.com/2022/03/22/you-could-feel-real-life-pain-in-the-metaverse-thanks-to-japanese-start-up/
Zoom’s new virtual avatars let you show up to your next meeting as a dog
... Zoom will let you show up to your next meeting as a rabbit, fox, dog, or another type of animal, using its new Avatars feature that replaces you with a virtual character that copies your expressions, Memoji-style. The company says this feature, which is included in the Zoom 5.10 update, will only let you become an animal at launch, but that new avatar options will be added in the future. ...
At least one study has indicated that constantly looking at yourself to make sure you’re presentable and reacting appropriately is part of what makes being in video calls all day so tiring. If your Zoom box is showing a giraffe that’s mirroring your facial expressions, that’s a lot harder to scrutinize than your actual face. ...
See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/22/22990983/zoom-virtual-avatars-animal-face-replacement?fbclid=IwAR2bNrgQktXPlCIfzjbuHnNSn4tz0hw9wg33adm-r0RSYn1r2HFcN5wKHrw
No-Code AI and Prediction Tools Bring Coding to the People
A new AI revolution is underway, turning people who know little about coding into developers. Called “no code,” startups are emerging to productize this new category, which essentially lets people use familiar, clickable web interfaces and even natural language to automate tasks or create simple applications, while machine learning takes over the rest. Proponents predict it will be a game-changer, powering a brigade of “citizen developers” to leverage artificial intelligence without knowing how to write code. Startups entering the space include Juji, which makes creating AI chatbots as easy as programming PowerPoint. ...
Wired explains that OpenAI developers “have already built demos that let a layperson write simple apps just by describing what they want: ‘Make me a personal website with PayPal embedded for payments,’ or ‘Write an app that finds travel expenses in my bank statements and puts them in a spreadsheet.’” ...
See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/no-code-ai-and-prediction-tools-bring-coding-to-the-people/
Can an Online Course Help Big Tech Find Its Soul?
The course, which comes out of beta today, was developed by the Center for Humane Technology. The nonprofit’s purpose has mainly been to give language to the uneasiness around technology’s impact on society, popularizing terms like “time well spent” (a metric to replace engagement on screens) and “human downgrading” (to describe the cumulative negative effect of technology on peoples’ cognition). The organization’s cofounder is Tristan Harris, an ex-Googler who called attention to the search giant’s extractive features in 2013. He has since left the industry and made a career out of rehabilitating it. ...
The new course is meant, in part, to answer that question, speaking directly to rehabilitated techies like Read. It contains eight modules and is intended to take about eight hours total, plus additional time spent on worksheets, reflection exercises, and optional discussion groups over Zoom. Read, who “binged” the course, says he completed it in about two weeks. ...
One module focuses on the psychology of persuasive tech and includes a “humane design guide” for creating more respectful products. Another encourages technologists to identify their highest values and the ways those values interact with their work. At the end of the lesson, a worksheet invites them to imagine sipping tea at age 70, looking back on their life. “What’s the career you look back on? What are the ways you’ve influenced the world?” ...
The Center for Humane Technology is not the first organization to make a tool kit for concerned tech workers. The Tech and Society Solutions Lab has released two, in 2018 and 2020, designed to encourage more ethical conversations within tech companies and startups. But the center’s new course is novel in the way that it tries to create community out of the burgeoning “humane tech” movement. ...
How Ukraine’s Digital Artists Are Grappling With Working Through Wartime
In Lviv, in western Ukraine, VideoGorilla senior developer/chief science officer Andrew Yakovenko is glued to his computer, not doom-scrolling but rather working on an AI-enabled software tool for a Hollywood entertainment company. The company’s senior developer Anton Linevich, holed up in a small village in the center of the country, is likewise focused on work, checking in with remote teammates via Slack. Senior developer Aleksey Sevruk, who stayed in Kyiv, just joined the Army and is fighting for that city. ...
ReSpeecher co-founder/co-CEO Alex Serdiuk reports that two of his employees are still in the Kyiv office but that, one month ago, 10 team members relocated to Lviv. He stayed in Kyiv until the first Russian bombs fell, and his whole family headed to western Ukraine (his wife and child have since gone on to Europe). The advantage, he says, is that he is more focused on work. “The day that bombs hit Kyiv, a Hollywood company received the audio files we had to deliver,” he says. “We haven’t any disruption with ReSpeecher business at all.” ...
See the full story here: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ukraine-digital-artists-grappling-working-220428416.html
Color affects people’s behavior differently in virtual reality
... Guobin Xia, assistant professor of digital design and innovation at Heriot-Watt's School of Textile and Design, set up experiments with 70 people. ...
Xia said: "We know color affects people's emotions and behavior—blues are calming, yellows are cheering, for example. We established that some colors affect people very differently in virtual reality settings. In the real world, red makes people most impulsive. But in virtual reality, orange gives the highest state of impulsivity. Green has the most positive effects on people's logical and lateral thinking abilities, and their attention to detail in the real world and in VR." ...
Color can trigger positive engagement and improve cognitive performance—so designers could use this information to trigger buying behaviors or deep concentration. ...
See the full story here: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-03-affects-people-behavior-differently-virtual.html
