I Spent 24 Hours in the Metaverse. I Made Friends, Did Work and Panicked About the Future.
Avatar meetings are great.
Look, it’s hard to take your editor seriously when his voice is coming from a legless Milhouse from “The Simpsons.” Still, after a few minutes sitting around a virtual conference table, we both realized it was better than a boring ol’ Zoom. It felt like he was really sitting across from me, making direct eye contact.
Avatar meetups aren’t great.
Meetings in the metaverse are nice, in part because you have control over whom you invite. It’s like the next evolution of a private Facebook Group or video call. What happens, though, with public groups any avatar can join? I found out when joining Microsoft-owned AltspaceVR.
Solo stuff is fun.
There are loads of stuff to do on your own, including games and my new favorite: working out.
See the full story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/metaverse-experience-facebook-microsoft-11636671113
Researchers Develop New Approach for Robotic Exosuit Assistance
The new approach relies on robotic exosuit assistance being calibrated to an individual, and it adapts to various different real-world walking tasks in just seconds. The bio-inspired system uses ultrasound measurements of muscle dynamics, which enables it to be personalized and activity-specific for users.
...“We used ultrasound to look under the skin and directly measured what the user’s muscles were doing during several walking tasks,” said Nuckols. “Our muscles and tendons have compliance which means there is not necessarily a direct mapping between the movement of the limbs and that of the underlying muscles driving their motion.”
...“From these pre-recorded images, we estimated the assistive force to be applied in parallel with the calf muscles to offset the additional work they need to perform during the push off phase of the walking cycle,” said Swaminathan.
See the full story here: https://www.unite.ai/researchers-develop-new-approach-for-robotic-exosuit-assistance/
Meta CTO thinks bad metaverse moderation could pose an ‘existential threat’
While the full memo isn’t publicly available, Bosworth posted a blog entry alluding to it later in the day. The post, titled “Keeping people safe in VR and beyond,” references several of Meta’s existing VR moderation tools. That includes letting people block other users in VR, as well as an extensive Horizon surveillance system for monitoring and reporting bad behavior. Meta has also pledged $50 million for research into practical and ethical issues around its metaverse plans.
As FT notes, Meta’s older platforms like Facebook and Instagram have been castigated for serious moderation failures, including slow and inadequate responses to content that promoted hate and incited violence. The company’s recent rebranding offers a potential fresh start, but as the memo notes, VR and virtual worlds will likely face an entirely new set of problems on top of existing issues.
See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/12/22779006/meta-facebook-cto-andrew-bosworth-memo-metaverse-disney-safety-content-moderation-scale
AWE 2021: Hands-on with Holoride and its automotive VR fun
Holoride is a very original startup in the XR ecosystem because it focuses on in-car VR entertainment.The idea is that during a trip the passengers can enjoy a VR experience that follows completely the movement of the car: if the car is going forward, you move forward at exactly its same speed inside VR, if it turns left, you turn left, and so on. If the motion of the car is synchronized with the one in the VR application, there shouldn’t be any kind of sensory mismatch, and so no motion sickness. This makes the experience much more fun and enjoyable than just playing a regular VR game or video while you are in the car.
...Since the games must follow the movements of the car, which are unpredictable, the games running on Holoride must adapt to whatever movement is happening and can not rely on a predefined path. This creates new challenges for what concerns the game design. The company provides an SDK, called Elastic SDK, that offers facilities to developers to create Holoride-compatible content. Holoride is looking for interested developers, and you can register your interest here if you want.
PETER THIEL: ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE ISN’T HAPPENING
He pointed instead to today’s concerns: Specifically, surveillance AI, which involves “fairly dumb computers” whose real potency is that they “monitor us in all places and all times.” That will shift the balance of society away from civil liberties toward centralization, he warned:
You can think of the crackdown in China or Hong Kong, where you have facial recognition software. This is not futuristic, super, super smart AI, but it is sort of a next generation technology.
He summed up: “Almost all the paths that lead to AGI, as it is currently conceived, go through giant organizations with giant databases, looking at people, modeling people, doing machine learning on people to build the AGI. You need this sort of surveillance to get to the AGI. And of course the surveillance a AI has a sort of a creepy totalitarian undercurrent.”
See the full story here: https://mindmatters.ai/2021/11/peter-thiel-artificial-general-intelligence-isnt-happening/
The World’s Largest Record Company Is Creating an NFT Super Group
Kingship, consisting of four virtual apes, reimagines the idea of a band — and a brand
Universal Music, the home to top-selling musicians like Drake and Taylor Swift, is working with collector Jimmy McNelis to convert four of his NFTs into a band called Kingship. Kingship consists of four digital characters — three bored apes and one mutant ape — all part of an NFT collection known as the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The club is one of the most successful NFT stories of the past year; it gave anyone who bought one of the apes full commercial rights to use the image.
...While Joshua has a novel idea — an NFT band — a virtual band is not unprecedented. In 1998, musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett created a virtual quartet called the Gorillaz. Albarn made the music and Hewlett designed four animated characters who appeared in music videos and the occasional interview or live performance. Albarn also gave interviews representing the group, and performed alongside musical collaborators.
What’s different this time around is how Kingship will make money — and interact with fans. Joshua plans to sell NFTs of Kingship, giving buyers access to exclusive music experiences and real-world events. Think of it as fan club for the virtual world.
Joshua pitched him on the idea of creating a new group, and picked four characters that she thought would work as a band. That includes a golden ape, another of which just sold at Sotheby’s for $3.4 million. Kingship's golden ape is valuedat around $190,000 at current prices, according to offer data on OpenSea, the largest marketplace for NFTs.
True believers say NFTs offer buyers something real — a bit of ownership in artists they like or access to special experiences. NFTs also speak to the blurring lines between our tangible and virtual worlds.
See the full story here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-11/the-world-s-largest-record-company-is-creating-an-nft-super-group
