The hype around artificial intelligence is the top digitization topic this year with ChatGPT and Co. Artificial intelligence has the potential to perform many complex tasks more effectively and quickly than human workers, which can lead to higher productivity and efficiency. More and more companies and organizations are therefore trying to take advantage of this technology. Although artificial intelligence offers these benefits, there are also some risks and challenges associated with its use, such as the ethical and legal implications of using algorithms in various fields.
But how does artificial intelligence influence the development and implementation of the metaverse discussed by our foundation?
The metaverse, or the increasing digital space around us, is taking on greater importance with the integration of AI technologies. The metaverse refers to an immersive virtual environment in which users can interact and perform various activities. It is an extended form of the Internet in which the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds are blurred. The Metaverse allows users to navigate virtual realities, create avatars, visit virtual stores, have social interactions, and more.
Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, describes the ability of computers or machines to perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence. AI algorithms and models enable machines to learn, understand, decide, and interact.
In the context of the Metaverse, artificial intelligence will play a crucial role. AI systems will help make virtual worlds more alive by creating realistic and interactive virtual characters or NPCs (Non-Playable Characters). These characters can respond to users’ actions and interactions, providing them with a personalized experience. In addition, AI algorithms will also help manage and organize the Metaverse. They will assist in recommending content, personalizing user experiences, optimizing resource allocation, and other tasks to improve the efficiency and quality of the Metaverse experience. Artificial intelligence will also create virtual worlds almost independently. Through the use of machine learning and other algorithmic techniques, artificial intelligence will analyze large amounts of data, recognize patterns, draw conclusions, and even take over human-like conversations. As a result, it will be able to create virtual worlds in an efficient and precise way that fits the user in question. She is also able to perform iterative processes and continuously learn, which further enhances her skills. This enables artificial intelligence to handle complex tasks in the field of virtual worlds largely on its own.
The projects of the Metaverse Europe Foundation
In addition to the incredible opportunities for innovation and creativity, only a few influential forces recognize that virtual reality or augmented reality combined with artificial intelligence can also severely weaken our society. This is especially true when our existing reality is supplemented or replaced by an augmented artificial reality. Actors who have come into possession of our data via social media can use artificial intelligence to spread misinformation, manipulate people and reinforce prejudices even more easily. This could play an even more threatening role in the coming 3D experience of the metaverse than in today’s communication via 2D screens. Each of us could then live in our own data bubble, where everyone is fed customized news and information tailored to their personal beliefs.
To counteract the resulting intensification of social and political division, we need to ask the right questions now to anticipate the implications of the metaverse. It is important to note that the extent of the threats to businesses and organizations depends on how AI technologies are used in the metaverse. There are several approaches and visions of how the metaverse can be combined with AI, and intensive research and innovation is needed to further explore this connection and drive it forward in a positive sense. Our foundation therefore works together with companies and organizations in projects to develop upcoming issues relating to positive values and appropriate recommendations for action.
The core topics of the Metaverse Europe Foundation
The basis of this project work is our core topics on Metaverse in connection with Artificial Intelligence: “Protection of identities”, “Intellectual self-control”, “Legally secure space”, “Sustainability”, “Data sovereignty”, “Positive images of the future”, “European sovereignty”, “Digital ownership”, “Decentralization”, “Human 1.0 in Web 4.0”, and “Shaping Democracy”.With our Board of Experts, we will work with top-class experts on each of the core topics in working groups to discuss the current status of development and derive future approaches to define them as the content basis for our projects and European events.
Current position papers of our foundation
The members of our Board of Experts have published 6 position papers on the core topics of our foundation with more than 50 pages of content. Another 5 position papers are currently in preparation.
Quotes from our experts on selected key topics:
➡️ Legally Secure Space by Anna Graf
“In summary, a flexible, forward-looking, and collaborative approach to regulating metaverse and Web3 technologies is essential to navigate the complex legal landscape and ensure the protection of fundamental rights.”
➡️ Positive Future Images by Dr. Isabella Herrmann
“The scenarios of futures we would like to live in can, on the one hand, serve as a starting point for “backcasting,” i.e., working backward from the desired outcome to describe events that lead to the desirable future, and in this way identify necessary policies. Second, science fiction stories can be written based on the positive future scenarios to make the future worlds emotionally tangible.”
➡️ European Sovereignty by Dr. phil. Martin C. Wolff
“Such a place rightly bears the name Metaverse: The combination of manifold possibilities with a clear regulatory framework and concept of values. The opposite of arbitrariness is not concern, but responsibility. Responsibility means answering to someone; someone from other milieus, industries, and departments; from other stove-pipes and horizons of experience.”
➡️ Protecting the identities by Louis Rosenberg
“…This background is intended to underscore the concern that regulators and policymakers who have underestimated the possibility that social media influence campaigns are far more effective, powerful, and harmful than those deployed in traditional print media, radio, or television are now similarly underestimating the increased power, effectiveness, and danger of interactive influence campaigns that may be deployed in the near future through metaverse technologies and conversational AI.”
➡️ Mental Self-Control by Prof. Dr. Thomas Metzinger
“Who controls the scarce resource of attention generated by our biological brains – ourselves or an American tech company? Questions like these are absolutely central to the culture of consciousness of the future. In the metaverse, such questions will arise once again in a different, more intensified form than in the “old” social media.”
➡️ Metaverse and web3 by Lennart Blödorn
“No one wants a decentralized financial system that uses data to determine people’s ethnicity as a metric for their creditworthiness. Right now, we are at the beginning of the development of virtual value creation and a new token age. This gives us the freedom as a society to have a say in what that evolution can look like.”
