Issue #16: What you should know about the "metaverse"
The future of work might blend reality and virtual space in new ways
Headlines you shouldn’t miss
THE ECONOMIST Is a self-driving car smarter than a seven-month-old? One of the biggest problems of self-driving cars is learning a skill called “object permanence.” It’s basically the knowledge that an object still exists when it’s covered from your sight, e.g., by a blanket, person, or a truck. Babies at seven months learn this skill. The probabilistic machine learning algorithms of modern vehicles have been struggling with it. New approaches emerge to teach machines the laws of physics, and scholars made small steps forward. Yet, this basic skill remains a challenge.
NEW YORK TIMES Facebook Apologizes After A.I. Puts ‘Primates’ Label on Video of Black Men: Viewers who recently watched a video of black men in discussion with policemen and white people were prompted with the question if they want to “keep watching videos about primates.” The AI had mislabelled the men as animals. Facebook apologized and promised to work on their AI algorithm that caused the mistake and assured advancing with their AI labeling technology.
VENTURE BEAT Call center agents interested in, but wary of, automation: Call center agents have mixed feelings about AI and automation. While 41% support more AI to tackle complex customer calls, 40% are worried about losing their jobs, a study by the University of San Francisco and the startup Asapp found. Another poll highlighted that already 46% of all tasks in call center services are automated.
TECHCRUNCH ‘Autonomous accounting’ platform Vic.ai raises $50M round led by ICONIQ Growth: AI-driven accounting is on the rise. Vic.ai offers automated accounting and already serves large clients like KPMG, PwC, and the Swedish bank HSB. The prospects in finance and accounting point towards more automation. This fuelled Vic.ai’s recent funding series, raising $50 million.
FINANCIAL TIMES The battle over the future of work is about autonomy: Columnist Emma Jacobs argues that the determining schism of the future of work is mainly about the degree of autonomy workers experience. Research suggests that a higher degree of work autonomy is linked to higher satisfaction and decreased stress levels, but autonomy is mostly available to workers in white-collar jobs. Jacobs believes that blue-collar workers could experience more autonomy, too, but employers appear reluctant to grant them this level of freedom.
ZDNET Facial recognition vending machine pizza (that's ... really good): The startup Piestro is developing a pizza vending machine that prepares artisanal pizza on the spot. The company has paired up with PopID, which develops payment solutions via facial recognition. Customers shall be able to pay with their faces — fully contactless.
Wrap-up of the week: Is the “metaverse” just a hype or the future of work?
💡 The idea of the metaverse sounds like something that could only exist in sci-fi novels and was coined by author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book “Snow Crash”: A space mixing virtual and augmented reality where people can meet and engage with each other. The metaverse idea has recently gained a lot of popularity due to social distancing and remote work.
🥽 While the metaverse doesn’t exist yet, companies like Microsoft and Nvidia have been pushing towards virtual spaces. Facebook recently announced its new digital workspace, which can be accessed via virtual reality goggles and is supposed to make the work experience more collaborative.
🤝 Various players are pushing for digital avatars moving within the metaverse. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang recently held a speech from his kitchen, which his digital 3D twin presented. Other companies like UK-based Synthesia want to make realistic digital avatars accessible. This could allow people to have more realistic experiences of remote events and networking.
🗨️ John Hanke, the head of Niantic (the company behind Pokémon Go), believes the metaverse will be about convenience and incorporating movement into our lives. In his view, we might be moving towards the metaverse: “Reflecting back on the pandemic, there was certainly a lot of delivery food and Netflix and Amazon shopping done, but there was also a huge amount of walking—people getting reconnected to their neighborhoods.”
🤔 The goal around the discussion about the metaverse is clear: People want to bridge the gaps of social distancing and experience exchange and collaboration in a meaningful way. While companies develop holograms and deep fakes the emulate real people, Christina Wasson, professor of anthropology at the University of North Texas, is cautious about the new advancements. She points out that video conferencing has been available for decades but only reached a mass market with Zoom. Additionally, she doubts that replication of reality is a reasonable disruption. To her, the focus should lie on technologies that deliver impact. Zoom meetings allow you to read a person’s emotions on the face. A digital clone might hide crucial information.
Quote of the week: An optimistic view on AI
Steve Vasallo, General Partner at Foundation Capital, shares his optimistic view on AI. He believes that “Artificial intelligence isn’t a Sarah Connor-killing, jobs-eradicating threat.” Instead, he sees new opportunities improving our lives already today:
The worthwhile possibilities with AI are endless. Think of a prediction system for farmers that provides real-time recommendations for increasing the productivity of their yield—including which crops to plant, the best areas to grow them, the amount of nitrogen the soil requires. Or an AI-based fraud-detection solution for banks, which monitors hundreds of millions of daily transactions to identify patterns of likely financial criminal activity. Think of “deepfake” images and videos created with the use of AI and so increasingly sophisticated that only with the use of the technology can they be revealed. Or imagine the potential of truly personalized medicine: drugs being discovered and created 10 times faster than it now takes, for a patient set so small that it would be diseconomic for today’s pharmaceutical companies. All of these applications of AI are in some stage of already happening now.
Recommendation of the week: Top economist Daron Acemoglu’s new book is coming out — and he urges us to be mindful of AI
In his new book "Redesigning AI”, economist Daron Acemoglu (Massachuessetts Institute of Technology) argues that the threats for job markets, civic liberties, and democracy created by AI can still be mitigated.
Acemoglu criticizes the uneven consequences of AI, leading to job loss on one end of the spectrum and creating new domains of work on the other end. Yet, there is time to navigate through the technological advancements reducing the risk of mass unemployment by automation. Acemoglu argues that we can’t be fully sure if the market is favoring the rights advancements. Therefore, policies and measures supporting the fruitful coexistence of AI and humans are needed. Read an excerpt from his new book on the website of the MIT Management Sloan School.