"This week in the ➡️ #Metaverse" #39
July 18, 2023
"This week in the ➡️ #Metaverse" #39
Welcome to a super sized edition of your weekly roundup of the digital land(scape). AI continues to dominate the week, with pay-attention-to regulatory developments in China, and looming EU drafts for the metaverse.
As always, we bring you interesting trends, regulation and policy about the metaverse, AI, crypto, neurotech, and gaming.
👁️🗨️What's going on:
THE WEEKLY SNAPSHOT: Meta’s launch of Threads is not without controversy.
The app hit 70m sign-ups in two days and to 150m until now.
It hasn’t been launched in Europe over data privacy concerns, as the app has access to your health data, financial data, and even your location, and has been dubbed “a hacker’s dream” by cybersecurity experts.
It is reportedly full of dark patterns, with Yanko design noting at least 11.
Most infamously, it bundles both apps in a “Hotel California” way: you can not delete your Thread account without deleting also your Instagram.
Jack Dorsey (Twitter’s co-founder and currently behind another rival service called Bluesky, posted a picture of Threads’ app store listing on Tuesday with the quip “all your Threads are belong to us”.
And Elon Musk threatened (thread-tened?) to sue it over being a “clone” of Twitter.
But after the massive surge of sign-ups, the number of daily active users is having a steep decline, with people not using the platform, and complaints of timelines ridden by influencer’s nonsense. According to data analytics company Similarweb, active users on Threads dropped from 49 million to 23.6 million in just a week.
👀 => European Commission presents EU strategy to lead on Web 4.0 and virtual worlds.
One of its key pillars is shaping global standards for open and interoperable virtual worlds and Web 4.0, ensuring that they will not be dominated by a few big players.
More on => ec.europa.eu
Yuga Labs’ new CEO is betting on ‘audacious’ metaverse plans as Bored Ape prices collapse—but details of this virtual world are thin.
More on => fortune.com
🤖I Am Not A Robot: AI news
UN Security Council to hold first talks on AI risks
Britain holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council this month and has been seeking a global leadership role in AI regulation.
In June, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres backed a proposal by some artificial intelligence executives for the creation of an international AI watchdog body like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
More on => reuters.com
Meanwhile, China unveils provisional rules for generative AI, including a licensing regime. As summed up by TechCrunch:
the rules require generative AI providers to adhere to core socialist values
algorithms that can influence public opinions must be registered with the relevant authority.
algorithms must not be discriminatory based on factors such as ethnicity, gender, age, occupation or health, and should not be used for anti-competitive behavior
service providers are encouraged to create an anti-addiction system for underage users, similar to those used in videogames.
regulators have the right to know the specifics of a generative AI model, including its training data, size, type, tagging rules and algorithms
And probably the most important one is the following, because of its potential impact on intermediary liability rules on the Internet if copied by other countries:
“Service providers are responsible for identifying and stopping the generative process for illegal content, and subsequently correcting the algorithms and reporting the incident to the relevant authority.”
That means prompts into an image generator or chatbot could potentially lead to legal trouble for individuals.
AI as replacement of labor is getting harsh backlash, with greed and deaf toned proposals like the one made by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), that lead to the actor’s joining the writer’s strike.
As called by SAG-AFTRA,
“This ‘groundbreaking’ AI proposal that they gave us yesterday, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation. So if you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”
From Black Mirror`s satire to reality. On the other side of the spectrum, Wix will let you build an entire website using only AI prompts.
The US Military Is Taking Generative AI Out for a Spin
US Air Force colonel Strohmeyer says they have fed the models with classified operational information to inform sensitive questions. The long-term aim of such exercises is to update the US warhorse so it can use AI-enabled data in decision-making, sensors and ultimately firepower.
Dozens of companies, including Palantir Technologies Inc., co-founded by Peter Thiel, and Anduril Industries Inc. are developing AI-based decision platforms for the Pentagon.
(Not-so-fun-fact: Anduril and Palantir are both references to The Lord of The Rings, carrying on Peter Thiel’s tradition to subvert Tolkien’s inspiration into dystopic capitalism)
More on => bloomberg.com
From “pause” to re-start: Musk announces new AI venture
After the widely circulated open letter asking to “pause the development of large language models”, Elon Musk launched a new AI company called called xAI.
(inside note) I can’t get over the dystopic irony, considering that XAI is the acronym for Explainable AI, a field within AI that tries to develop AI models that can explain the reasoning behind the decisions or predictions made by the AI.
Talking on a Twitter space, Musk stated that his plan is to create a “maximally-curious AI” to “to understand the true nature of the universe”.
LAION AI Introduces Video2Dataset: An Open-Source Tool Designed To Curate Video And Audio Datasets Efficiently And At Scale
More on => marktechpost.com
‘World’s first mass-produced’ humanoid robot to tackle labour shortages amid ageing population
The company behind GR-1 plans to release 100 units by the end of 2023 mainly targeting robotic R&D labs. GR-1 will be able to carry patients from the bed to wheelchairs and help pick up objects.
More on => euronews.com
🤦The WTF award of the week goes to…
“Nine robots held a press conference…”
Seems the start of a joke, and… migh well end up being a bad one.
A PR stunt gathered, nine AI-enabled humanoid robots stood with their creators at a podium in a Geneva conference center for what the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union, billed as the world’s first news conference featuring humanoid social robots.
“I believe that humanoid robots have the potential to lead with a greater level of efficiency and effectiveness than human leaders. We don’t have the same biases or emotions that can sometimes cloud decision-making and can process large of data quickly in order to make the best decisions.” Sophia, U.N. robot ambassador.
More on => nationalpost.com
😬Meme corner:
🎮Gaming news
Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard but the saga continues
“FTC v. Microsoft” is over, and the judge is allowing Microsoft to close its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, by denying the FTC’s preliminary injunction request. More on => TheVerge.com
Microsoft still faces an ongoing antitrust case by the Federal Trade Commission.
It also faces challenges in the U.K., where the Competition Markets Authority blocked the deal in April. The UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal has agreed to pause proceedings while Microsoft and the Competition and Markets Authority negotiate a modified acquisition that addresses the latter's concerns. The pair now have two months before the appeals process resumes.
Microsoft and Activision are reportedly in talks to extend the deadline of their acquisition contract, which ends today, in order to clear the final regulatory hurdles. If they are unable to reach an agreement by the end of the day, they can continue to negotiate. More on => gamesindustry.biz
Xbox Launches New Voice Reporting Feature
The latest safety feature allows players to capture and report inappropriate voice activity on any multiplayer game with in-game voice chat on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.
Players who experience or witness inappropriate verbal behavior can “capture now, report later” minimizing impact to their gameplay.
Xbox’s player reporting and evidence capabilities now cover all content including text, image, video, and voice, further supporting player safety.
More on => news.xbox.com
And also Unity launched its “AI-driven toxicity detection” tool
Understanding context is AI’s Aquilles heel. When used in online content moderation, AI has proven inefficient and prone to comit mistakes by literal interpretations of the informations at hand.
Unity claims that “Safe Voice overcomes these limitations by using context-aware AI technology”. It also claims that it “can detect audio disruptions like loud music or toxic behaviors, then classify these into more than a dozen categories including obscenities, threats, insults, identity attacks, problematic speech, and verbal attacks. Safe Voice analyzes unique voice characteristics like tone, loudness, pitch, and emotion to deliver nuanced insights on both session and player-based metrics”.
🧠Neurotech:
UNESCO held its International Conference on the Ethics of Neurotechnology in Paris
The Conference featured a new study of UNESCO' shedding light on innovations in neurotechnology, key actors worldwide and key areas of development.
More on => unesco.org
✍️Ending nugget:
“The one sentence version: many scientists are curious about fruit flies, but this rarely ends well for the fruit flies”
”A Maximally Curious AI Would Not Be Safe For Humanity”
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading!
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