"This week in the ➡️ #Metaverse" #49
February 13, 2024
Dear person reading:
What is on your mind this week? Here in Argentina we are living through turbulent moments endangering our democracy, and attending a historical strike. Also Argentina became #1 in the world again. Futbol? nah, inflation… Coincidence or not, I started reading The King in Yellow . What about you?
Thanks for reading, as always! And onwards with your weekly roundup of the relevant trends, regulatory developments and policy insights, about the metaverse, AI, crypto, neurotech, and gaming.
👁️🗨️What's going on:
🍎 => It’s Apple’s world and we are all living in it
A most awaited launch in the XR community, the Apple Vision Pro is here and this is whay people is saying:
WIRED: The Apple Vision Pro Lives Deep in the Uncanny Valley
It's a beautiful machine, but its true potential may not be realized for some time.
and also: Apple’s Vision Pro Is Trying to Solve a Nearly Unsolvable ProblemWatching long-form video in a headset sucks.
TOM’s GUIDE: Apple Vision Pro review: A revolution in progress
Pros and Cons by Tom’s Guide, always worthwhile watching this video THE GUARDIAN: Think Apple’s Vision Pro headset makes you look like Neo in The Matrix? Sorry, you so don’t
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Stop Wearing Vision Pro Goggles While Driving Your Tesla, U.S. Says
ARS TECHNICA: What I learned from the Apple Store’s 30-minute Vision Pro demo
For all the "wows" that were included, the Vision Pro demo was perhaps most interesting for what it didn't include. There was no mention of syncing with an existing MacBook display or of using the headset in any productive capacity. There was also no mention of Apple Arcade or other interactive gaming experiences.
Why you'll need a VPN for the Vision Pro (and other XR headsets)
ZDNet asks what's the universal killer app for these novelty devices? (and I know the answer you might be thinking, I see you!) but no, its not that…
The answer is travel and living or working in a constrained space.
Using headsets like Quest 3 and Vision Pro could have negative effects, finds new field study
The study, titled "Seeing the World through Digital Prisms: Psychological Implications of Passthrough Video Usage in Mixed Reality", by Researchers at Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL)
The authors conclude that while passthrough technology may be impressive and suitable for many applications, it may also have negative consequences, including visual aftereffects, lapses in distance judgments, simulator sickness, and "social absence".
More on => mixed-news.com
"We recommend caution and restraint for companies lobbying for daily use of these headsets, and urge scholars to rigorously and longitudinally study this phenomenon,"
Inside the metaverse meetups that let people share on death, grief, and pain
“Death Q&A,” is a space with a unique combination of anonymity and togetherness, where avatars discuss what weighs on them most heavily.
More on => technologyreview.com
Ex-Apple exec launches AI-powered specs
The central feature of the audio-enabled glasses is a multimodal generative AI voice assistant dubbed Noa. The start-up has backing from Niantic CEO John Hanke. The AI assistant uses OpenAI for visual analysis, Whisper for translation, and Perplexity for web search
More on => axios.com
Image: Brilliant Labs
🤖I Am Not A Robot: AI news
Google’s Gemini assistant is a fantastic and frustrating glimpse of the AI future
Gemini isn’t nearly as good of a conversationalist as ChatGPT, but its ability to hook into Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Docs is what makes it really interesting.
More on => theverge.com
Sam Altman Seeks Trillions of Dollars to Reshape Business of Chips and AI
OpenAI chief pursues investors including the U.A.E. for a project possibly requiring up to $7 trillion
More on => wsj.com
OpenAI's Eve humanoids make impressive progress in autonomous work
Norwegian humanoid robot maker 1X is the manufacturer that OpenAI put its chips behind last year, as part of a US$25-million Series A funding round.
A new video posted last week shows android-ish mobile manipulators doing a wide variety of tasks leveraging end-to-end neural networks
More on => spectrum.ieee.org
This AI Model Is Trained On Public Domain Stills To Create Mickey Mouse Images
Mickey-1928, is an AI model developed by Pierre-Carl Langlais, head of research at Opsci, a French AI research lab
More on => arstechnica.com
How an algorithm denied food to thousands of poor in India’s Telangana
It adopted AI in welfare schemes to weed out ineligible ones, but has wrongfully removed thousands of legitimate ones.
The algorithm incorrectly flagged an 67-year-old widow, Bismillah Bee. When the COVID-19 pandemic was raging in India and her husband’s cancer had peaked, Bee was running between government authorities to convince them that she did not own a car and that she indeed was poor.
The authorities did not trust her – they believed their algorithm. Her fight to get her rightful subsidised food supply reached the Supreme Court of India.
More on => aljazeera.com
AI chatbots take aim at human loneliness
A startup best known for offering AI companions for romance and friendship is expanding into coaching, yoga and meditation — the latest in the AI industry's effort to encourage personal relationships with chatbots.
More on =>axios.com
🤦The WTF award of the week goes to…
Deepfake scammer walks off with $25 million in first-of-its-kind AI heist
A report from the South China Morning Post revealed a significant financial loss suffered by a multinational company's Hong Kong office, amounting to HK$200 million (US$25.6 million), due to a sophisticated scam involving deepfake technology.
The scam featured a digitally recreated version of the company's chief financial officer, along with other employees, who appeared in a video conference call instructing an employee to transfer funds.
More on => arstechnica.com
An Australian news channel has come under fire after it doctored an image of a female state MP that enlarged her breasts and exposed her midriff.
Nine News apologised and claimed "automation by Photoshop" was to blame.
More on => bbc.com
😬Meme corner:
🧠Neurotech:
Elon Musk Says Neuralink Has Implanted Its Chip in a Human for the First Time
Elon Musk says that the first person has received a neural implant from his controversial brain chip startup Neuralink. Musk revealed the information in a tweet posted on his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter). The tweet reads merely:
More on => gizmodo.com
yes, but also …
✍️Ending nugget:
“Lack of trust in the technology industry is often cited as a reason why people (particularly marginalized people) opt-out of data collection efforts - even when these efforts are in support of potentially beneficial purposes like algorithmic fairness assessments. As a response, the tech industry is increasingly focused on building trust between users and AI systems. While this sentiment is aspirational, it’s difficult to trust tech companies when we lack basic data protection. In the US, for example, we have essentially no data rights. Why should we trust an organization to collect our identity data when what they choose to do with that information is basically up to their discretion? Trust is only possible when policy protections help to reduce the power imbalance between us and industry”
Eliza McCullough, Research Lead for Fairness, Transparency, and Accountability at Partnership on AI"
That’s all for now! To continue the conversation, find me at https://linktr.ee/abogamer. And if you want to support my work, my coffee (and feed my cats :)🐱 please consider sharing and subscribing to this newsletter!!
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