🌟 Sunday Edition: Tim Sweeny's (Epic Games) vision of an open metaverse; Meta is developing its own search engine; The downside of the White House's AI memorandum.
Occasional writing about how the metaverse will change everything. By day, I’m building Supersocial as a next-gen metaverse studio and creative agency. By night, I’m publishing the Into The Metaverse podcast and newsletter.
From Into The Metaverse
Caught My Attention…
In a recent discussion at the GamesBeat Next 2024 event, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney emphasized that the path to an open metaverse relies on “enlightened self-interest” from tech giants, urging them to support fairer terms for developers rather than monopolistic practices. Sweeney envisions the metaverse as a seamless digital ecosystem powered by interoperable platforms where users and brands coexist across games like Fortnite, utilizing assets from Epic's new Fab marketplace. He highlighted advances in Unreal Engine 6, which aims to support massive, shardless multiplayer environments and integrate user-generated content at unprecedented scales. Sweeney sees these steps as essential in creating a "metaverse browser" where assets, avatars, and experiences transfer across platforms. Epic's collaboration with Disney on a “Disneyverse” connected to Fortnite also exemplifies the shared economy Sweeney advocates for, with cross-platform accessibility as a defining feature. Sweeney's vision also extends to AI, which he predicts will expedite development processes, enhance game creation, and help make the metaverse a central force in gaming over the coming decade.
Meta Platforms is developing its own web-crawling search engine to enable its Meta AI chatbot to deliver real-time answers on current events, reducing its reliance on Google Search and Microsoft’s Bing. This move aligns with Mark Zuckerberg's strategy to reduce dependency on other tech giants, a lesson reinforced by past challenges with Apple’s restrictions on ad revenue. To support real-time information retrieval, Meta has also partnered with Reuters to provide news content. Meta AI, already integrated across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, has grown to 185 million weekly active users, catching up to popular platforms like ChatGPT. By creating a web-indexing system, Meta aims to make its chatbot self-sufficient in providing timely responses, a competitive edge as the market for conversational AI continues to expand.
The recent White House AI memorandum emphasizes new risks from advanced AI models, including national security concerns. Still, critics argue it overlooks more immediate harms linked to existing digital platforms. While AI does introduce novel risks, many issues—like misinformation, discrimination, and mental health impacts—already exist within current social media and digital platforms, fueled by engagement-optimized algorithms. Rather than establishing entirely new regulatory bodies, updating existing frameworks, such as those governing social media and digital content, could address these overlapping issues more effectively. AI experts like Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton stress that ongoing harms, amplified by AI, require immediate attention alongside emerging risks. This memorandum’s “new AI” approach risks underplaying the role of established tech giants, where current algorithmic practices and high user engagement remain fertile ground for societal harm. Comprehensive AI regulation should prioritize transparency and safety in both AI-driven platforms and traditional tech spaces, encouraging regulatory continuity rather than a complete overhaul.
Other Reading…
AI
Meta’s AI Abundance (Stratechery)
Apple’s Low-Cost AI Strategy Wins Over Investors, Despite Risks (The Information); Also, Apple’s competition isn’t other AI companies, its smart phone makers, says Fmr. Apple executive (CNBC)
Meta announced three new cutting-edge developments in robotics and touch perception — and a new benchmark for human-robot collaboration to enable future work in this space (Meta)
How NotebookLM was created and where it’s going (Exponential View)
OpenAI plans to offer its 250 million ChaptGPT users even more services (ZDNET)
Can Startups Thrive in an Age of AI? (Harvard Business Review)
Gaming & Virtual Worlds
I Played The Kamala Harris ‘Fortnite’ Questline And Here’s What I Found (Forbes)
Roblox Q3 Earnings: Bookings Jump 34%, User Base Hits 89 Million, Raises Annual Outlook (Yahoo Finance)
How EY reinvented recruitment and onboarding with AI and the metaverse (Ragan)
Partnering with Decart: The Future of AI-Generated Experiences (Sequoia)
AR business goes all in on gamifying pro sports events (Axios)
Industrial Metaverse
The State of the Industrial Metaverse (Siemens)
On X & Linkedin…
Podcasts…
The future of AI with Microsoft AI’s CEO (Masters of Scale)
Why AI Is Underhyped with Elad Gil (Joe Lonsdale)
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