This week is Siggraph 2022 where Nvidia will be doing one of the main things.
While on the consumer side the Metaverse has industrial uses, outside of gaming, which has effectively included Metaverse instances over the years, at Siggraph Nvidia will talk about its leadership in integrating AI into technology, the creation and application of digital twins, and successes. . In major new robotic factories such as the one made by BMW with the help of Siemens.
But what I find even more interesting is that as metaverse tools like Nvidia’s Omniverse become more consumer friendly, the ability to use AI and human digital twins is enabling us to create our own worlds where We Let the rules dictate and where our AI-powered digital twins will simulate real people and animals.
At that point, I expect we’ll need to learn what it means to be gods of the world we’ve created, and I doubt we’re prepared anywhere, in terms of the addictive nature of such products and the way these metaverses become virtual. How to create a world in a way that can form the basis of our own digital immortality.
Let’s explore the capabilities of the Metaverse this week, then we’ll end with our product of the week: the Microsoft Surface Duo 2.
Sigraph and the AI-powered metaverse
If you’ve participated in multiplayer video games like Warcraft, you’ve experienced a rudimentary form of the metaverse. You also found that objects that do things in the real world – like doors and windows that open, leaves that move with the wind, and people who behave like people – don’t exist yet.
With the introduction of digital twins and physics through tools like Nvidia’s Omniverse, this is changing so that reality-dependent simulations, such as those developed by autonomous cars and robots, work accurately and assure that humans or Potential accidents are reduced without putting real animals at risk. Because those accidents initially happen in a virtual world.
At SIGGRAPH, Nvidia will talk about the Metaverse’s current capabilities and its near future, where for a time, money and greatest capabilities will be tied to industrial, not entertainment, use.
For that purpose, the need to make an observer feel as though they are in a real world, outside of simulations intended to train people, is largely reduced. But training humans is also a goal of simulations, and creating human digital twins will be an important step forward in our ability to use AI of the future to handle the ever-increasing amount of repetitive and annoying portions of our workloads.
It is my belief that the next major breakthrough in human productivity will be the ability of regular people to create digital twins of their own that can perform an increasing number of tasks autonomously. Auto-fill is a very, very early milestone on this path that will eventually allow us to create virtual clones of ourselves that can cover for us or significantly increase our reach.
Nvidia is at the forefront of this technology. For anyone wanting to know what the Metaverse is capable of doing today, attending Siggraph Keynote should virtually be on your important to-do list.
But if we project 20 or so years into the future, given the enormous pace of development in this space, our ability to immerse ourselves in virtual worlds will increase, as well as our ability to create these existences. Worlds where physics as we know it is not only optional, but where we can choose to put ourselves in “God Mode” and walk through virtual worlds as the ultimate rulers of the virtual spaces we’ve created. Huh.
immersion is important
While we’ll have intermediate stages using prosthetics that use more advanced forms of haptics to make us feel like we’re immersed in these virtual worlds, it’s like Elon Musk’s attempt to create better human-machine interfaces. that will make a real difference.
By connecting directly to the brain, we should be able to create experiences that are indistinguishable from the real world and place us far more realistically in these alternate realities.
Meta Reality Labs is researching and developing haptic gloves to bring the sense of touch to the metaverse of the future.
Yet, as we gain the ability to create these worlds ourselves, changing these connections to provide more reality (e.g. experiencing pain in battle) will be optional, allowing us to walk through encounters. As if we were super powers.
human digital twin
One of the biggest problems with video games is that NPCs, no matter how good the graphics, use very limited scripts. They don’t learn, they don’t change, and they’re barely more capable than the animatronics at Disneyland.
But with the creation of human digital twins, we will gain the ability to populate the created world with more realistic citizens.
Imagine being able to present the Digital Twin you create to others and license them to be used in companies or games made by them. These NPCs will be based on real people, will respond more realistically to changes, potentially be able to learn and grow, and will not be tied to your gender or even your physical appearance.
For example what about Talking Dragon based on your digital twin? You can also populate the created Metaverse world with a large number of clones that have been altered to look like a diverse population, including animals.
Practical applications will include everything from virtual classrooms with virtual teachers to police and military training with virtual partners against virtual criminals – all based on real people, providing the ability to train with an unlimited number of realistic scenarios.
For example, for a police officer, one of the hardest things to train is domestic disturbance. These collisions can go all the way sideways. I know of many instances where a police officer stepped in to protect the abusing spouse and then was spotted by the same spouse who suddenly decided to defend her husband from the officer.
Today I read a story about a rookie who approached a legally armed citizen who was on his property. The officer was almost shot because he tried to seduce a civilian who had not broken any laws. He was all set to kill the civilian officer if it had happened. For this the officer was fired but he could have died.
Being able to train in situations like this can help ensure the safety of both the civilian and the officer.
Wrapping Up: God Mode
Anyone who has ever played a game in God Mode knows that it really destroys a lot of the game’s value. Yes, you can burn through the game in a fraction of the time, but it’s like buying a book and then reading a comprehensive summary with no spoilers. Most of the fun of a game is figuring out puzzles and working through challenges.
“Westworld” explored what might happen if virtual people, who were created to emulate humans, found out they had been abused. To be realistic, these creations would need to emulate the full flow of pain, suffering, and emotion, and it’s certainly a remote possibility that they could kick off their schedule.
However, another possibility is that people fully immersed in God Mode may not be able to differentiate between what they can do in the virtual world and the real world. This can result in some bad behavior in the real world.
I think we will find that there will be a clearer delineation between those who want to create viable worlds and treat those worlds beneficially, and those who want to create worlds that allow them to explore their distorted fantasies and occult desires. allow.
This can be a way to determine if someone has the right personality to be a leader, as it would be so easy to abuse power in the virtual world, and the tendency to abuse power is for anyone who goes into management. Should be a big red flag.
We’re still decades away from this potential, but we should start thinking about the limits of using this technology for entertainment so that we don’t create a significant group of people who don’t see others as different from virtual people who don’t. They misbehave in the twisted world. they will make.
What kind of metaverse god would you be?
Surface Duo 2
I’ve been using the Surface Duo 2 for several months now and it remains my favorite phone. I’m amazed at how many people came up to me to ask me about the phone and then said, when I shared with them what it does, they want to buy one.
This has huge advantages when consuming emails with attachments or links. The attachment or link opens on another screen without interrupting the flow of reading the email that it delivered. Just like using the phone when you’re opening a website that requires two-factor authentication. The authentication app is on another screen, so you don’t have to go back and try to locate the screen you were working on, preserving the workflow again.
For reading, it reads and holds like a book with two virtual pages, one on each screen. While I thought I might have problems watching videos due to the gap between the screens, I have been watching videos on both screens for some time now and unlike my issues of using dual screen monitors where I find the separation annoying , it’s not the difference. Doesn’t bother me at all.
Ideally this phone works best with a headset or smartwatch, such as the Apple Watch, so you can talk and listen – as it’s awkward to hold this form factor on its head. However, many of us somehow use the speakerphone feature on our smartphones and the Surface Duo 2 works fine that way.
In the end, I think it shows why with a revolutionary device – such as the iPhone was, and there is the Surface Duo 2 – it needs a lot of smart marketing for people to really understand the benefits of a different design. Otherwise they won’t get it.
Remember that the iPhone design, which previously emulated the failed LG Prada phone, was supported by a lot of marketing, while Prada, even though it initially had a strong luxury brand, was not.
Nonetheless, Microsoft’s Surface Duo 2 remains my favorite smartphone. This is really awesome – and my product of the week.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.