It's exciting and worrisome. Exciting because I agree that it is going to change long distance communication in a way that could only be imagined in a SF novel a few short years ago. Worrisome because the human capacity to turn something good to evil ends knows no limits. Let me slip on my Skojec Avatar *TM and dial in my voice modulator and contact some of his friends/acquaintances and see what kind of trouble I can get into. Tight regulation might help but there will be end arounds to nullify any attempt at regulation.
There's certainly plenty to worry about. But since this is such a game-changing development, I can't imagine it NOT coming to market, so I'm trying to keep my eyes on the upside.
It will definitely come to market. The amazing thing is that what we are seeing here is still the developmental stage. Who can imagine what it will be like a few years after hitting the market place. "Ready Player One" is motvlooking very far fetched.
Amazing achievement. But with Scott, my initial reflective reflex is in the direction of how can we trust this? Deepfakes abound already in the shallower media we're used to right now. Just considering pron and politics, possible applications come fast and furious to mind. Imagine a call center full of agents employing a faked avatar for whatever purpose. The handshake evolved from its roots as a polite pat-down on encountering another. Many of us remember the sound of the modem handshake of the pre-broadband era. What would a genuine metaverse handshake be?
I'm not sure I agree. I'm not sure there are that many subtleties that you get from seeing someone in 3D compared to just seeing someone using Zoom or Facetime or Google Meet. And yes, using Zoom is not the same as being in the same room as someone --- but neither, I would add, is strapping a set of VR Goggles on your face and seeing an illusion of someone in 3D. It's not really complete. For example, you saw in the video a 3D avatar of Mark Zuckerburg standing up. But they are both sitting down in chairs, and the legs are completely fake. Similarly, they have these VR Goggles strapped to their face, so the image of their face is synthetic; the software may be capturing the portions of the face that are not hidden by the VR device, and using that to model the person's face, but it's not actually *real*. And you can see that to some extent when you look at how the eyebrows and the forehead of the avators. It's a nice illusion, sure but in some ways, what you see in a 2D zoom conversation might be more "accurate" in some ways.
I'd also argue that having a VR goggles on is not the same as being in the same room as someone; where you can break bread with each other; where you can reach out and touch them sympathetically when they share a story that exposes some vulnerability or emotional pain.
Google has a technology called Project Starline[1][2] which doesn't require awkward VR googles, but instead, uses light-field displays[3] which allow you to see a 3-D image without need special googles or glasses. This won't allow you to do extreme virtual realities (so you might be flying through space), but if the goal is meeting with someone so that the illusion is that the person in front of you, it's much more practical. (Disclosure: I work for Google, but not on the Project Starline effort, and everything I saw is my own personal opinion, and not Google's.) At least with Project Starline, what you see is the real person, not emotions that are projected onto an Avatar that might or might not be a faithful representation of the person in real life.
However, I still claim that it's not necessary going to "revolutionize" human communication. It's a certainly an improvement over a 2D video conference link, which in turn is an improvement over a phone conversation. But it's still incremental improvements.
I agree that it's not the same thing as being in the same room with someone. But it IS the closest thing I've seen to that experience, barring the real thing. So many families are spread out across thousands of miles and only get to see each other every couple of years. This seems like it could be a great fill in. To say nothing of what it might do for other kinds of meetings/gatherings/events.
It's exciting and worrisome. Exciting because I agree that it is going to change long distance communication in a way that could only be imagined in a SF novel a few short years ago. Worrisome because the human capacity to turn something good to evil ends knows no limits. Let me slip on my Skojec Avatar *TM and dial in my voice modulator and contact some of his friends/acquaintances and see what kind of trouble I can get into. Tight regulation might help but there will be end arounds to nullify any attempt at regulation.
There's certainly plenty to worry about. But since this is such a game-changing development, I can't imagine it NOT coming to market, so I'm trying to keep my eyes on the upside.
It will definitely come to market. The amazing thing is that what we are seeing here is still the developmental stage. Who can imagine what it will be like a few years after hitting the market place. "Ready Player One" is motvlooking very far fetched.
Amazing achievement. But with Scott, my initial reflective reflex is in the direction of how can we trust this? Deepfakes abound already in the shallower media we're used to right now. Just considering pron and politics, possible applications come fast and furious to mind. Imagine a call center full of agents employing a faked avatar for whatever purpose. The handshake evolved from its roots as a polite pat-down on encountering another. Many of us remember the sound of the modem handshake of the pre-broadband era. What would a genuine metaverse handshake be?
I'm not sure I agree. I'm not sure there are that many subtleties that you get from seeing someone in 3D compared to just seeing someone using Zoom or Facetime or Google Meet. And yes, using Zoom is not the same as being in the same room as someone --- but neither, I would add, is strapping a set of VR Goggles on your face and seeing an illusion of someone in 3D. It's not really complete. For example, you saw in the video a 3D avatar of Mark Zuckerburg standing up. But they are both sitting down in chairs, and the legs are completely fake. Similarly, they have these VR Goggles strapped to their face, so the image of their face is synthetic; the software may be capturing the portions of the face that are not hidden by the VR device, and using that to model the person's face, but it's not actually *real*. And you can see that to some extent when you look at how the eyebrows and the forehead of the avators. It's a nice illusion, sure but in some ways, what you see in a 2D zoom conversation might be more "accurate" in some ways.
I'd also argue that having a VR goggles on is not the same as being in the same room as someone; where you can break bread with each other; where you can reach out and touch them sympathetically when they share a story that exposes some vulnerability or emotional pain.
Google has a technology called Project Starline[1][2] which doesn't require awkward VR googles, but instead, uses light-field displays[3] which allow you to see a 3-D image without need special googles or glasses. This won't allow you to do extreme virtual realities (so you might be flying through space), but if the goal is meeting with someone so that the illusion is that the person in front of you, it's much more practical. (Disclosure: I work for Google, but not on the Project Starline effort, and everything I saw is my own personal opinion, and not Google's.) At least with Project Starline, what you see is the real person, not emotions that are projected onto an Avatar that might or might not be a faithful representation of the person in real life.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q13CishCKXY (from 2 years ago)
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obuyCkotJ_s (from 4 months ago)
[3] https://www.holoxica.com/light-field-displays
However, I still claim that it's not necessary going to "revolutionize" human communication. It's a certainly an improvement over a 2D video conference link, which in turn is an improvement over a phone conversation. But it's still incremental improvements.
I agree that it's not the same thing as being in the same room with someone. But it IS the closest thing I've seen to that experience, barring the real thing. So many families are spread out across thousands of miles and only get to see each other every couple of years. This seems like it could be a great fill in. To say nothing of what it might do for other kinds of meetings/gatherings/events.