The Metaverse: how it matters... and enables superintelligent

The Metaverse is a term used to refer to 3D virtual worlds. The Accelerating Studies Foundation has a project called the Metaverse Roadmap Project with the goal of analyzing the state of different such worlds today, and their directions and influences for the future. The Metaverse notion seems to me hugely important. However, I have a sense the some big – perhaps the largest – influences on the future Metaverse are missing from our current concept of it. The Metaverse Roadmap has a Wiki site inviting contributions. I recently posted to that Wiki here… but since it’s a Wiki, have copied that post below.

There is a very large sector of current "virtual world" activity which has been largely ignored by MVR because it is not, today, represented in any 3D, or even graphical form. There is, however, I think, a strong case to be made that this activity will come to dominate the Metaverse of 2016.

That sector is the set of all Internet-based representations of real people, businesses and objects - including software and services - for the purpose of accomplishing real communications and transactions between one another. This corresponds, in a sense, to the "Mirror Worlds" notion in MVR. It is, however, much broader and more valuable, because it encompasses the full set of Net-intermediated interactions between them, rather than limiting it to those that already, today, have some 3D visualization component. In particular, it includes all Internet-based e-commerce, B2B and B2C, all P2P communications (voice, chat and email), and all social networking.

This might seem an unhelpful broadening of the MVR concept. However, these technologies have the potential to converge with the Metaverse as currently defined to the extent that a visualization "layer" or "toolset" gives them a Metaverse presence - whether or not that's intended by the owner of those technologies, or the other participants in those interactions. For example, an individual Metaverse user might, for their own reasons, prefer to remain in a Metaverse environment for all their interactions, including those with non-Metaverse users via those "legacy" technologies. In a business setting, Metaverse visualizations might enhance the usability of systems involving complex sets of partners, relationships, products and services. Indeed, 3D visualization tools already exist for certain logistics and supply chain applications. People or businesses that consciously created their Metaverse instantiation or avatar would of course have more control of its behaviors. It's important to point out, though, that in many cases that would have nothing to do with 3D or graphics - the focus first would in most cases likely be on those attributes that mattered in the context of their important relationships, such as the richness of types of interaction that were possible with their online presence.

While this convergence may still be some way off, its arrival, if, as and when it happens, could rapidly dominate the pre-existing Metaverse for two reasons. One, the number of such individually identifiable and addressable entities or objects in the real economy and society is vastly greater than that in "pure 3D" virtual worlds. And two, the intensity of engagement and variety of relationships between those entities and objects will be vastly greater, because it encompasses an increasingly large proportion of what most real people and businesses spend their days and lives doing. The Metaverse economy and society thus becomes not an interesting adjunct to that in the real world, but rather subsumes it, at least for those who choose to experience it that way.

From a systems perspective, there are a few major pieces of infrastructure that remain unbuilt, for the most part. The Metaverse visualization layer is one obvious one.  More interesting though, perhaps, are (i) Human-computer interfaces (e.g. conversational interfaces) that couple software more tightly to their human users; (ii) creating a software-addressable "Internet proxy" for every software instance (and thereby also for their human users), and (iii) integration systems and standards that enable broad and easy interoperability between those Internet proxies. More technically, this broad and easy interoperability requires (a) broad discoverability of different entities (via registries), (b) definitions of the set of possible interactions between them (standards and APIs, official and de facto), and (c) integration and translation software and service systems.

The notion of interoperability could be seen as redefining what language is a Metaverse context. In some cases, that might approximate or support human language (perhaps enhanced with session management or tagging). In other cases, interactions might mostly be occurring between software entities, with only a relatively small element of human-oriented content. Indeed, it might be predicted that the volume of Metaverse conversations is likely to follow that of Internet traffic broadly, where voice (human-oriented) traffic has declined to less than 1%, with data being most of the rest. The bulk of that even, is machine driven, as opposed to human-consumed "data" such as music or video.The Metaverse, as here, more broadly defined, has the potential to be a very-fast accelerating driver of change. Arguably, it will be the fastest - faster than the nano or any other technology sphere - given the combinatorial explosion of potential interactions, and the speed with which such connections could be established.

It could also be argued that this Metaverse is what the Strong AI of the future will really look like.  It has the essential structures of intelligence that we observe in the brain - vastly diverse and flexible connections between different subsystems (neurons and higher level subsystems).  It has the characteristics of massively technology-enhanced scale and speed of processing that we expect from Strong AI.  Strong AI purists might object to the significant role in this Metaverse system of entities that 'are' (or at least represent) human beings.  However, I'd suggest that for the purposes of functional effectiveness, that doesn't matter.  This is a system of loosely coupled subsystems - it shouldn't matter what's inside those systems - i.e. whether they are in fact human or software.  From the Metaverse (or Strong AI) perspective, everything is an addressable object, each with its own set of supported interactions, and service levels or response times associated with those interactions.  In the diverse ecology and economy of this future Metaverse, humans and software entities all find their niche and role.