Geoff just asked me how I would see AI making the Metaverse compelling.
I answered and while doing so I thought I might just as well share this with you all, because this, to be honest, is just the tip of the iceberg and only my humble take on the topic. Please feel free to discuss in the comments!
So, why do I see AI making the Metaverse compelling?
Because of at least 3 key-developments:
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VIRTUAL CHARACTERS:
Imagine NPCs without a script wandering digital 3D spaces. But not just walking around. Players can actually talk to them and they would answer to any input coherently. And, because each of these entities has their own „Life“, they are prone to follow mundane daily activities which also includes cooperating with other NPCs when needed. The only thing they were given was a short textual description of their character and life circumstances. AI would do the rest. Basically it is like „Westworld“ but within a contained virtual environment.
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PROCEDURAL WORLD BUILDING:
NVIDIA already demoed how, once designers created a snippet of a virtual environment, AI would „auto-complete“ additional virtual spaces in a virtual world. But even before that, games like „No Man’s Sky“ already proved that you can indeed create entire Galaxies with procedural methods with a simple Seed (a string of numbers) at its core. The game uses parametric generation equations that mimic natural forms in nature, such as L-systems that can create any types of natural form. The universe of No Man’s Sky is populated by more than 18 quintillion procedurally-generated planets (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 or 2^64 to be exact) of many sizes, colours, and biomes. Each planet orbits a star, creating a cycle of day and night. Each star system has up to 6 planets or moons. EVERYTHING created via procedural methods.
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LIMITLESS (digital) SPACE:
With companies like „Improbable“ the Metaverse will be platform agnostic. Improbable is a British technology company that focuses on the development of distributed computing and large-scale simulations. They are the creators of SpatialOS, a platform designed to enable the creation of massive, complex, and persistent virtual worlds for various applications, such as multiplayer games, virtual reality, and simulations for various industries. And make no mistake. AI definitely plays a huge role here as well. Just think of the server balancing and persistence tracking of any and all items and characters within these simulated worlds.
So, in summary:
If you put all these technologies into perspective (and there are definitely more than the ones I just mentioned), the Metaverse will be an amazing place to be in a not-so-far future ahead. People will want to use these spaces for teaching, learning, entertainment, business and socializing. I have no doubt about that. And the way AI and with it the entire tech stack is currently racing into the future all of this may be closer than we want to think with our lizard brains. ;-P