Metaverse, Artificial Intelligence and Real Life

Motto: “By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it”. Eliezer Yudkowsky (American AI researcher)

On 4 October 2024, the last day of the autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), in a half-empty Hemicycle of the Palace of Europe in Strasbourg, one of the most interesting resolutions I have witnessed at the Council of Europe (CoE) was adopted: “Risks and Opportunities of the Metaverse” (PACE resolution 2578/2024).

Introducing the resolution, the rapporteur, Andi-Lucian Cristea, a member of the Romanian Parliament, asked a fundamental question: “As we step into new frontier, we need to think carefully about the kind of world we want to build for future generations. Technology is a tool, an interface between out biology and the world, but is also becoming the medium in which we live. We are used to interactions in the physical realm, but are we prepared for the interactions that will dominate in the metaverse?”

While the internet democratized information, the metaverse democratizes experiences. It creates an immersive, persistent and interoperable digital environment using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Both technologies are based ongathering huge amounts of information and have the capacity to access sensitive personal data such as movements of eyes, expressions of face and gestures of body, which may lead to privacy invasion and even identity theft.

Therefore, PACE resolution looks at how metaverse could alter social interaction, and its potential threat to free speech, human rights and democracy: “The Assembly is convinced that international cooperation among governments, as well as their collaboration with the private sector and researchers are essential to address the complexities of metaverse technology, with the aim to prevent monopolies, agree on code of ethics for publicly funded metaverse projects, promote compliance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, sign and ratify the CoE Framework Convention on Artificial intelligence and Human rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, and put in place limitations on certain uses of AI deemed incompatible with human rights.”

Metaverse is already part of today’s business landscape, as the size of the global market of virtual worlds is estimated to generate over 800 billion euro by 2030. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when travel and in person contact was limited, Lufthansa developed a Virtual Table Inspection of engine parts. Based on 5G wireless connectivity, real-time high-resolution video allowed virtual inspection of dismantled engines and enabled joint decision about the inspected components between specialists located in a wide geographic area.

Mark Zuckenberg, who three years ago rebranded his company Facebook to Meta, offered a vision on this future: “Pretty soon, I think we are going to be at a point where you are going to be there physically with some of your friends, and others will be there digitally as avatars or holograms, and they will feel just present as everyone else”.

With the focus turning to Artificial Intelligence, which is considered a paradigm shift in the tech world, metaverse may lose some of its attraction. The Walt Disney Companyclosed down its metaverse division, while Elon Musk compared the metaverse to “a disease that infected the world, and the world has just overcome this disease and is in the process of recovering from it”.

But the metaverse uses AI and the speed of change in the digital world is breathtaking:the first generation of World Wide Web, Web 1.0, was originally conceived to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists around the world. Itscurrent version, Web 2.0, the internet we all use, has established tech companies’control over the platforms. The next generation, Web 3.0, will be built on decentralized blockchains, creating a digital ecosystem where users have both the ownership and governance over platforms.

Work is already in progress on Web 4.0, the “Intelligent Web”, which will combine AI, machine learning, the Internet of Things, VR and AR. Researchers have started to think about Web 5.0, the “Telepathic Web”, an idea with no exact definition but which is said to combine Web 2.0 with Web 3.0 in a decentralized, peer-to-peer vision of the web.The story could continue with Web 6.0, the “Internet of Senses”, where users are supposed to be able to smell, feel and taste things in a digital world, or Web 7.0, imagined as a universal, solution for the internet’s digital identity and trust problems…

AI and virtual worlds are entering into our daily life, blending with the physical world. Ensuring their governance is rising fundamental questions of jurisdiction, enforcement and accountability, as they are just too big to be regulated by any one country on its own. Therefore, international cooperation is needed to develop clear and universally accepted concepts and definitions, requiring states, tech companies, the United Nationsand regional organizations like EU and CoE to join their efforts and act in synergy.

On 12 July 2024, the EU adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act (Regulation 2024/1689), with the aim to: “harmonize the legal framework for the development, the placing on the market, the putting into service and the use of artificial intelligence systems”. The EU AI Act bans certain AI practices which are harmful, abusive and in contradiction with EU values, such as: “the deployment of subliminal AI techniques beyond a person’s consciousness, or purposefully manipulative or deceptive techniques, with the objective, or the effect of, materially distorting human behavior.”

The first-ever international legally binding treaty on AI is the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, signed in Vilnius on 5 September 2024. Negotiated by all 46 CoE membercountries, CoE observer states (Canada, Japan, Mexico, the Holy See and the USA), and several non-member states (Australia, Costa Rica, Israel, Peru and Uruguay), the Framework Convention covers the use of AI systems by public authorities and private actors, and ask that: “activities within the lifecycle of AI systems must comply with the following fundamental principles: human dignity and individual autonomy; equality and non-discrimination; respect for privacy and personal data protection; transparency and oversight; accountability and responsibility; reliability; and safe innovation.”

In September 2024, the UN High Level Advisory Body on AI released the report “Governing AI for Humanity”, which asserts: “AI presents challenges and opportunities which require a holistic, global approach, cutting transversally across political, economic, social, ethical, human rights, technical, and environmental domains… AI governance must be universal and anchored in the UN Charter, international human rights law, and other international commitments such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals”.

AI promises to be a useful tool in many aspects of our lives. For instance, experts from the Universities of Nottingham, Bradford and Stanford used AI programs for deep feature analysis of Raphael’s painting Madonna della Rosa, which hangs in the Museo del Prado, in Madrid, and they discovered that while most of the painting is indeed by Raphael, the face of St. Joseph is painted by someone else. It is a proof that the computer sees far more deeply than the human eye. Today, AI can only be employed in art authentication together with a human understanding of the historical context. But what will happen when the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI – machines that can understand the world as humans do) will become reality?

The increasing role AI plays in searching new economic models for the transition away from fossil fuels suggests that it may also become a powerful instrument of foreign policy. If AI systems will be able to stimulate high economic growth, or to develop newweapons, then AI could affect the global balance of power. We are entering the age of Artificial Intelligence Diplomacy, similar to what Oil Diplomacy represented for more than a century.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, wrote a little while ago: “In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents. We are more capable not because of genetic change, but because we benefit from the infrastructure of society being way smarter and more capable than any one of us; society itself is a form of advanced intelligence. Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is paved with computer, energy, and human will. If we don’t build enough infrastructure, AI will be a very limited resource that wars get fought over, and that becomes mostly a tool for rich people.” (“The Intelligence Age”, 23 September 2024).

In an article published in November 2023 (“Metaverse: A World in a Word”), I quoted Henry Kissinger words: “Without proper moral and intellectual underpinnings, machines could control rather than amplify our humanity and trap us forever. Once these machines can communicate with each other, which will certainly happen within five years, then it becomes almost a species problem of whether the human species can retain its individuality in the face of this competition.”

Faced with this prospect, Eliezer Yudkowsky suggests a “Friendly AI”, asserting that friendliness (a desire not to harm humans) should be designed as a mechanism for evolving AI under a system of checks and balances, and to give the system utility functions that will remain friendly to humans even if the robot will learn and evolve over time. But some other people might prefer real life…

Dr. Ion I. Jinga

Strasbourg, November 2024

Note: The opinions expressed in this article do not bind the official position of the author.