Generative AI + The Metaverse

June 9, 2023

Generative AI has totally changed “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once,” like this year’s Oscar winning film. Besides dozens of instant GenAI tips, cheat sheets, classes and schools, people are asking: What will be the impacts? How will I be affected? What should I do? This period reminds of 1994 with the rise of the commercial Internet, except it’s moving faster since more people are online.

Business AI: This one is a no-brainer. Forbes recently surveyed executives and found that 70% plan to use GenAI to streamline their operations and reduce costs. The key areas will be identifying potential problems, threats, supply chain bottlenecks and likely competitors. ChatGPT content is old, limited to November 2021, so it’s great for summaries and fast coding, but not recent analyses or forecasts.

Training and Education AI: Employees and students are already using the many GenAI tools for everything, but its major value is as a tutor to structure and organize existing content into a skeleton of knowledge, even though the details and facts may be wrong or distorted. However, its speed allows for rapid iterations.

Climate Action AI: My focus is climate where I see major rethinking and restructuring the way we view, analyze and prepare for climate chaos and disasters. Instead of passively waiting for bad news, we will be running what-if scenarios, especially worst-case scenarios from all possible perspectives to avoid missing major issues. Since ChatGPT merely summarizes existing content, it is viewed as a neutral compilation of ideas, even though embedded biases tilt it toward business-as-usual (BAU) and activist disaster scenarios, with less subtle variations among various communities. For example, how would families change their choice of lifestyles and residence due to wildfires? But a climate AI boom is coming. Why? Some $120+ trillion in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) funding is sitting on the sideline due to greenwashing and awaiting clear rules. Once they are established, innovators will race to attract capital.

Metaverse AI: This is the big question mark among VR/AR creators since GenAI is such a game changer. One of my startup, Aimedis.io, has used AI avatars for personalized medicine in Europe since 2017, which is very fast and convenient for doctors and patients. With VR/AR, avatars could be 3D; with GenAI, you could talk to it and get answers or program it to represent you. Useful 3D applications are mostly in the enterprise, such as AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction), medicine, and corporate training, with consumer use cases still limited to gaming and some STEAM (STEM + Arts) education.

Where will GenAI take us this year? My bet is that the 2,300 new GenAI startups will flood and confuse us, but most users will stick to the top two or three, so startups will have to focus on niches to survive the coming market shakeout. ChatGPT, Bing and LifeJourney will be leaders, with Google, Apple, Samsung and other tech giants trying to get into the game. We’ll see lots of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) as the market quickly consolidates since GenAI is moving in real time. ChatGPT hit $30 billion valuation in 6 weeks, which used to take up to 10 years in the past, so expect many unicorns this year and in 2024.

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Dreamscape Global focuses on imagining and designing the future by combining VR storytelling, urban and environmental planning, and VR visualization and digital twins.

Let’s invent a better world together!

Contact: smtatsuno@gmail.com or sheridan@dreamscapeglobal.com

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