Bart Veenman, Humans.ai’s Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), took the stage at the ‘Creativity4Better’ event to talk about the Metaverse and draw attention to some of the challenges this virtual reality world needs to overcome to become future-proof.
While discussing the topic, the Humans.ai representative took the opportunity to talk about the company’s technology, underlining how its unique mix of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology can help support and ensure the ethical development and use of the Metaverse.
The Creativity4Better event was organized under the International Advertising Association (IAA) Global Conference umbrella and the patronage of IAA Worldwide.
A new version of the real world — Metaverse
While under the limelight, Humans.ai’s Chief Commercial Officer touched upon some thought-provoking questions related to the Metaverse like:
“What happens when we connect different extended reality worlds and create a borderless, unlimited universe?” […] “How do we make sure people feel safe?” […] “How do we make sure there is no abuse or harassment in this cyberspace?”.
The answer, in his opinion, can be found in AI NFTs, a technology that allows humans to create their own unique digital DNA that will set a path toward a safe, open, transparent, and limitless world.
According to the Dutch executive, humanity is in the middle of a powerful digital transition which will lead to the creation of a new world, an enhanced version of the real world — Metaverse. Strangely enough, no one knows exactly what the Metaverse will truly look like because it’s still a work in progress. It’s not quite here yet. What we know is that it will be a collection of interconnected virtual reality worlds that will deliver immersive experiences to its users, reshaping the way we perceive advertisement, gaming and many more industries. Overall, a giant leap toward the future.
Although companies like Meta, formerly known as Facebook, are trying to hijack the concept of the Metaverse and make it their own, Bart explains that the Metaverse does not belong to a single entity. It’s a collective goal the future we should all work towards. As a matter of fact, very early examples of the Metaverse or Metaverses have been present for some time in the gaming industry. Some popular examples are Roblox and Fortnite, the latter acting as the stage for unique music events involving top singers like Travis Scott and Ariana Grande.
The entertainment and gaming industries are only the tip of the iceberg, as the Metaverse can reshape and supercharge many industries like retail, education and healthcare. By focusing on user immersion and experience, the Metaverse can generate a lot of cool new use cases.
How to make Metaverse a safe place for future generations
Without a doubt, the Metaverse will hugely impact our lives, but if left unchecked, this new world can become a stage for unsavoury behaviour. The highly anticipated Horizon Worlds, Meta’s virtual reality social media platform, unfortunately, had its first case of harassment in the first two weeks of its beta testing. Drawing attention to this issue, Bart outlined three points that need to be addressed to make the Metaverse a safe place for future generations who will inhabit this limitless world.
The first element is reality, or more precisely, the ability to create a realistic world in which we can do anything and where we can scale our potential indefinitely. According to Bart, we can build a world like this with the help of synthetic media. To prove his point, he showcased Diana, a synthetic avatar created using Humans AI’s technology that can speak any language.
With the technology used to create Diana, anyone can create a digital clone of themselves with only a few minutes of video recording and use it to interact with other people in the Metaverse. A major advantage is the simplicity of the technology. By typing a text input, anyone can speak a foreign language.
Another interesting technology showcased by Bart was a real-time AI filter that allows its user to speak with somebody else’s face in real-time, giving access to anyone to change their guise with the push of a button. Bart also wowed the audience with an AI NFT that can make its user speak in other languages. The example presented by Bart showed Humans’ CEO, Sabin Dima, speaking fluently in Portuguese, although he doesn’t know the language. All of these feats are possible through the Digital DNA and the AI NFTs created by the company.
The second element Bart drew the audience’s attention to was security, namely, how we make sure that our digital DNA and artificial intelligence are used ethically. The solution is to build a stable and secure framework to host this innovative technology and our digital DNA. The catch is that traditional centralized frameworks offer zero ethical control. Humans.ai’s solution to this question is to bring artificial intelligence to the blockchain, to build a unique blockchain framework designed not only to host AIs but also to execute them, offering users complete ownership and control over the technology and their digital DNA.
The centerpiece of the blockchain of AIs is the Proof of Human mechanism, a complex governance, consensus, and validation mechanism which ensures that every decision made by AI is monitored by a real human.
“With a smile, with a head movement or with my fingerprint I can always prove that I am behind my digital DNA. We believe that behind every AI decision, there should be a human decision. So, at this moment, we are bringing AI to the blockchain”, explained Bart while describing the company’s take on AI.
Bart also introduced the audience to Scale, an AI Launchpad designed to help companies scale their AI products by helping them make the transition from Web2 to Web3, essentially building an economy around each AI.
As the presentation was drawing towards its conclusion, Bart stated that the last element needed to ensure a future-proof Metaverse is responsibility, underlining that all of us share a collective responsibility regarding what we are building for future generations, outlining the fact that we, the users, also need to take responsibility for how technology is used.
“I believe, and I would like to stress, the responsibility is with all of us. All of us in the room here, all of us out there using it, users, people that could have an influence on creating this parallel digital world”, stated Bart.
Before wrapping up his presentation, Bart Veenman asked the audience to think about what we can achieve if we all work together and how the powerful technology, we have created can help build a better environment.
“The only thing I wanted to achieve here is to think about what we are doing together, how we can use the technology we created to build a better environment and to do it together because, at the end of the day, we’re all humans.”
