Aliens TLDR

Neural by TNW Tristan covers human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, Voltron, physics, and space stuff.

Pronouns: He/him Tristan covers human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, Voltron, physics, and space stuff.

Pronouns: He/him Omar Sultan Al Olama, the United Arab Emirates minister of artificial intelligence, yesterday told an audience at the World Economic forum in Davos that it’s his belief that people who commit “serious crimes” in the metaverse should be punished with real-world criminal consequences.

Per an article by CNBC’s Sam Shead, the minister views this as a necessary measure to protect people’s mental health: If I send you a text on WhatsApp, it’s text right?

But if I come into the metaverse and it’s a realistic world that we’re talking about in the future and I actually murder you, and you see it ...

Jennifer Kobelt, a survivor of the NXIVM cult, told investigators and documentarians that her PTSD was triggered after being subjected to a horrific “experiment” in which she was exposed to graphic violence from Hollywood cinema and a real-world snuff film.

We’re talking about murder most foul, in the metaverse.

I’m not sure what the UAE’s minister of AI knows about the field that the rest of us don’t, but in this particular version of reality, there’s no basis for this fantasy.

Rock bottom: You may as well pass a law against ‘murdering’ people in video games.

The point is that, no matter how traumatizing it might be to see yourself murdered in first person, it’s not like Zuckerberg’s planning on making that a feature.

Maybe Al Olama’s thinking the metaverse is going to be a splintered internet experience like web, where dark corners of the platform could be host to anything.

But, at least for now, the companies such as Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and Epic that are investing billions of dollars into creating bespoke experiences probably aren’t going to put together a team of designers focused on adding PTSD-inducing gore to their production models.

The idea that somehow, you’ll be casually shopping in the Nike section of Meta‘s billions-of-dollars and counting metaverse and suddenly a digital Jack the Ripper is going to appear in front of you in a rabid frenzy is just plain silly.

If you can murder people in the metaverse, it’ll be a feature that people log in specifically to experience.

For the same reason so many of us play Dead By Daylight, Resident Evil, and Call of Duty, or watch R-rated horror movies, there’s plenty of people who’d enjoy a good old-fashioned fake-murdering in a VR world.