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Why Mark Zuckerberg is having Meta give away its most advanced AI models

kamran — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 17:59:32 +0000

Last week, Meta made a game-changing move in the world of AI.

At a time when other leading AI companies like Google and OpenAI are closely guarding their secret sauce, Meta decided to give away, for free, the code that powers its innovative new AI large language model, Llama 2. That means other companies can now use Meta’s Llama 2 model, which some technologists say is comparable to ChatGPT in its capabilities, to build their own customized chatbots.

Llama 2 could challenge the dominance of ChatGPT, which broke records for being one of the fastest-growing apps of all time. But more importantly, its open source nature adds new urgency to an important ethical debate over who should control AI — and whether it can be made safe.

As AI becomes more advanced and potentially more dangerous, is it better for society if the code is under wraps — limited to the staff of a small number of companies — or should it be shared with the public so that a wider group of people can have a hand in shaping the transformative technology?

Top tech companies are taking different approaches

In Meta’s Llama 2 announcement, Mark Zuckerberg posted an Instagram of himself smiling with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, announcing the two companies’ partnership on the release. Zuckerberg also made the case for why it’s better for leading AI models to be “open source,” which means making the technology’s underlying code largely available for anyone to use.

“Open source drives innovation because it enables many more developers to build with new technology,” wrote Zuckerberg wrote in a separate Facebook post. “It also improves safety and security because when software is open, more people can scrutinize it to identify and fix potential issues.”

The move is being welcomed by many AI developers, researchers, and academics who say this will give them unprecedented access to build new tools or study systems that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive to create. Cutting-edge large language models like the ones that power ChatGPT can cost tens of millions of dollars to create and maintain.

“I’m just bracing myself for what kind of progress can happen,” said Nazneen Rajani, research lead at open source AI platform Hugging Face, which collaborated with Meta on the release. Rajani wrote a post on Twitter assessing Llama 2’s capabilities when it first came out and told Vox, “We will be able to uncover more secret ingredients about what it actually takes to build a model like GPT-4.”

But open-sourcing AI comes with major risks. Some of the biggest players in the field, including Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google, have been limiting how much of their AI systems are public because of what they cite as the grave dangers of these technologies.

Some technologists are increasingly worried about hypothetical doomsday scenarios in which an AI could outsmart human beings to inflict harm like releasing a biological super weapon or causing other havoc in ways we can’t fully imagine. OpenAI’s co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, told The Verge in February that his company was “flat-out wrong” when it shared details about its models more openly in the past because if AI becomes as intelligent as humans one day, reaching what some call AGI or artificial general intelligence, it would be unwise to share that with the masses.

“If you believe, as we do, that at some point, AI — AGI — is going to be extremely, unbelievably potent, then it just does not make sense to open-source. It is a bad idea,” Sutskever said at the time.

While we may be far off from AIs that are capable of causing real human destruction, we have already seen AI tools from the open source community be misused in other ways. For example, soon after Meta released its first Llama model strictly for research use in February, it leaked on the anything-goes online message board 4Chan, where it was then used to create chatbots that spewed hateful content like racial slurs and, in some cases, scenes of graphic violence.

“We take these concerns seriously and have put a number of things in place to support a responsible approach to building with Llama 2,” wrote Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta, in an email to Vox. Those measures include “red-teaming,” or pressure-testing the model before its release by feeding it prompts expected to generate a “risky output,” such as ones about criminal conduct and hateful content, Al-Dahle said. Meta also fine-tuned its model to mitigate against this kind of behavior and put out new guidelines barring certain illegal and harmful uses.

Meta says it will continue to fine-tune its model for safety after its release.

“When technology is released and refined in the open, we believe it ultimately leads to more transparent discussions, increased responsiveness to addressing threats, and increased iteration in building more responsible AI tools and technologies,” Al-Dahle said.

Some experts point out, for example, that we had the problem of misinformation even before AI existed in its current form. What matters more at this point, they say, is how that misinformation is distributed. Princeton computer science professor Arvind Narayanan told Vox that “the bottleneck for bad actors isn’t generating misinformation — it’s distributing it and persuading people.” He added, “AI, whether open source or not, hasn’t made those steps any easier.”

To try to contain the spread of misinformation, companies creating AI models can put some restrictions on how their programs can be used. Meta, for example, has some rules barring users from using Llama 2 to promote violence or harassment, but those rules will likely prove difficult to enforce.

It’s also worth noting that Llama 2 also isn’t fully open. Meta didn’t release the training data used to teach the latest model, which is a key component of any AI system; researchers say it’s crucial to measuring bias in AI systems. Lastly, Meta requires companies with over 700 million monthly users — so basically, only a handful of fellow tech giants like Google — to ask Meta’s permission before using the software.

Still, overall, Llama 2 is the most open sourced AI project we’ve seen recently from a major tech company. Which brings up the question of how other companies will respond.

So what exactly is the case for and against a more open sourced AI world? And what direction do we seem to be moving toward, especially given Meta’s recent announcement?

Open source can lead to more innovation

If you’re a casual user of AI tools like ChatGPT, you may not see the immediate benefits of open-sourcing AI models. But if you’re an AI developer or researcher, the introduction of open source LLMs like Llama 2 opens up a world of possibilities.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Anton Troynikov, a co-founder and head of technology of AI startup Chroma which builds databases that developers plug into AI systems to customize it with their data, facts, and tools.

For someone like Troynikov, using Llama 2 could allow the company to give its users more control over how its data is used.

“Now you don’t have to send any data outside of your system, you can run it 100 percent internally on your own machines,” said Troynikov, who gave the example of doctors who don’t need to expose patients’ medical records out to a third party. “Your data no longer has to go anywhere to get these fantastic capabilities.”

Troynikov said he’s personally just started using Llama 2 and is still testing how well it works with his company’s technology.

It’s too early to see exactly how else Llama 2 will be used, but Meta’s Al-Dahle said it sees a “range of possibilities in the creation of chat-based agents and assistants that help improve productivity, customer service, and efficiency for businesses that may not have been able to access and deploy this technology otherwise.”

There’s also a self-interest here for improving Meta’s own products. If Meta puts its AI models into the wild, the open source community of outside engineers will improve its models, which Meta can then use to build the in-app AI tools that the company has said it’s working on, like business assistant chatbots.

This way, Meta doesn’t have to put all of its resources into catching up to OpenAI and Google, which are further along in putting generative AI tools in their main product line.

Open-sourcing AI will tap into the “intelligence of the masses”

Some leading experts think that if AI models are open sourced, they could become smarter and less ethically flawed overall.

By open-sourcing AI models, more people can build on them and improve them. The open source AI company Stability AI has already created a model called “FreeWilly” that builds on top of Llama 2. It quickly became popular and can now outperform its genesis, Llama 2, in some tests. That has led it to rise to the top of Hugging Face’s leaderboard open source AI models.

“People outside Meta are beating Meta at its own performance and its own models that they carefully collected and curated over the years. They were able to do it in a week,” said Rajani. “It’s very hard to beat the intelligence of the masses”

Meanwhile, the AI community has a strong history of open-sourcing knowledge. Google built and publicly shared the transformer model, which is a neural network that understands context, like language, by tracking relationships in between parts of data, like the words in a sentence. The model has become foundational in cutting-edge AI models, and is used in many applications including in ChatGPT (the “T” in GPT stands for transformer).

Open source models allow researchers to better study the capabilities and risks of AI and to stop the concentration of power in the hands of a few companies, Princeton professor Arvind Narayanan said, pointing out the risk of a technological “monoculture” forming.

“Monoculture can have catastrophic consequences,” he said. “When the same model, say GPT-4, is used in thousands or millions of apps, any security vulnerability in that model, such as a jailbreak, can affect all those apps.”

Historically, experts point out, AI has blossomed as a field because company researchers, academics, and other experts have been willing to share notes.

“One of the reasons why data science and AI is a massive industry is actually because it’s built on a culture of knowledge sharing” said Rumman Chowdhury, co-founder of Humane Intelligence, a nonprofit developing accountable AI systems. “I think it’s really hard for people who aren’t in the data science community to realize how much we just give to each other.”

Moreover, some AI academics say that open source models allow researchers to better find not just security flaws, but more qualitative flaws in large language models, which have been proven to perpetuate bias, hallucinations, or other problematic content.

While companies can test for some of these biases beforehand, it’s difficult to anticipate every negative outcome until these models are out in the wild, some researchers argue.

“I think there needs to be a lot more research done about to what point vulnerabilities can be exploited. There needs to be auditing and risk analysis and having a risk paper … all of these can only be done if you have a model that is open and can be studied,” said Rajani.

But open source AI could also go terribly wrong

Even the most ardent supporters of open AI models acknowledge there are major risks. And exactly how AI could go wrong runs the spectrum from more easily faking people’s identities to wiping out humanity, at least in theory. The most pressing argument in this scenario is that if AI does reach some kind of artificial general intelligence, it could then one day outsmart humans in ways we won’t be able to control.

In a recent senate hearing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Congress that with “all of the dangers of AI, the fewer of us that you really have to keep a careful eye on — on the absolute, bleeding edge capabilities,” the easier it is for regulators to control.

On the other hand, even Altman acknowledged the importance of allowing the open source community to grow. He suggested setting some kind of limit so that when a model meets certain “capability thresholds” for performing specific tasks, it should be forced to get a license from the government.

That’s one on which some proponents of open source seem to agree with Altman. If we reach the point when AI models get close to overtaking humanity, then maybe we can pump the brakes on open source.

But the challenging question with AI is at what point do we decide that it’s too powerful to leave unfettered? And if the genie is out of the bottle at that point, will it be impossible to stop the progress of AI? Those questions are impossible to answer with certainty right now. But in the meantime, open source AI is here, and while there are real immediate risks, as well as ones that could snowball down the road, there are also clear benefits for all of us in having a wider group of people thinking about it.

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CubeX an NFT project with real utilities

kamran — Sat, 29 Oct 2022 20:57:00 +0000

CubeX is an NFT project, launched a few months ago. It has shown a steady growth and offered some of the best utilities in the space. I will share the complete details of the project which aims to be next blue chip in near future.

What is CubeX?

CubeX is a 3D animated collection of 10,000 NFTs on the ETH blockchain. Cubies can be used as personal avatar and playable character in upcoming video games and applications. The art and animation is stunning with real utilities.

CubeX # 5 7 48 on Opensea

CubeX Utilities

CubeX offers a wide range from Gaming to Social Media and much more. It is one of the most unique projects which has targeted the fast growing gaming market, expected to be worth $321 billion by 2026. and also the social media, which is the key in future.

CubeX Utilities

Staking

Team had introduced a 90 day staking program. There are multiple benefits for stakers and more can be included with time.

Every CubeX NFT holder who staked in the first 15 days of staking period received a free mint for CubeX access card. These cards are valid for 90 days till the staking period ends. Holders can either sell these cards on any NFT marketplace or use to access beta utilities. The only way to access CubeX games and social media app (Hubbl) is to get the Access card from Opensea at the moment.
Access card holders will receive a percentage of gaming fund after 90 days of staking period.
Access card royalties are kept in staking fund. Holders will receive a percentage in metaverse rewards such as ETH, NFT’s etc.
CubeX NFT stakers will receive a percentage of social media app (Hubbl) funds generated from post to earn, share to earn, like to earn and other app campaigns.
Holders can also get free NFT’s from future projects.

Complete details of current staking program can be read in discord channel here.

Gaming

CubeX game development started before even minting the NFT collection. This early initiative gained the trust of holders. Two of the games are already developed and in beta available for access card holders to play.

CubeX Splat PC video game with NFT/Blockchain integration

Team has built Splat, a blockchain integrated capture the flag shooter game. They’ll be hosting $100,000s of Project vs Project tournaments. Projects will allow their holders to compete for $$$ and utility. The game is already in beta and the only way to play the game right now is by getting a CubeX card from Opensea.

Splat, capture the flag shooter game

Splat Tournament

First ever official tournament on CubeX SPLAT already completed. This tournament was accessible to CubeX Card holders only. More tournaments are planned for future.

Splat Tournament

CubeX Swarm VR video game with NFT/Blockchain integration

Team has built Swarm, a blockchain integrated VR shooter game. The game is already in beta and the only way to play the game right now is by getting a CubeX card from Opensea.

Credit to @MattVegh

CubeX Gaming World

CubeX is the first NFT project to acquire a world class esports organization, that has championship, millions of dollars in earnings, some of the best players to ever touch gaming, a community of gaming natives, millions of impressions, hundreds of thousands of followers, and established name. This is the beginning of full expansion into the gaming world. Content creators just moved in to CubeX house! Millions of followers combined between these content creators. Goal is to achieve millions of views monthly and become the #1 watched and engaged NFT brand in the world.

Content Creators in CubeX House

CubeX world on Minecraft

CubeX has set an explosive entry in to the gaming world soon with CubeX Minecraft world. Minecraft server will generate revenue for the CubeX fund in future.

CubeX Minecraft world

Social Media App (HUBBL)

Hubbl is the first large scaled NFT based social media app. The purpose it to make lives easier and Solve a core Problem in NFT industry. Too many apps and platforms to visit to do your daily NFT activities, now all in ONE PLACE that will feature:

-Wallet integration
-Posting
-Likes/Sharing/Replies
-AMA voice channels
-DMs/GCs
-Rarity tools
-OpenSea statistics
-Top projects
-Upcoming projects
-WL perks
-Gas tracker
-AND MORE

The team is working hard to change the WEB3 & NFT social media FOREVER!

Hubbl app

Bloodlines NFT Access

Team has announced free access to @BloodlinesNFT for CubeX stakers. This is one of the many free access that Cubex holders will be getting by just staking the NFT’s. Tons of plans and alpha shared in discord daily. This is considered by many as a world class free mint.

The first ever animated NFT show controlled by holders across the world.⚔️

Get your FREE MINT now!🩸
➡️https://t.co/Ao25X9bsgz pic.twitter.com/3JciaydRNs
— Bloodlines NFT (@BloodlinesNFT) August 19, 2022

Cubicle

Cubicle is the exclusive DAO voting system only accessed with your CubeX Card Token on the blockchain. When the Cubies connect their wallet, they will be granted access and power to make important decisions on the roadmap and utility of the project!

All the Access card holders voted for the first time on 28th October for first important decision. The community felt glad to participate in key decisions of the project.

Voted for big decision for @cubexnft As a community member it feels great to use my right to vote. Great work @TFGmykL @thekngmoe @DaraDouglas Many promise but very few deliver. The progress of CubeX in such short time is more than impressive. #INCUBEXWETRUST #NFTs #CUBEXTAKEOVER pic.twitter.com/TTJlqz4hcA
— Mr. K (@mekamran) October 28, 2022

Future Plans

Build out the CubeX gaming ecosystem

Team is building long term video games that will bring the overall web 3 community together like never before. They are partnering with other NFT projects around the space to integrate their NFT into CubeX blockchain games and also to build games for them. It will create revenue for gaming fund which will be distributed to host gaming events and to provide metaverse rewards to CubeX Web3 Card holders.

Host the first ever inclusive Web3 gaming event

The team has planned to host the first ever Web3 gaming event with the generated gaming fund. It will feature other projects from all across the space competing for thousands of dollars in CubeX video games.

Hubbl official launch

Hubbl is already in beta and available on the Apple App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android. In future the Holders will get access to in-app benefits which will be available for public purchase. Also the funds will be generated from post to earn, share to earn, like to earn and other app campaigns.

Metaverse

Team is building a metaverse where all CubeX holders will have their own identity based on the NFT they own. They will get their own apartment and other projects can also join the metaverse with their NFT’s. It will create a whole new experience to meet new people and projects.

CubeX Team

The Founding Team @DaraDouglas, @thekngmoe and @TFGmykL is fully Doxed and well experienced. They also enjoy a large following on social media platforms. Join the discord or their twitter page to meet & learn more about the Team.

Founders @TFGmykL @thekngmoe in CubeX House

Official Links

Discord: https://discord.gg/cubex

Twitter:
CubeX: https://twitter.com/cubexnft
Gaming: https://twitter.com/CubeXgg

Website:
CubeX Website: https://cube-x.gg
CubeX Staking Page: https://stake.cube-x.gg

OpenSea Collections:
CubeX NFT: https://opensea.io/collection/cube-x-official
Cubex Access Cards: https://opensea.io/collection/cubex-card

CubeX Staking Wallet: https://opensea.io/0xcB1a599Da5a4BD9382743eE63ACd1eabF67F036F

Final Thoughts

CubeX has a well experienced and dedicated team. They have developed two games and a social media app in a very short time. The community is also very active and passionate about the project. It is very rare to see a project delivering the real utilities. CubeX has just proved they will keep on building and providing utility to the Holders. The floor price is still around 0.2 ETH which is a good time to buy and Hold the CubeX NFT for long term.

Note: Always do your own research before investing in any Project.

Let us know your comments and experience regarding CubeX

MetaBaby — Crypto Gaming Aggregator with Bitcoin rewards on every trade

kamran — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 00:56:52 +0000

What is MetaBaby?

A Crypto Gaming Aggregator where you can browse, find, and play multiple games under one umbrella. MetaBaby is a One stop shop for all gamify needs. We aim to bridge the gap between players and games, negate the hassle of fetching them and make it easily accessible under one roof. The entertainment for the game lover or a crypto enthusiast doesn’t stop there, MetaBaby also unlocks the doors for NFTs, Staking, in-game Marketplace, Multiplayer tournaments, Babyverse and more.

The Global Gaming industry is valued more than 170 billion dollars in 2020 and estimated to cross over 300 billion by 2026. Comparatively, crypto gaming is only the tip of the iceberg.

The Problem

The decentralized gaming industry is widely scattered with multiple games launching every day. It has become a hassle for gamers to jump between gaming platforms and blockchain to find the right game.

The Solution

With MetaBaby we are going to make everyone’s life easier by creating one platform to browse and play multiple games in one place.

MetaBaby Platter

BABY NFTs:

There are 10,000 Unique NFTs available to mint on our dapp before the launch. Each NFT has it’s own rarity score and minted randomly from a mystery box.
Base price for NFT = 0.1 BNB.

NFT Features

Stake them to earn more MBABY tokens
Trade them on secondary marketplace
Use them in our Metaverse to access premium features

Babyverse

The next generation metaverse game where everyone is a newborn baby and makes themselves stronger by completing tasks and competing with other babies in the virtual world. Powerups and NFT upgrades to help the Baby become an adult. Our Babyverse will have more entertaining features like lounges, malls and gaming zones.

Our GameFi project partners will have a facility to open their lounge for free and can sell their in-game items, NFTs etc.

Multiplayer Tournaments

One of our best features is where you can participate in multiple tournaments and play against 1000s of players in the world and win huge prize pots.

It will come with duels as well where you can create your own challenge and ask others to play to win.

KYC by — Pinksale ,
Reviewed by — Rugdoc
Audited by AuditRateTech

TOKENOMICS

NO TEAM TOKENS
Community focused Token
Automatic Liquidity — Locked forever

Dual token rewards mechanism
5% in $BTCB on every buy txn — Distributed at a threshold of 30M $MBABY
5% in $MBABY on every sell txn — Distributed Instantly

Forever on-chain Referral system
Refer & Earn 0.05% of trade fee on each trade when your friend buy MBABY

Metababy Contract Address(Official): 0xA013cdE0F8A5C0E5b5165ff21d0186222341A453

Total Supply: 100,000,000,000
Pre-sale and Liquidity: 34.06%
Private Sale: 3%
Community Farming: 32.94%
Marketing & Ecosystem : 20%
Referral : 9.8%
Team : 0%

Slippage 13–15%

Buy Tax: 13%
Auto-Liquidity : 3%
$BTCB Rewards : 5%
Marketing & Development: 5%

Sell Tax: 15%
Auto-Liquidity: 3%
$MBABY Rewards: 5%
Marketing & Development: 5%
Burn: 2%

#MBABY Sale

Private Sale is available on the Dapp
https://app.themetababy.io/
Price: 1 BNB = 32,000,000 MBABY
Max 2BNB

Presale on 👉🏻Pinksale.Finance

Date: 7th April 2022
Presale Price — 1 BNB = 29,000,000 MBABY
Fair Launch, No Hardcap.

Presale link:
https://www.pinksale.finance/#/launchpad/0xe7Ade717411553fcdD4E215D350A3207081bd0aA?chain=BSC

Biswap Launch
Launch Date: 11th April 2022
Biswap Launch Price — 1 BNB = 26,000,000 MBABY

✅ NO TEAM TOKENS — MetaBaby Team DO NOT hold any tokens. The only way the tokens will be owned in the Treasury will be via accumulating trading fees. We are aiming for along way and hence, are committed to the same. That way, no team can dump $MBaby on you.

✅ NO MINTABLE OR HIDDEN TOKENS — MetaBaby smart contract has NO ability to mint extra tokens or simply DOES NOT consist of any hidden tokens. The total supply is 100,000,000,000 and will remain the same.

✅ Liquidity Locked — Liquidity locked for 1 year via trusted pink lock which cannot be touched or released early. (This means that you as a token holder will ALWAYS have the freedom to buy/sell whenever you like without restrictions or complications — your tokens that you buy are yours and remain in your wallet always and are never ‘locked’).

✅ Auto-Liquidity (Anti-Rug pull)- 3% on every transaction added to liquidity pool and locked it forever.

✅ NO BOTS — MetaBaby contract has an inbuilt antibot technology in blocking any bot attacks or sniper bots that will play with the chart/trading/transactions, etc. Our smart contract cannot block normal wallets, only contracts, i.e. bots.

Metababy Official links

🌐Website: https://themetababy.io/
📝Whitepaper: https://docs.themetababy.io/
🎮Dapp: https://app.themetababy.io/
✍️Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/metababy/
💬Discord: https://bit.ly/3tSC2vT
🗣️Telegram: https://t.me/metababyofficial
🐦Twitter: https://twitter.com/themetababy
📓Medium: https://metababy.medium.com/
💻GitHub: https://github.com/themetababy/
📷Instagram: https://instagram.com/themetababy/
👤Facebook: https://fb.com/themetababy/

Massive DeFi hack hits Axie Infinity’s Ethereum sidechain

kamran — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 18:01:33 +0000

Hackers stole over a half-billion dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency, and no one noticed.

That’s the wild takeaway Tuesday morning after the team behind Ronin, an Ethereum sidechain developed for the popular blockchain-integrated game Axie Infinity, said they discovered only today that 173,600 ether and 25.5 million of the USDC stablecoin were stolen from their network starting March 23. Worth approximately $615 million, this theft represents one of the largest DeFi losses to date — even surpassing the August 2021 Poly Network hack of approximately $600 million in crypto.

To make matters even worse, the official Ronin Network blog post says developers were only alerted to the missing funds by a user who was unable to withdraw their own ether.

“ETH and USDC deposits on Ronin have been drained from the bridge contract,” explains Tuesday’s blog post. “As of right now users are unable to withdraw or deposit funds to Ronin Network.”

Axie Infinity is a pay-to-earn game popular in the Philippines, where people spend real money to get access to the game with the hope of earning tokens that can be cashed out for actual money.

Notably, unlike previous DeFi disasters, at issue with the Ronin hack does not appear to be some kind of smart contract exploit — meaning there wasn’t necessarily a bug in the code. Rather, whoever stole these funds took a more traditional approach and swiped the cryptographic keys from Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis and “a third-party validator run by Axie DAO.”

“The attacker used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals,” notes Ronin.

Tweet may have been deleted

Ronin says it’s working with law enforcement and the blockchain-analytics firm Chainalysis to track the funds.

As with other public blockchains, like Bitcoin, as of the time of this writing it’s possible to see where the stolen funds are. Ronin points out that while some are on the move, most of the boosted ether and USDC is sitting in two wallets controlled by the hacker or hackers. Some funds have already been moved again. Those wallets document the initial transfers in question on March 23.

Perhaps in the exploit-prone world of DeFi, a half-billion dollar hack just wasn’t enough to trigger any internal alarm bells. Either that, or the so-called future of finance is seriously lacking in alarm bells to set off.

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Mark Zuckerberg wants to build a metaverse voice assistant for Facebook that blows Alexa and Siri away

kamran — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 18:53:56 +0000

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has shifted its long-term strategy away from its social media apps to focus on the metaverse, a virtual world where people wearing augmented/virtual reality headsets can talk to each others’ avatars, play games, hold meetings, and otherwise engage in social activities.

That’s created a lot of questions, such as what this means for a company that has been focused on social media for nearly two decades, whether Meta will be able to achieve its new goal of building a metaverse future, and what that future will look like for the billions of people who use Meta’s products every day. On Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed some answers during a keynote speech about the company’s latest developments in AI.

One of Meta’s main goals is to develop advanced voice assistant AI technology — think Alexa or Siri, but smarter — that the company plans to use in its AR/VR products, like its Quest headset (formerly Oculus), Portal smart display, and Ray-Ban smart glasses.

“The kinds of experiences you’ll have in the metaverse are beyond what’s possible today,” said Zuckerberg. “That’s going to require advances across a whole range of areas, from new hardware devices to software for building and exploring worlds. And the key to unlocking a lot of these advances is AI.”

The presentation comes during one of the most challenging moments in the company’s history. Meta’s share prices have taken a historic dip, its advertising model has been shaken up by Apple’s mobile privacy changes, and it faces the looming threat of political regulation.

So it makes sense that the company is looking to the future, in which Meta hopes to roll out sophisticated language-processing AI.

Mark Zuckerberg (left) — in virtual reality avatar form — demonstrating how his company’s new AI tools allow you to create virtual environments by speaking what you want to see.

Meta is building its own ambitious voice assistant for AR/VR

On Wednesday, it became clear that Meta sees voice assistants as a key part of the metaverse, and it knows that its voice assistant needs to be more conversational than what we have now. For example, most voice assistants can easily answer the question, “What’s the weather today?” But if you ask a follow-up question, such as, “Is it hotter than it was last week?” the voice assistant will likely be stumped.

Meta wants its voice assistant to be better at picking up contextual clues in conversations, along with other data points that it can collect about our physical body, like our gaze, facial expressions, and hand gestures.

“To support true world creation and exploration, we need to advance beyond the current state of the art for smart assistants,” said Zuckerberg on Wednesday.

While Meta’s Big Tech competitors — Amazon, Apple, and Google — already have popular voice assistant products, either on mobile or as standalone hardware like Alexa, Meta doesn’t (aside from some limited voice command functionality on its Ray-Bans, Oculus, and Portal devices).

“When we have glasses on our faces, that will be the first time an AI system will be able to really see the world from our perspective — see what we see, hear what we hear, and more,” said Zuckerberg. “So the ability and expectation we have for AI systems will be much higher.”

To meet those expectations, the company says it’s been developing a project called CAIRaoke, a self-learning AI neural model (that’s a statistical model based on biological networks in the human brain) to power its voice assistant. This model uses “self-supervised learning,” meaning that rather than being trained on large datasets the way many other AI models are, the AI can essentially teach itself.

“Before, all the blocks were built separately, and then you sort of glued them together,” Meta’s managing director of AI research, Joëlle Pineau, told Recode. “As we move to self-supervised learning, we have the ability to learn the whole conversation.”

As one example of how this technology can be applied, Zuckerberg — in virtual reality avatar form — demoed a tool the company is working on called “BuilderBot” that allows you to speak out what you want to see in your virtual reality. For instance, saying “I want to see a palm tree over there” could make an AI-generated palm tree pop up where you want, based on what you say, your gaze, your controllers/hands, and general contextual awareness, according to the company.

Meta still needs to do more research for this to be possible, and it’s studying what’s called “egocentric perception,” which is about understanding worlds from a first-person perspective, to build this out. Currently, it’s testing the technology from the model in its Portal smart displays.

Eventually, the company also hopes to be able to capture inputs beyond speech — like a user’s movement, position, and body language, to build even smarter virtual assistants that can anticipate what users want.

AI in the metaverse will present ethical challenges

Privacy concerns and failures have haunted Meta and other big tech companies because their business models are built around collecting users’ data: our browsing histories, interests, personal communications, and more.

Those concerns are even greater, privacy experts say, with AR/VR, because it can track even more sensitive data, like our eye movements, facial expressions, and body language.

Some AR/VR and AI ethicists are worried about just how personal these data inputs can become, what kind of predictions AI can make with those inputs, and how that data will be shared.

“Eye-tracking data, gaze data, literally being able to quantify whether you’re feeling stimuli off of sexual arousal or a loving gaze — all of that is concerning,” said Kavya Pearlman, founder of the XR Safety Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for the ethical development of technologies like VR. “Who has access to this data? What are they doing with this data?”

For now, the answers to those questions aren’t entirely clear, although Meta is saying it’s committed to addressing such concerns.

Zuckerberg said that the company is working with human rights, civil rights, and privacy experts to build “systems grounded in fairness, respect, and human dignity.”

But given the company’s track record of privacy breaches, some technology ethicists are skeptical.

“From a purely scientific perspective, I’m really excited. But because it is Meta, I’m scared,” said Pearlman.

In response to people’s concerns about privacy in the metaverse, Meta’s Pineau said that by giving users control over what data they share, the company can help alleviate people’s worries.

“People are willing to share information when there’s value that they derive out of that. And so if you look at it, the notion of autonomy, control, and transparency is what really allows the users to have more control over how their data is used,” she said.

Aside from privacy concerns, some Meta AR/VR users worry that if an AI-powered metaverse takes off, it may not be accessible to and safe for everyone. Already, some women have complained about encountering sexual harassment in the metaverse, such as when a beta tester of Meta’s social VR app Horizon Worlds reported being virtually groped by other users. Meta has since instituted what amounts to a 4-foot virtual safety bubble around avatars to help avoid “unwanted interactions.”

If Meta reaches its goal of using AI to make its AR/VR environments even more immersive and seamless in our daily lives, more problems around accessibility, safety, and discrimination are likely to surface. And though Facebook says it’s thinking about these concerns at the outset, its track record with its other products isn’t reassuring.

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Next Earth Metaverse: The only blockchain based virtual land ownership platform on the exact copy of Earth

kamran — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 14:52:36 +0000

We have seen a rapid increase in metaverse projects in 2021. The start of new year has seen a great interest and awareness among the common people. The solid projects like Next Earth have already reached milestones in virtual land ownership.

What is Next Earth?

Next Earth is a metaverse that uses blockchain technology. It is NFT based, transparent digital land purchasing platform without a middle-man. Instantly buying and selling land, directly from your wallet. The virtual land NFTs are exact 1:1 replica of Earth. This allows users to buy, sell, and trade virtual land of any location they like in the real world.

Still waiting? NextEarth has a great potential and early adopters can benefit great deal. Below is the link to join discord community of more than 59,700 nextearthians to share the ideas, get rewards and the latest updates.

Join Community

How to buy land?

Buying the land is very easy using simple steps. You can buy land tiles with Matic coin, so you have to set-up the Polygon (MATIC) network in your wallet. Buy Matic from any Crypto exchange like binance and withdraw in your wallet of (Metamask, Trustwallet)

Buy Land

Note: Use code ABGD6PFX5P to get 5% instant discount on land purchase.

Step by step guide on how to buy land on NextEarth

How to sell land?

Next Earth has its built-in marketplace to sell your land. You need to enter your selling price and add the land to marketplace using your wallet. Anyone can visit the marketplace and buy the land. You can also create LandArt on your non-urban and water tiles before putting it on maketplace to make it more attractive.

Since Next Earth is a NFT based, transparent digital land purchasing platform so you can put all of your land NFT’s on opensea by just paying a one time little gas fee. You just need to give the permission of your land NFT’s once to show automatically on opensea.

Access button to allow NFT on opesea

NFT on Opensea

Next Earth Token

NextEarth has also launched the token $NXTT which is available to buy and sell on Uniswap and Quickswap. The token has seen a rapid increase in price since the launchpad and it is continuously gaining more strength. The current stats show the positive response and future growth of the token. You can now check the graph at coinmarketcap and dextools.

Coinmarketcap showing the growth in one month only

Environmental Charity

Next Earth has its focus on making the world better by improving environment. To contribute in this noble cause 10% of all transactions including buying and selling on the nextearth platform are donated to charities like The Ocean Cleanup, Amazon Watch, Kiss the Ground, and SEE Turtles.

A handsome amount of 1,011,746 USDT have been donated in the charity pool till now which shows the great commitment of the team towards environment improvement. The amounts that are collected in this environmental support pool are sent to environmental projects, as voted for by the DAO on a monthly basis.

Charity pool stats

Note: It is not a financial advice, we shared our honest opinion. Please do your research before investing in any project.

We will be waiting for your feedback on Next Earth