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| Image from Pixabay |
We
once referred to the internet with the term “the digital highway”. It was the
time of 14k4 modems and - if you were lucky - ISDN lines, and compared to today
you should have spoken of a digital service road. You regularly found yourself stuck
in traffic or having a breakdown along the road. But now there is the
metaverse: a virtual 3D world, a parallel universe, whether or not integrated
into the real world, in which you can fully immerse yourself and interact with
other people and companies.
This
sounds very familiar to fans of the science fiction series Star Trek: as
early as the late 1990s, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, number one Will Riker
and the rest of the crew used the so-called holodeck for recreational and
training purposes. There they trained in a safe environment for situations they
would later encounter in the real world. However, the metaverse does not work
with holograms and force fields, but with 3D glasses and augmented reality (Wikipedia:
an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated
content).
Winn
Schwartau was in the Netherlands a few weeks ago. He is an American security
analyst and a thought leader in my field. He came to Utrecht to share his view
on the metaverse, and that was certainly not a rosy picture. Just look at the
following quote: “We are digitally terraforming the future cognitive
infrastructure. We have ONE chance to get it right.” Terraforming is what you
do on an alien planet to make that planet habitable - literally forming an
Earth. Schwartau applies this mechanism to our future knowledge infrastructure
and believes that we should be very careful what we do.
Why
these concerns? Schwartau calls the metaverse the most powerful reality distortion
machine ever. You choose your own reality, in which you can then be
indoctrinated, radicalized and bombarded with advertisements. He emphatically
warns of the danger of addiction. I've never been addicted to anything myself,
but I can understand that alcohol, drugs, and the metaverse all provide ways to
escape the reality where you may not be doing so well. Schwartau substantiates
his view with data from neuroscience: our subconscious mind processes data many
times faster than our conscious mind – two hundred million times faster. About
84% of that processing capacity is used for seeing, hearing accounts for 10%
and then there is still a little left over for smelling, tasting and feeling.
If you provide someone with 3D glasses and bombard their subconscious with all
kinds of stimuli, while they feel they are doing something fun, you can
strongly influence that person. And make them an addict.
And
then suddenly the term metawar appeared on the screen. Wait a minute:
the metaverse is still in its infancy, but a war is already raging? In the non-English
speaking world, ‘war’ is exclusively understood as armed conflict between
nations, but (especially in the US?) it also means struggle, of fight, as for
example in the war on drugs. Schwartau distinguishes three classes in
this struggle: personal, corporate/commercial and nation-state. The stage for
the personal battle is the gaming and advertising world, where deceit lurks. In
the commercial world we have to fear deep surveillance capitalism,
indoctrination of employees and the end of privacy. And nation-state wise, we
are threatened by religious extremism, political radicalism and brainwashing.
Disinformation
plays a role in all three classes of metawar. To defend ourselves against this,
Schwartau advocates three developments: ChatGPT detection (what is real and
what has been made by artificial intelligence?), deepfake detection (is that picture,
film or sound fragment real?) and teaching critical thinking. I wholeheartedly
agree with the latter in particular: use your common sense, and remember that
if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
To
end on a somewhat positive note, I don't think the metaverse is any worse than
the 'regular' internet. After all, the old incarnation is also widely abused.
But with Schwartau's story in mind, I do think that the bad guys in the
metaverse have a lot more potential to do evil, because they have much more
direct access to your brain - and especially your unconscious. I'd say enjoy
it, but watch out crossing the road.
And in the big bad world…
- Twitter pulls out of an EU agreement against disinformation. [DUTCH]
- AI advises on the impact of AI. [DUTCH]
- iPhones can be infected with malware without user intervention. [DUTCH]
- the US may have used that iPhone vulnerability to spy on Russia.
- professional cybercriminals sign their malware digitally, because then they get through more easily.
- hackers are also sometimes hacked.
- US border guards can no longer search your phone at will.
- Tesla is as leaky as a sieve, and the Dutch Data Protection Authority has to investigate.
- an AI model called DarkBERT is based entirely on knowledge from the dark web.
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