Episode Info
- Season10
- Episode3
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Matthew Ball
Matthew Ball is a venture capitalist and author of 'The Metaverse and How It Will Revolutionise Everything' exploring the metaverse's implications for real-world security and stability.
Episode Summary
Will the metaverse jeopardize security and stability around the world? Venture capitalist and author of “The Metaverse and how it will revolutionise everything,” Matthew Ball sits down with One Decision to delve into the implications of the new virtual world on the real world. One Decision hosts Sir Richard Dearlove, former Chief of MI6, and journalist Julia Macfarlane explore opportunities and concerns about the new risks that will be found in the metaverse.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: I'm Julia McFarlane, cohost of the One Decision Podcast. We're coming up on a significant milestone. It's our one year anniversary of bringing you in-depth analysis of the critical decisions shaping our world. To celebrate the occasion, cohost and former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, and myself, will answer questions submitted by you, the listeners. Spies are usually pretty tight lipped, so don't miss the chance to write in. Your question might even make it onto the podcast. For more information, head over to 1decisionpodcast.com. You're listening to One Decision. I'm your host, Julia McFarlane. With every passing year, modern life is increasingly dependent on the Internet. For most of us around the world, particularly in developed nations, our money is stored online in digital form rather than in cash. Important documents, deeds, and paperwork is kept in digital storage. More and more of our communication with each other now takes place online and not in person. But the leap from our current use of the Internet to the metaverse is profound. Leaders in Silicon Valley and tech have increasingly used this phrase, the metaverse, to describe the coming digital revolution of how we will spend our lives. The exact definition of what this online digital realm is depends on which company you ask and how they are preparing for it. But if you are someone who has happened to play any online role playing games or if you've seen Ready Player One or Free Guy, you might have a better understanding of the metaverse than you might think. Matthew Ball is a venture capitalist and author on tech. His book, The Metaverse and How It Will Revolutionize Everything, was published last month and rapidly became a national and international bestseller. He joined me and my cohost, Sir Richard Dearlove, to talk us through what the metaverse is, starting with his definition of it.
INTERVIEW
Ball: So the best place to start is to start with the experience that we're using right now, the way in which many listeners will be receiving this recording, and what already defines much of human life, and that is the Internet. The Internet is a common framework, a series of technologies and protocols which connects and spans 40,000 different autonomous networks across nearly 200 countries, hundreds of millions of different servers, billions of web pages, 25,000,000,000 devices, and of course nearly every person on Earth, and in doing so directly drives 20% of the world economy and of course powers much of the remaining 80%. When we talk about the metaverse, in particular Messrs Zuckerberg and Sweeney at Epic Games, they talk about it as a successor to today's Internet. And that is because they look at what the Internet today lacks. It does not support three-dimensional integration, file formats, conversations, and experiences. It does not support synchronous and shared live versions of it. That's why even something as basic as a video call can often seem so challenging. And so at a baseline level we're talking about producing a live shared three-dimensional augmentation of the Internet that in totality many imagine as producing a parallel plane of existence for us all.
Mcfarlane: Right. Richard, I don't know if you have any experience of it, but in reading Matthew's book, the thing that was very, very clear to me, going through all of these definitions of what the metaverse is, I just immediately thought, well, this is World of Warcraft, right? This is an online digital dimension where we have alter egos, we interact with people around the world in real time, we have actions that lead to consequences, and that concept has been around for much longer than we have been using the word metaverse. I mean, what did you make of Matthew's introduction to what this new sort of digital realm is going to be like?
Dearlove: Well, I've lived through a period, you know, where technology has fundamentally, you know, changed the nature of how we conduct our lives. So I'm really attracted by Matthew's explanation, you know, using the Internet as it were as a jumping off point to try and understand the next stage, which is the metaverse. I think the thing I find difficult, and this is really a philosophical question for Matthew, is the way that you present the metaverse blurs the distinction between reality and virtual reality. And I find that extremely worrying because what it suggests to me is that so many people want to escape the reality of their lives and live in virtual reality. But are we therefore approaching a world in which, you know, virtual reality becomes the reality and the sort of boring day to day aspects of life. I mean, I don't live in the virtual world, and I don't want to. I like to read books. I like to listen to the opera. I like going for walks. I like my experience to be direct, not, as it were, imported technically. But I can see that this is a generational issue. But maybe Matthew can comment on my slightly grumpy analysis. But I think the philosophical question of virtual reality and reality is the thing that worries me most.
Ball: So I think it's a valid point, and I have three different responses. The first is to recognize that, as with the Internet today, almost all of the value will come not from consumer facing experiences or leisure. It is actually the ways in which it powers primarily enterprise and industrial applications. I like to remind individuals that these days when you enter a facility, be it of national security or other, your passcode is usually operating over IP or the Internet. When you check out at the grocer, it's usually using the Internet. When you press a crosswalk button, you're using the Internet. In many instances, the metaverse will feel like that, used underneath you without you actively disengaging with the real world, but nevertheless supported by it. The second is to recognize that it should and will always be a compliment. That does not mean that there won't be some individuals who retreat to virtual reality, as is the case with all forms of leisure today, but we should think of it as a compliment in that regard. But the third most important part is to understand it as a substitute for current time. I share your admiration for the outdoors. I spent two years, I'm Canadian, working for the federal government as a wildfire fighter on a full time basis. That was premised upon my desire to spend years of my life outdoors knowing that much of the rest of my life would be indoors. However, in The United Kingdom, the average citizen watches nearly four hours of television per day. In The United States, the average person watches five and a half hours per day. The average senior watches seven and a half hours per day. That time is roughly three quarters done alone. It's almost all done sedentary. Now we need not consider that a good use of time today to justify the rise of virtual reality. But in general, I think we have to start from how humans spend their time today, and it's largely in television as a share of leisure time, and I consider a substitution of that time to a more active, engaged, and social medium to be a positive shift, even if more of that time should go to a walk.
Mcfarlane: Matthew, I just wanna ask you, you talk a lot about popular culture in your book. You reference a lot of sci fi novels. Some films that have really gone into this concept, and you mentioned Ready Player One, as an example of a kind of metaverse like scenario in the future. And you talk a lot about games and the gaming industry, which I think is such a good analogy, because as I mentioned earlier, it's kind of the most sort of comprehensive way of exploring what the metaverse is. And if we start asking about, what is the metaverse for? Why do we want to spend more time plugged into screens? Isn't that not a good thing? I'll put to you both, the thing about games that I find to be universal is that they have always been a form of escapism that was also quite empowering. I mean, you have the ability to design your own character, to choose the skin that your virtual person lives in. Maybe in real life, you don't like your weight or your skin color, or maybe you picture yourself a different way. There was always something egalitarian, but also meritocratic in the metaverse of a game. You know, if you complete tasks in a linear way, you work your way up a faction or a guild by completing objectives and running errands, you inevitably move up a chain of hierarchy. You're rewarded for your hard work. You're guaranteed to be seen for your efforts and to be rewarded and recognized. That just doesn't always happen in the real world. All of these people, and I have to say it's people, not just kids, because I think there's an idea that, you know, the gaming industry is mostly teenagers in their mom's basements, and that's not true. People around the world, they can make something of themselves in the online virtual world that they feel that they can't, or that they have no way of doing in the real world? Talk to us a bit more about the good that the metaverse could bring.
Ball: So I love this question. And a good place to start is really to return to the point on current human leisure, the fact that it affords us a more social and immersive actively engaged forum. And why is that? Number one, when I talk about the use of time and leisure for seniors, I don't believe most of us hope to retire to spend the rest of our lives primarily watching television, which is indeed what happens most often. It's that we lack either the financial means, the mobility, or the health to be able to explore much more. Again, while not saying we wouldn't prefer to hike Iceland in our seventies or eighties, that's not often an option. And so this is liberating in some regard to be a different person, a younger person, to do things that you can't do and perhaps never could do. This extends beyond just age. I think one of the most remarkable innovations in this category over the last ten years has been that of desire, not technology. Microsoft built what they call the Adaptive Controller. This is an accessibility oriented controller that allows those who perhaps have no typical movement they can only move their neck, perhaps blow into a tube, have limited mobility or dexterity in their hands to play the most technically capable video games, perhaps not as though a professional could, but now we're actually talking about liberating those with limited movement into unlimited movement in virtual space with their friends on relatively equal territory. Furthermore, we can take a look at those who suffer from social anxiety or perhaps a lack of confidence, and we see clear evidence that they are more comforted here. That can be of the personal self and their capabilities, their gender identity, or their sexual identity, or purely visual. Then there's the geographic constraints, bringing individuals together in a way that is not typically possible. And this is where I get most excited about the disruption of categories that we have not done. Education happens to be the category in The United States economy that has seen the greatest cost increase since the Internet was developed: 1200%. Health care is up half as much and it's still crippling. The problem with education is that we haven't learned to teach students more effectively, faster, with fewer resources, or to have a single instructor teach more people at the same time. It has instead become more costly. That has exacerbated extant tensions in the category of access to education as an early opportunity. We've learned throughout the pandemic and others that remote education as we imagine it digital multiple choice, YouTube videos and live broadcasts lack many of the things that are instrumental in education: the response of a teacher, looking to your left and seeing your peer, making eye contact with either party, or perhaps physically touching and immersing yourself in a chemistry lab or a sandbox. The metaverse is not going to eradicate the utility of those experiences in real life, but I believe deeply that it will allow those whose school boards can't afford those properties, who live thousands of miles away from the top educators, to get a much better experience.
Mcfarlane: I mean, the difference is interaction, isn't it? I mean, watching videos and pre recorded lectures, that's quite a passive way to learn. And Richard, I wanna read out something that really struck me in the paragraph, the chapter where Matthew talks about education, because I find it absolutely mind blowing. Rather than create a volcanic eruption using vinegar and baking soda, students will immerse themselves in a volcano and agitate its magma chambers before they're both ejected in the sky. Everything once imagined in the Magic School Bus will be virtually possible and at a greater scale too. Unlike a physical classroom experience, these lessons will be available on demand anywhere around the world, fully accessible, and more easily customized to students with physical or social disabilities. What do you make of that, Richard?
Dearlove: Well, what I make of it is that Matthew makes a phenomenally compelling argument for the metaverse as let's express it like a tool for the improvement of human life. You know, what concerns me is when the arguments are so compelling and the progress towards the metaverse is apparently and probably irresistible is I can also think of many downsides. And you argue for the, you know, the virtual social experience, but there is also, let us say, the isolation of being on your own in a room with machines. And I think we would all agree that's a poor substitute from sitting next to somebody and actually having a conversation. And you know as well as I do that the conversation, that means the exchange of ideas and words, is only part of the experience because it's the physical presence. I suppose my question to Matthew is, can this tool substitute actually the physical presence in the same to the same degree, to the same value. And what worries me if it can, there must be so many angles of abuse which you wouldn't necessarily face in real life if you see what I mean.
Ball: So there's a lot to hit right here. Let's start with what you're talking about right at the beginning, which is the conversation that you and I are having and the ways in which it would be better in person. I absolutely agree with you. I personally struggle to imagine that we can ever fully close that gap. But that may be an impossible aspiration, and that's separate from whether or not the metaverse can significantly close it. I personally detest video conferences. I find them taxing, frustrating. Right now I'm trying to make eye contact with you and so I'm not looking at you, I'm looking at the lens above my screen. We actually have eye contact one way. Only one of us can look into the eyes of another. This is a good way to talk about the metaverse as a three-dimensional medium rather than one which requires virtual reality headsets. For example, Google has unveiled a project called Starline, and Starline is holography, holographics. Most believe that this sits decades in front of us it does not. It's here. The challenge is it's costly and the equipment is large. The result is that when you look at me in a holographic display you feel at ease. How do we know? I can give you some of the sample data. A 50% increase in nonverbal forms of communication: head nods, hand gestures, and eyebrow movements. There's a 30% increase in eye contact. Why? Because frankly it can be made. And then there's a 20% increase in memory recall. These are all of the markers of an improvement that's coming through three-d technology. Of course, we also see the advent of myriad new technologies, interfaces in the home that use ultrasonic sound to produce tactile experiences in front of you. You can feel my hand in the air. You can feel the uniqueness of a handshake. Again, that's not to say that we'll ever be the same thing, but we are progressing rapidly to bridging that gap substantially. Now to your point on abuse and harassment, this is a macro issue of course and we are often clumsily finding our way into what's appropriate and what's not. I think if there's one reason to be optimistic there are many it's that the social media era has actually pivoted the perspective of many giants. It used to be users can do anything and then let's figure out what's no longer permitted. One such example concerns sexual harassment. You get banned from a social media platform for sexual harassment, but on these platforms, they essentially make it so that it is not possible unless opened.
Mcfarlane: Right. I mean, we're now talking about what issues will the metaverse bring, and there are obviously issues of ethics, and what is allowed, and what steps over the line? There are all kinds of questions that have already been raised by the introduction of virtual reality, particularly when it comes to sexual harassment, you know, is it a crime, you know, to have sex with someone who is underage in a virtual reality sense? Like, is that still illegal? Because it's not a human being who is involved in that act, it's a virtual situation, is one example that a lot of people have used as a question in order to sort of start seeing what the barometer of ethics online is. And so the question, if we start looking at what we can and what we can't do, and where people can be exploited in the metaverse, who is going to be the subject of exploitation, it kind of leads me to ask you as part of that question, who decides these things? Who is going to police the metaverse?
Ball: So let's start from the macro consideration. There are many problems that we observe with the Internet today: mis and disinformation, harassment, abuse, happiness at large, platform power and platform regulation, data rights, data security, and frankly data literacy, among many others, radicalization. The metaverse will make all of those problems more acute. Why? Because these are fundamentally human and societal problems, and the metaverse means that more of humanity and society moves online. What we do online will have greater importance to our lives. In some regard, what you're just talking about is a foundational difference. The Internet today is primarily a window into our real lives. My identity may be substantially captured on Instagram, but Instagram is capturing my real life. The metaverse will be where much of my life exists and operates. As a result, there's no way but to believe those challenges will become harder. At the same time, it's very hard for us as users, developers, consumers, governments, regulators to affect change in this cycle. None of us are really decamping en masse from the platforms that we use, the social media properties and video networks, but change is a feature of new platform eras. In The EU, I've seen a relatively savvy shift from just legislating the last fifteen years with recent acts to looking forward. And so I generally believe that while the opportunity can produce worse outcomes, we have the opportunity to produce an even better one than today, and I see activity there. But ultimately, the question of who polices is the hard one. The Internet was created as a de facto public good owned by no one. I believe that governments have to be deeply involved in who owns the metaverse, who influences the metaverse. Frankly, if we consider charging ports of importance across Europe, then we should certainly consider data rights and data portability and standardization of critical national security. But one last thing that I find inspiring is I mentioned that the metaverse will lead to new business leaders and new philosophies. We are seeing that unfold, and one particular advocate comes from the founder and CEO of Epic Games, which makes the Unreal Engine used extensively, for example, in simulations in The United Kingdom, and powers Fortnite. And the company under his leadership has actually been to consistently relinquish rights that most platforms covet and to instead hand them over to the legal system in The United States. I love this because the Web3 and blockchain community talks about technological decentralization. This is decentralization by allowing voters in democratic processes to inform the rights of users and developers. And as I mentioned, not everyone thinks that they should give up their rights to the judicial system.
Dearlove: But we're talking really exclusively about democracies or western democracies. What scares me about the metaverse is it can be used in exactly the opposite sense as a massive organ for control. And in a way, we see this already occurring in China, which tried to strike a balance between giving its population a certain amount of, let's say, liberty through information technology. But at the same time, the other side of that coin is it's a massive organ of control for the state. And fine if we're in democracies, but there's an awful lot of the world that's gonna see this very differently. And I'd like Matthew's comments on that because in a way, we could almost argue for a sort of geopolitical bifurcation in two worlds that use this metaverse differently.
Mcfarlane: So, Matthew, before you jump in, there is a quote from your book that really sums up the essence of what Richard is saying, and I just wanna read it out for our listeners. The Communist Party of China's concerns about the growing role of gaming content and platforms in public life became more explicit in August, when the state owned Security Times warned its readers that the metaverse is a quote, grand and illusory concept and blindly investing in it will ultimately come back to bite you. For a communist and centrally planned country ruled by a single party, the potential of a parallel world for collaboration and communication is a threat, regardless of whether it's run by a single corporation or decentralized communities. I think it's clear that what the CCP fear about the metaverse is that it is a realm in which they cannot control creatively and practically. I mean, the way that the CCP police their own society to the absolute hilt, especially when it comes to culture and lifestyle choices. I mean, it's clear that they will not be able to do that in the metaverse. And so the question I have for you, Matthew, is who will be the dictators of the metaverse? And there was a really interesting quote by Tim Sweeney, the games executive that you've quoted earlier. He says that the metaverse is going to be far more pervasive and powerful than anything else. If one central company gains control of this, they will become more powerful than any government and be a god on earth.
Ball: So I love your point on China. At the end of the day, I wouldn't underestimate their ability to constrain what's possible in these creative multidimensional mediums. Again, we've seen that. I would argue that the basic ban year over year of gamers under 18 is evidence of that. It's a remarkable example of what many of us in the West fear that was implemented quite effectively and quickly, even if there are caps and limitations.
Mcfarlane: Let's assume that the metaverse is here and it is manifested and it exists, and let's say it's kind of like the Ready Player One online virtual world where people can log into and it is totally immersive, it's basically VR. Who is in charge of what you do and what the rules are, and who can essentially violate those rules? Is it gonna be the developers, the designers? Is it gonna be the companies who build the architecture that supports the metaverse? Will governments really have the influence, national governments? Because essentially, the metaverse is going to be a world that potentially has seven, eight, 9,000,000,000 citizens. Right? Because it has no borders the way countries do. And so instead of, you know, the governments of 200 countries vying for control, you could have whoever gets to rule this realm. And so who do you think is going to be the real arbiters of the law in the metaverse? And therefore, who do you think is the biggest threat in terms of having the ability to abuse that power?
Ball: Right. And I think this gets to the earlier discussion. Right? We should think of almost everything on the Internet, especially the World Wide Web. We're operating on technologies and standards that no one owns, not even the groups that actually manage them. Like, when we think of ICANN, for example, or the Internet Engineering Task Force. They provide recommendations that require their constituencies universally adopt them. And so the underlying network, what everything runs on, isn't owned. But everything that's being built on top is effectively being owned. And we see growing concentration of power. A great example comes from the iPhone. The iPhone is two thirds of devices in The United States. It's 75% of new purchases and it has 90% penetration among those under the age of 25. That's important because we can see that power growing. On the iPhone, which is therefore the de facto gateway to digital existence and virtual existence, Apple is essentially king and god. Why? Because they choose which software is distributed, how you pay for that software, which identity system you use, which business models they're allowed to deploy, and also governs the technologies that they require. This is why we see growing scrutiny in the EU, in South Korea, in Japan, and also The United States. But if we find that grand, then we should imagine what happens in the metaverse. Well now we have someone who literally owns the laws of physics in this parallel existence. They control the atoms that make up that realm. This is where the forecast of Mr. Sweeney starts to become less bombastic. Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, which sits as one of the 15 most valuable companies globally, says that he believes the economy of the metaverse will eventually exceed that of the physical world because he believes it will be responsible for most things that happen in the physical world. And therefore the company that mandates customs, technology, policing, policy, behavioral, your passport will be profoundly important. The role for governments here is to do what we're seeing with USB-C in the EU. To say that this is a mandatory technology you must support, a standard that you, Apple, and others do not own, and which is a requirement for operation here. That identity, those rules, the ways which information is stored or exchanged has to support these provisos. If not, we do end up in the outcome that you mentioned where because corporations have built it, because corporations operate it, and because corporations profit from it, they will command it.
Dearlove: I mean the implication of that description is that interoperability is almost irresistible. I mean, you seem to be assuming that obviously it would be accelerated if you were building products and activities which take that into account. But, obviously, that's not the case, and it wasn't the case with the Internet. But is your thesis that interoperability would happen naturally even if it isn't deliberately constructed, Matthew?
Ball: I tend to believe that interoperation is a natural arc, and we see that generally. For twenty years there was something called the Protocol Wars forgotten to most younger generations, and this was based on the idea that there would be no the Internet. The Internet would be one of multiple internetworking standards, and to access some applications and websites, we'd use the Internet, and then we'd use whatever else. There were multiple in contention. In fact, there was a point in time in which the Department of Commerce was advocating for a different internetworking standard alongside the EU, but in contrast to the Department of Defense which had produced the Internet. Ultimately the gravity, and by that I mean the utility and economics, of a single unified networking standard won out. Just as we can imagine, it would be frustrating if I could not send an email to you or we had to both sign up to an inferior network so that we could talk. The world economy tells a similar story. It has opened up not just in terms of trade but in the establishment of standards. We have multiple of them and that's key. You don't need to think of everyone agreeing. USD is the primary world currency, but of course we have the pound and euro. We primarily operate through English, but of course there's German, French, and increasingly Asian languages. We have the metric system, not perfect. And then, of course, we have things like the intermodal shipping container to facilitate the exchange of goods. That arc goes in one direction. The question, of course, is to what extent will interoperability exist in the virtual world and when is it deployed? The pace of change and the control over digital existence is so great that right now there's a bit of a rush to capture now and open later or capture now and be forced to open by governments later. I believe interoperability will rise. I'm optimistic that governments will push early, that consumers will require it, that the economics will mandate it, but at the end of the day it actually is the counterweight to power because we can't leave, we can't rebuild, and new competitors can't work if the feedback loops plus the protection and the lack of interoperation allows one or two companies to indefinitely grow. And this is why I think the legislation that we're seeing in the EU as a leader forcing platforms to, for example, allow anyone to use a mobile payments chip or a GPS locator signal is essential because it constantly opens up competition.
Mcfarlane: So that leads me to a foundational question for you, Matthew. And we're now sort of at the part of our conversation where we're looking at what are the challenges and the logistical issues that are delaying the metaverse manifesting right now. And you've referred to it a couple of times as a kind of rebirth of the Internet. So, I mean, my assumption was that the metaverse was going to be something that was built on the foundation of the Internet. But in your book, you painstakingly go through the many reasons why our current digital internet hardware infrastructure is really not built, or even designed to support just how massive and taxing really that the metaverse is going to be program wise. I mean, you talk about the problems of rendering of graphics, the problems of stable connection, the never ending problems of memory and storage. We will always run out of space because as soon as we make our data storage capabilities more efficient, we immediately find more stuff to put it in. So that's something that's gonna be a perennial problem. And also how the physicality needed to power the metaverse, this program, if I can call it that. Not only has it not been built yet, but it hasn't even really been conceived or even designed yet. We need to have a lot more fuel and data efficiency needed before the ecosystem of the metaverse can really start to grow and be adequately supported on a physical foundation. Right?
Ball: That's quite right. There are myriad different challenges. Right now, the network infrastructure that we have is inadequate. In The United States, only three quarters of those with broadband can reliably access these environments. Fewer than one in four in The Middle East can. And, again, I'm not talking about one in four Middle Eastern homes. I mean, with broadband. In India, it's fewer than one in 10. And that's because the infrastructure was not laid for these use cases. It was not designed for it. And exacerbating that is the original designs of the Internet. The Internet protocol suite never imagined us trying to pull this off, or that's probably not true. They imagined it, but you don't build for a technical use case that seems a century away. You build based on the practical requirements of today and the foreseeable future. And in that instance, the Internet was built so that you and I could exchange a file, then both having a distinct copy of it, and where the delivery of one second to ten seconds or two hours was not material. But the metaverse, of course, requires us all to be in it live, the same copy, you can't have fragmented versions of myself, and we wanted to have not just one person and one other person receiving, but all of us. And so this is where we talk not just about network infrastructure for which we have long struggled with the business case to expand into rural areas and to bring up to high performance, but how we design and operate the Internet. This is where the decentralization of its management is both good and bad. It can't move quickly. Then you're talking about other requirements which are general requirements for computing power, data storage, miniaturization. This is where we see the importance of things such as the proposed acquisition of ARM and others. But the enormity of these challenges is part, if not the sole reason why we see the privatization of the Internet for the metaverse. Solving them requires extraordinary capital, extraordinary patience, not just in one region, in one data center, but globally. The production of new equipment. The Internet is this quirky byproduct of the fact that no one believed in the potential importance of it, and of course it comes primarily from national security concerns, and no one else had the talent, resources, and timeline to build it. But that is no longer government, that is private industry. And the larger the problem, the more intractable, the greater the advantage the corporations building it has. And so these are hand in hand.
Mcfarlane: We're running out of time. So I have one last question for you, Matthew, and it's quite a philosophical question. And it stems from something that your book really reminded me of when I was reading it. And that is of a concept by Arthur C. Clarke, in his sci fi novel, The City and the Stars. And his narrative begins with a young man who grows impatient, breaking out of the preset narratives of the metaverse type virtual reality games, that is his society's social pastime. He keeps sort of breaking the programming by thinking outside of the box and trying to choose options and take paths that have not been written for him to explore in this game like scenario. Now, religious people will say that God as creator is the ultimate programmer of the universe in which we live in. And it works because he is infinitely more advanced and developed than mankind by a long way. So I wanna end just by asking you, will there ever be a comparable God of the metaverse? Will AI or quantum computing, will that ever be able to be programmed to extrapolate an infinite number of scenarios and paths to tread in the way that we have in our physical reality today?
Ball: Well, so the good news is, at least as we think of a human at the wheel for the metaverse, I think that the complexity of the systems that we already have and certainly the complexity of the systems that we want to build will so far exceed their ability to singularly, effectively, and perhaps coherently serve as a god of these platforms. When you're talking about artificial intelligence machine learning algorithms personified into a mythical god or a network, that's too far beyond my capabilities. I think what's remarkable is to recognize how far we are beyond what we already thought we might be able to pull off, and therefore think that we can kick the can on your philosophical question for perhaps a century or more.
Dearlove: I think I agree with Matthew's conclusion, but what I wanted to say to him is that you are a true philosopher of this new technology, and I've never had anyone explain it quite so clearly and logically, and congratulations. It's been a remarkable education for me, and I've so much enjoyed listening to and talking to you.
Ball: Oh, well, thank you. I'm so delighted to be here and appreciative of your time and thoughts.
Mcfarlane: This has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much, Matthew. That's it for this episode of One Decision. If you enjoyed this conversation, why not like and subscribe so you never miss an episode? We drop new shows every Thursday. From me and the team, thanks for listening, and see you next time.
