Interview with Pactera Edge CAIO Ahmer Inam on a Responsible Metaverse

Ahmer Inam experience is the Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO) and Chief Product Strategist at Pactera Edge. Pactara Edge has worked with many large companies to provide AI services and consulting.

Ahmer Inam said in a Nextbigfuture interview that Meta will be a very financially successful pivot for what was Facebook but also could be used to deliver benefits to mitigate certain psychological traumas and issues like elder loneliness and isolation.

The recent Meta announcement was where Facebook changed its name to Meta and announced major investments to realize the vision of the Metaverse.

Facebook wants to take all of the social connections they provide today and make it more immersive. The Meta vision is to enable people to interact like teleporting holograms with others.

This will have commercial benefits because any selling of product or services will be as powerful or as addictive as any imaginable real-world or cyber experience. Data will be used to find what the optimal selling experience is for each person.

Any benefits or problems caused by powerful social media or powerful digital selling would be magnified with the more engaging Meta experience.

Ahmer sees the metaverse as an ego-centric experience vs. the spectator experience of the current AR/VR (augmented reality / virtual reality) experience. For this ego-centric multidimensional experience to be successful, companies building metaverse platforms need to ensure that they are built with hyper-personalized relevancy and context for each individual. To do so would require extensive varieties of data that AI algorithms can train on. Pactera Edge has the expertise in this type of data that can help bring hyper-localized experiences to life. Pactera calls it AI Localization — https://www.pacteraedge.com/index.php/ai-localization-what-it-and-how-do-it-right).

The innovation in data, cloud, infrastructure, algorithms, and experiences that have to happen to bring the vision of metaverse to life would have a much more lasting and meaningful impact than perhaps the metaverse itself. This is where Ahmer draws the parallels with the space program of the 1960s that launched many technology innovations that the society at large benefited from, and continues to do so.

Metaverse is already one of the hottest stories in Big Tech, and the metaverse is creating business value for companies such as Roblox that are building its many component.

Tencent, powerful chinese company, has been making large investments in the goal of the Metaverse. Many companies are working towards these goals. Nvidia is making the chips needed for a richer Meta graphical experience.

As a technologist, Ahmer is excited about the metaverse. As a member of our society, he is also a bit concerned about the potential harm that the metaverse could cause. He believes it is crucial that the technology companies designing the metaverse take a mindful approach with human centricity, responsibility, and trustworthiness at the core.

Businesses are already achieving value from the metaverse, such as the use of digital twins to perform highly complex tasks in virtual worlds. But the increased hype also puts societal risks in a clearer light. There is enough evidence of the detrimental effects of social media and its role as a catalyst in the ever-widening polarization of the global societies. Conspiracy theories and false information that used to be on the fringe have now taken the center-stage.

The metaverse may very well amplify these problems dramatically.

Regulations could be useful for mitigating issues related to the Metaverse but regulations will take time. In the meantime, companies and individuals involved in creating the Metaverse will need to be mindful and responsible actors. Pactera Edge is involved in the mindful analysis and discourse around potential problems and will be a mindful partner in responsible implementations.

Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.

Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.

A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts.  He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.