Metaverse sounds like a far-fetched dream that fits more in sci-fi movies than reality. However, that doesn’t stop some from attempting to cash in on the concept. Not just that, a startup is working on providing a digital workforce for it.
Enter Soul Machines, a New Zealand-based startup that claims to be designing AI-driven digital humans for clients to use for things such as customer service, education, and promotions. The company aims to provide a “digital workforce” for a potential metaverse, as per co-founder Greg Cross, reports The Verge.
Digital humans to work for humans
“When we’re playing a game, we adopt a certain persona or personality, when we’re coaching our kids’ football team we adopt another persona, we have a different personality when we’re at the pub having a beer with our mates,” Cross told the Verge. “As human beings, we’re always adjusting our persona and the role we have within those parameters. With digital people, we can create those constructs.”
These digital humans will run on a system called Humans OS 2.0. It’s an “Autonomous Animation Platform” that has a digital brain that allows the AI to learn from its interaction with real humans, as per the company’s website.
Is it ethical to create digital slaves?
“At some point in the future, you might be able to create a digital version of yourself or multiple versions of yourself, and they can go out and do stuff, make money for you, make money for your company, while you’re doing something else that’s a whole lot more fun,” Cross told the Verge.
Creating digital people with the ability to learn only to work for real humans brings up a plethora of ethical questions. “[Technology] has always been used by most of us to do incredibly good things and by a few of us to do the things that aren’t very nice or simply plain evil,” Cross told the site. “That is a reflection of the human condition.”
