> Interestingly AI will paint a new world for humans to learn and experience new situations more often, more easily on a broader spectrum.

This is ignoring the instinct built over generations that humans don't want to "experience a new world", they want to explore it with other humans.

We are social animals. Facebook is so successful because it started out as a way to connect more with people you already knew or were acquainted with.

The "metaverse" and all its AI-generated worlds add little to no value in that direction. Wake me up when the metaverse makes it trivial to host a garden party and cook for the 5-10 attendees.

> This is ignoring the instinct built over generations that humans don't want to "experience a new world", they want to explore it with other humans.

I think humans want to explore it with intelligent beings, not necessarily “humans”. These new technologies have the potential to create agents in the movie “Her” sense that are compelling to interact with. The metaverse applicability seems clear.

Here's another scenario I envision now:

You and your friends jump in the metaverse every Tuesday night to play some virtual game, e.g., go hunting or rob a bank. Timmothy is out on vacation this week so won't be joining -- but now you can spawn up virtual Timothy, which is trained on a bunch of Timothy's data (see the other HN post about the guy who trained his bot on his friends group chats). Now Timothy is with his friends in this virtual world and he behaves mostly how Timothy does.

Virtual timothy plays better and without complaining. Weeks later the gang dreams of virtual tim. A week later they start playing, but this time without Tim.

Ok this scenario, but my wife.

> now you can spawn up virtual Timothy, which is trained on a bunch of Timothy's data

Not just no, but hell no.

If I'm going to play with a robot, I absolutely don't want it to replicate a friend. Even more, I would be furious if any of my friends replicated me like that.

When I'm playing with my friends, I'm doing it to play with my friends, not simulacra of my friends.

It won’t start with Timmothy. It’ll start with John Cena or Donald Trump. You’ll get to play with virtual celebrities. Then domain experts, like tennis camp with Serena Williams. Or story telling with Steven King. Or Fortnite with Ninja. And it will slowly find its way down the popularity slide to friends.

And you will protest it. Just like my MIL hates Facebook and thinks calling is so much more efficient than texting. But the younger generation will find this as natural as TikTok.

I wouldn't protest any of those things (assuming the celebrities consent to it). You're right that such a thing holds zero interest to me, but I don't find the idea objectionable. Celebrities are essentially "virtual people" to begin with (that is, celebrities are playing a role in public appearance -- you aren't seeing their true selves).

But I find the idea of replacing actual friends with simulations to be inherently objectionable.

I think that's what people do on a normal day, but all of the technical formats and decisions (vhs/dvd/streaming video/etc) have been pioneered by porn.

So, pretty much what you said, but probably having sex with anime girls instead.

> I think humans want to explore it with intelligent beings, not necessarily “humans”.

I think the majority humans want to be with humans, not just intelligent beings. Some don't, of course, and there's probably a decent business catering to them.

Honestly I don’t think content generation is a limiting factor for a compelling meta verse. IMO the constraints are more to do with fidelity and the quality of the experience.

There are currently so many weaknesses and limitations with the medium of VR that it’s just not particularly appealing for folks to spend a lot of time using it, and I think that’s why you don’t have great content gen.

I do think generative AI has some really interesting possibilities for interactive media - but I don't see how it unlocks anything.

It's clear there's a market for well-designed and compelling VR chat. VRChat[1] has a large community and had a very active developer community[2]. Facebook had no luck in attracting users in a proven market - there's no reason to believe their products would be more popular after hooking a generative agent up to it.

If you are looking for "the metaverse" in a generic sense - other people are already doing it better than Facebook (and have been for some time). It's been unlocked for years. Facebook hasn't even managed a capable clone, much less broken new ground.

[1] https://hello.vrchat.com/

[2] Until they banned all modding - here's a video of a user using sign language and subtitles: https://twitter.com/TheFoxipso/status/1551640725455982593

> It's clear there's a market for well-designed and compelling VR chat. VRChat[1] has a large community and had a very active developer community[2]. Facebook had no luck in attracting users in a proven market - there's no reason to believe their products would be more popular after hooking a generative agent up to it.

Facebook gets to take 30% of VR Chat's gross revenue (they sell premium features) on standalone and the desktop Oculus store.

Apple likely makes more profit off Roblox than Roblox.

we had SecondLife, ut dies everythibg metaVerse does, 20 years ago.