A new social media, Metaverse, and more AI
Highlights-
- The past year wasn’t the best for tech firms. As user behavior plateaus and evolves, we could see innovative technologies emerge. Social media spaces that are more localized, multilingual, and encrypted present opportunities and challenges.
- The shift to 5G finally happened towards the last quarter of the year. Many of us have moved to this latest generation 5G, but maybe we are still waiting to see how that has made our life better.
- ChatGPT has shown the world that conversational artificial intelligence is an idea whose time has come. Yes, it is intelligent enough now to start writing leave applications that are believable, but most such AI elements are now in standalone products, which is more play than work.
- If Twitter has taught us something this year, it is that social media as we know it might soon become a thing of the past.
- Facebook too is struggling to remain relevant amid an increasingly younger and digital native audience.
- Meta, for instance, knows that it will have to think beyond its present social media platforms and wants to be the social link when users move to the Metaverse, if at all. But that might not be something that will shift soon.
- As Facebook’s user base becomes older by the year, younger users are preferring new platforms like Discord, where conversations happen more in closed groups than in virtual town squares.
- The evolution of such platforms are already challenging traditional methods of monetising social media engagement.
- As the Internet spreads to new users, especially in countries like India, it is also becoming more localized and multilingual. Across the world, the English language internet seems to have plateaued, making platforms like Google focus more on opportunities to serve smaller, regional languages.
- This emerging mosaic-like structure of users will mean that new platforms will need to solve more localized problems and the success of the one-size-fits all features will be even more limited.
- As hybrid workforces become the norm and with travel still not as easy as earlier, extended reality (XR) could become the answer to collaborate and communicate virtually.
- Expect a few more commercial versions of the Metaverse to be accessible to regular users during the year. However, the challenge will be with the hardware that lets you access these virtual worlds without making you bankrupt in the real world.
- The big disruptor could be an affordable device that logs users into the Metaverse easily—maybe it will just be a smartphone.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. It quickly garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. Its uneven factual accuracy was identified as a significant drawback.
What is metaverse?
“Metaverse” is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets.
What is the difference between AR and VR?
(Credits- I-BOSON INNOVATIONS)
Conclusion- As technology evolves it creates new avenues and opportunities. However, it remains a double edged sword and hence, its potential for harmful use should be adequately addressed.
Source- Indian Express
NEWS- A new social media, Metaverse, and more AI
Syllabus- GS-3; Science and Technology
