In 2017, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a change of direction, moving from "mobile first" to "AI first." Over the next few years, Google increasingly integrated artificial intelligence with its software and hardware.
Today, almost all Google services rely on artificial intelligence — from Google Maps and YouTube to automated transcriptions in the Google Camera and Recorder apps. Google's Pixel 6 smartphone, released last October, also relies on a chip optimized for AI computing, which it says can perform numerous AI functions faster.
Google is also investing heavily in basic research to develop new translation systems, next-generation dialogue systems or artificial intelligence systems for medical diagnosis. Meanwhile, its sister company Deepmind is bringing AI to biology, mathematics, materials science or plasma physics. In short, Google's success largely stems from its use of artificial intelligence.
Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, also recognized the potential of artificial intelligence very early. In 2013, he hired Yang Likun, an artificial intelligence researcher and Turing Award winner. He helped build Facebook's diverse network of AI fundamental research, product development, and infrastructure development.
Initially, Facebook's AI ambitions appeared to be limited to automated moderation systems, chatbots and AI translations. In 2013, an attempt to bring Facebook to smartphones as a device home screen through Facebook Home failed. But it also suggests Zuckerberg is trying to steer Facebook away from its role as a social network and marketing platform. Immediately after, Facebook acquired Oculus and decided to create a closed ecosystem with VR hardware. Today, it is clear where Facebook can apply the combination of artificial intelligence and hardware and software demonstrated by Google at scale: in the metaverse.
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are still services run by Meta, but Zuckerberg sees a future in the metaverse. Is this just an action to avoid negative headlines, regulation or a breakup? It doesn't appear to be, because the stakes are too high to do so, and the cost of failure is too high. So what exactly is the Metaverse to Zuckerberg -- and why is he betting on the future of his company?
The term metaverse has many definitions, but all of them contain elements of an immersive experience in a three-dimensional digital world. For example, it's like a scene from the movie Ready Player One, or the game space of Minecraft and Roblox. However, in response to a question from podcaster Lex Fridman in early 2022, Zuckerberg explained that the Metaverse is not a virtual place connected to each other. Instead, he describes the metaverse as the point at which we do most of our daily digital work and leisure while wearing VR/AR glasses in an immersive 3D environment.
What he means is that the metaverse emerges when we work, socialize, consume media, create and play in these virtual environments. And as it expands, the metaverse will sooner or later become the successor to the mobile internet.
This claim that the metaverse is time, not space, likely stemmed from a late October 2021 tweet by former Twitch manager Shaan Puri: "The metaverse is the ratio of our digital lives to us. A moment when physical life is more valuable.”
Specifically, digital life here includes our online identities, experiences, relationships and assets. For example, work has moved from factories and offices to laptops and Zoom meetings. Friends go from neighbors to followers. There are more kids playing Fortnite than kids playing basketball and soccer combined. Filters are the new makeup, and Instagram Stories are your personal billboards for who you are. Now with cryptocurrencies, even your assets are online. If everyone is hanging out online all the time, then you need to go fully digital yourself.
While 99% of our attention was once devoted to caring for the physical environment, today it is constantly being sucked from the physical world into the digital world. Once we change our focus on the screen from 50% to over 90%, this is the point in time when the metaverse begins. Because at that moment, our virtual life will become more important than our real life.
Moments like this are reminiscent of the "singularity," a point in time when artificial intelligence becomes smarter than humans. This metaverse view focuses on human experience, making our transition to the metaverse a sociological shift, not just a technological one.
Play it this way, and you'll see that the metaverse isn't going to be an overnight change, or a Steve Jobs-esque invention. It will be an incremental change over 20 to 50 years.
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