 Good afternoon, everybody. It is a privilege to be here. My name is Andrew Ross sorkin of the New York Times and CNBC We are live in high fidelity here to you But this is going to be a conversation about the metaverse Where maybe we won't really be live in the future. Maybe we'll all be all together in the metaverse But there are so many issues that the metaverse Raises opportunities it creates and we're going to dig into all of them this afternoon together And we have an amazing group of people here to talk about these issues of governance Of potential regulation what those opportunities really look like potentially even issues around inequality And then we'll get into the innovation and tech side of it as well Let me introduce who's here Peggy Johnson's here chief executive of Magic Leap We have Omar al-Omama Obama He is the minister of state for artificial intelligence digital economy remote work applications in the UAE Chris Cox is the chief product officer at meta They just changed their name to reflect this new world and then Philip Rosdale is the co-founder of high fidelity But for the purposes of our conversation here today He is the founder of second life perhaps one of the original metaverses of sorts To help level set where we are and what this conversation is really going to be about and because I think The metaverse means a lot of different things to a lot of people and I think we don't really know necessarily Where we all are I want to spend if we could only about 60 seconds We 120 seconds getting a sense from all of you about what the metaverse is and to the extent You can add how you think it's going to impact our society I would love to do that and I'm gonna start if I could with Chris Cox On this issue Chris. Thanks Andrew I wanted to start just with a message of support and condolences to the victims of the shooting in Texas To their families to the affected community and to the people of Texas I know a lot of us are sending our hearts and condolences to them. So I wanted to start with that message Important message. Thank you. Thank you Metaverse I at least think about it as the next chapter the next evolution of the internet except It's the part where it gets less flat If you think about the primary metaphors for the internet to date have been about web pages and literally two-dimensional objects that we peer at through screens One of the most important trends is in computing has been the computer moves from a basement to our desktop To our pocket that has happened over the last 50 years and we believe I think we as an industry believe that it ultimately gets closer to the senses to the eyes to the hands to speech And so keyboard input goes away and and peering at everything through a screen in our pockets eventually goes away The metaverse is a way of describing the transition into three-dimensional environments Why don't we go all the way down and we'll come back this way great, you know for me As someone who you know became an entrepreneur and I'm an engineer in 1994 For me the metaverse was this idea really of a place That was somehow simulated on computers that were connected by the internet so as a young Entrepreneur the dream that I had was what would people do if we could create an enormous single landscape? You know that was perhaps the size of a city or something and then let everybody come into that landscape and make things And build things and so the beginning of the Genesis of second life was very much this idea of dreaming of a single Shared place that we would inhabit together as human beings and and do things together. So that's what really Started off for me And now we've got avatars and behaviors and psychology and groups and all these other wonderful things happening But that place idea is what really captured me Oh, I'm So if I look at this from a government perspective the first thing that comes to mind is scale So if you look at the Travis Scott example the concert that he did in I think it was fortnight 56 million people have ended that it was a matter of scale the biggest concert on earth is around a million people or a million and a Few hundred thousand you can definitely scale different goods and services to people across borders in a very seamless manner That's the first thing the second is I think it's a new form of expression We used to imagine text on screen. We used to imagine graphics now We can imagine new worlds. We can imagine new ways of giving these services We can imagine a new let's say paradigm between the virtual and the physical which is augmented reality And I think we can create a bridge that we could never have imagined in the past What do you think? Well, first of all, I have a bit of a reaction to the word metaverse just having Red snow crash by Neil Stevenson. It's a that's a bit of a dystopian view that he had But I think at its highest level I would think of it as the seamless merging of our digital and physical worlds And I think actually currently in the conversation across media and publicly we It seems to me a little limited because it seems to center just in virtual reality But when that actually happens a seamless integration of your digital and physical world that that really is I think the true promise of the metaphors And I think that's realized in augmented reality when our heads are like Tell us what it feels like and and some people here I'm sure have used either a magic leap or an oculus or or warn a headset And and I'm sure many others have not and so if there's a way to articulate it. Yeah So I think they're very different Virtual reality, you know, you have a headset on and you're fully occluded. You're in a you're in another world and it's Fantastic and there's use cases for that Augmented reality is you're in you put the headset on you still see your physical world and then we augment it with intelligent digital content and And there's different use cases for that, but they tend to get merged. I think in this idea of the metaverse Chris here's where I want to go There's a view in the world that There's a bunch of people trying to do Trying to create the next metaverse and in different worlds within those metaverses the internet right now There's lots of players in it but of course there's a couple of big players in it and When when you start to think about how the metaverse might look You might start to think that actually only one or two sort of operating systems can win the day because you're sort of living in this in this universe and how Interoperable these things can ultimately be this now gets into web 3 and other things as well But I'm sort of curious whether you think this is a win or take all Sort of future and to the extent that it these worlds are going to be interoperable how that would ever work Yeah, so first of all, I hope it's interoperable. We want it to be interoperable We if you think about the hyperlink Just as a really brutalist simple metaphor for the structure of Portability that made the original internet work was I could click on a blue word and you will go from one service to another service That was the structure that enabled Google that enabled sort of the first generation of web services to build utility was we had some agreement on what the primitives were of The internet the primitives in the metaverse are going to be more complicated because Travel the equivalent of a hyperlink in the metaverses. I can go from second life into Into a work meeting and then I can go from there into an educational experience where I'm visiting the Coliseum And then I can turn it all off Maybe in being an AR experience where I can just pull my messages up or I can Translate the person who's speaking a different language next to me These are the kinds of things that I think we're all envisioning you want them all to be interconnected Because from a user experience, that's just going to be a better experience The first thing you want to do when you're in a beat saber, which is one of our most popular applications If you're playing with your friend is leave and go somewhere else Not leave because it's a bad experience But leave because you you get bored and you want to you want to do something after it The industry as a as a as a coalition is spending a lot of time starting to talk about standards What are the standards for an avatar? What are the standards for travel between one space in the next? What are the standards are on privacy? around encryption Around how things like report buttons will work the report button is the key element to help somebody in an unsafe situation Flags something about it and how we manage those experiences as an industry are going to be some of the most important questions on how We build something that's safe But also that provides lots of opportunity for developers Philip. You've been at this for a long time You think it's possible all these issues meaning that you can actually create an interoperable world that I can be in One part one one world and maybe I've even bought You know a digital pair of Air Jordans and I can still wear them to the next place and then I can have my you know my my my My yacht my my yacht club monkey You know, I mean like can I is all this is like you bought a yacht in the meta, but I didn't buy Am I gonna be able to but I think this is the real question was just how interoperable these things ever can really be Well, I certainly think from a technical perspective. We can do everything here You know, I mean between the you know the the various technology companies that are working on this now at such scale We definitely can make anything we want technically happen I think the question is and if if you're asking, you know, can we have a form of interoperability say an identity? And and and moderation that is a stable positive environment I think that's certainly true and interesting fact about second life though It's not experienced on headsets. It's experienced on screens But an interesting fact about it is that it stands out as a remarkably positive experience overall for the people that are there So strangely enough and I and I don't want to brag and say we anticipated this ahead of time But the the experience that people actually do have in second life for the people that are there Which is a smaller group than the whole world, but you know, it's a million people is Remarkably positive people get along they make new friends. They overcome You know divisive boundaries, so it's intriguing to note that technology is kind of neutral But right now we're we're appropriately concerned with some of the negative impacts it's had but I think the metaverse experience and the particular experience of bringing people together with the right shared rules the right like the right basic basic rules about how they can interact does have the potential of Bringing us all together worldwide in the way that we're doing it right here, right? Hey, Peggy Do you think we'll all be do you think the world economic forum will live in the metaverse? You think we'll actually travel here a decade from now What what and by the way, what is the just give us even a time from a technological perspective a timeline for which this Conversation which seems seems somewhat theoretical to people is actually a reality. So a couple things I do think we will replace some amount of travel with 3d meetings because You know pre-pandemic I would get on a plane and fly cross country for a two-hour meeting and then back again and looking back at that Now it's like why did we do that because we've proven we can do meetings? Okay? but You know the the issues that you would have really truly replacing a physical meeting is you want that That empathy that you feel when you're sitting next to someone you see their their body movements Their their gestures their eye movements much of that can be done in a 3d meeting So when we put devices on fact, we use this a lot my management team during COVID we would wear the devices and call each other and I would have a meeting all my team would be there in in In my living room and they were depicted though as generic avatars Because you need to have cameras on you if you're going to depict Andrew a circuit and you're gonna need to have a bunch of cameras on you so we can capture you in 3d well We didn't have that But we did know where people's eyes were if you have four cameras on our device looking at your eyes so that we know Where to place the digital content right but I then could see if you were looking at me I could see that and there's there's a feeling you get when someone's looking at you even in this Augmented world and if you walked around my living room and behind me I could hear you the spatial audio is awesome and there's There's just an empathy that you get in a 3d meeting that isn't possible right now in our 2d video conferencing So I think a fair amount of those meetings can be replaced That's your governance question. Yes, you know the internet is somewhat borderless, but is defined by Regulations in very in every country. It gets more complicated I think in the metaverse in that really if it works the way it's supposed to work it should be a borderless world and I could be in New York and you could be the UAE and Phillip could be in Hong Kong and And the question is whose rules are supposed to apply, you know Chris mentioned this this tragic shooting that just happened yesterday And I was thinking actually of a fascinating and I think actually very scary situation Which was two weeks ago up in Buffalo, New York. There was a shooting that was taken live on Twitter I'm sorry on twitch and then taken down and a lot of the other social media companies took it down Around the country in the United States. Yet. There's a law in Texas interestingly That's supposed to be about free speech and censorship that says you actually have to leave it up You'd actually have to leave up the video of the shooting which is extraordinary And so I imagine there's going to be different rules in different countries in different states And how you as somebody who's a Government actor thinks about that in this new world Absolutely, so there are different types of risks that we need to pay attention to There are risks that need to be enforced by government Let's say financial transactions that happen in the real world for goods that you buy in the metaverse Like you mentioned the Air Jordan's or the the monkey art that you talked about or board a by called the monkeys But the insult to the board board apes So so if you actually pay money for that and you don't get it in the metaverse someone needs to enforce that action Right, so that's one type of issue that governments need to talk about and and in some way shape or form come to an agreement Of how that's going to be enforced then there is the more extreme aspect Which is terrorism really terrorizing people on the metaverse because the difference is if I send you a text on what's up It's text. All right. It might terrorize you but to a certain degree to not create the memories that you Will have PTSD from it but if I come into the metaverse And it's a realistic word that we're talking about maybe in the future and I actually murder you and you see it It actually takes you to a certain extreme where you need to enforce it aggressively across the world because everyone agrees that Certain things are unacceptable There needs to be a conversation today at the level of the United Nations or the ITU or these Non-governmental bodies where a certain standard is set that standard is set on the internet to a large extent where everyone agrees that The content on the internet is actually content that for example dark web content is illegal in many countries Content that is not part of dark web that was not nothing to do with drug trafficking, you know Child pornography, etc. Is acceptable and we're able to use this common platform I also think that there needs to be passporting between the different platforms or the different layers of the metaverse So if meta develops something and magically develops another there You know their own platform rather than the hardware and actual software that you live on There has to be some sort of interoperability between them And the person needs to be able to choose the content that they go between Because what we've seen today is there are a few things content is king. Why will you go to the metaverse? I think meeting on the metaverse is good But I actually know nine out of ten people are to say we prefer to meet face-to-face Covid is an issue. They're worried about it But actually sitting and seeing people's body language interacting with them today is preferential Why people want to go to the metaverse is because they're able to access content that they've never seen before experienced new Experiences play new games with people on a larger scale And it is important for us to have this conversation today and build at least the ground rules and work our way up Do you that's you you do business all over the world Chris? Yes, that's right obviously Yeah, and you're dealing with different laws and different regulations in many different places Is this doable and is it is the UN going to be the the arbiter of how this is gonna any What you know what we call that's the splinter net and and de-globalization Is is there a governing body that can actually make this work? There certainly are if you look at If you look at child exploitation if you look at terrorism there are international organizations Some of them are associated with the UN some aren't you want international standards Especially for things that are across especially cross-border like terrorist content We already are in the situation where we're operating in Thailand where there's laws against You know lay majesty and we're operating in Turkey where there's laws against defaming at a Turk You know We're already managing as our most internet companies the reality that you want companies to have their own community standards to define their own rules Obviously out in conversation with the industry But also to recognize that that exists in tension with national laws and in some cases as we're beginning to see state laws There's tensions on both sides. I think the most important thing to say is much like the internet in the metaverse You're gonna have services Service companies operating different systems with different rules some are gonna be way more open-ended some are gonna be rated R You know some are gonna be PG and some of them are gonna have sort of more or less strictures Around safety and integrity there will probably be something like a rating system which we have for film We have for music we have for other types of content so that a parent Or a young person can have some sense of what the rules are and their environment they're gonna walk into Just like if you walk into a bar versus a playground There's a different expectation of what rules govern that that place some of them are social norms some of them are enforced by People who run those institutions the persons who's running the restaurant feels responsible for the behavior of the people who are inside at some Way shape or form so those are some of the things I think we're gonna play out I think some are gonna be Similar to versions on the internet today But to some of the points that were made it's gonna be a much more synchronous experience So it's not all gonna be written down in text There aren't gonna be probably nearly as much data associated with a communication because it's gonna be happening over audio It's gonna be happening in real time And for all those reasons I agree completely There's gonna be a new set of problems as well as opportunities we need to think about and hopefully as an industry well But go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say new set of problems one thing that we're realizing is when you put on the device and You go to reach for something your eyes go there first and then your hand goes there Yeah, and then when you have these different input mode out modalities You can start to guess what the human's gonna do before they do it and that's an area that we have to think about From a privacy situation. Yeah, I Wanted to go ahead. I was just gonna say regarding You know, I'd make maybe a maybe a more controversial statement Which is you know, second life is always sort of thought of itself as a kind of a new country And it was something that I often said when we were getting started and I do think that while local while local community Regulation is ultimately what we must build in the metaverse If we have any hope of having a billion people regulate themselves as they do in the real world I think that in the same way that the UN emerged I bet you that as these shared systems become more useful say just for meetings We will we will collapse to a more singular set of rules say around intellectual property or Privacy we can't do anything else. I mean, I think the efficiency will drive it You mentioned privacy and I want to talk about monetizing this world because I think that's gonna be a huge challenge And maybe I'm maybe I'm gonna stir this stir up this conversation a moment I'm gonna read you something that you said Philip about Mr. Cox's company you said if Facebook is successful at building a metaverse with behavioral ad targeting It's just a very very bad outcome And it's not inevitable at all. There's lots of ways that this whole universe can be monetized That may be one of them But I'm curious how you think about those issues and all of the lessons if there's been any lessons learned Over your time at second at second life, but also in this new world Chris at at Facebook at the social media universe that we're all Living through data tracking We've had a huge debate as you very well know because you've been at the center of the last decade, frankly. Yeah, you know I mean restating that what I said and what I meant You know, there are two companies worldwide that have built tremendous businesses just in the last 20 years Which an internet time I guess is most of it but still it's relatively new and and those two companies are Facebook meta and Google That that that make money through advertising the point I was making was if we move those models which rely on Making predictions about what you want and suggesting things to you and and in some cases. I think manipulating your behavior Yeah, I think it's a terrible risk. The good news is nobody actually has to go there and I would imagine that You know meta would also point out that it has you know different models for things the model that has to work in the metaverse in my opinion is a Transaction or a fees model rather than an ads model that and I definitely stand by especially with that buying digital goods and subscriptions Is that yep in a word? Yes Chris is that is that the model you're I think I think you're gonna have both. I think if you want free services at scale Advertising is gonna be the natural business model for it. Just like it has for you know since print And if you're gonna want more narrow services that can be ad-free or offer other Sort of transactional business models. You're gonna have subs. You're gonna have digital goods I think much like on the internet you're gonna have trade-offs and you're gonna want to offer a service That's is there a way to do it. Yeah, where The user owns their own data I mean one of the sort of benefits of web 3 Some of the blockchain things that we've talked about that may exist in terms of layering on top of this There's this idea that maybe you could own your own data and even maybe sell it to Maybe a meta or to other. How do you see that? So first the user should control their data So at any any sort of combination of events the user should have the ability to delete to understand and to have Controls over how their data is used the user should understand that having data aggregated means they can have a much more relevant service I mean the exchange of you can have ads that are relevant to you or ones that are generally irrelevant to you is an exchange that comes along with Basically agreeing to have data collected in a privacy safe An aggregated way right so we all and I'm here in Europe with all of you now And we all just click on the except except except the cookie and and even though we now have more we now have more control We ostensibly have more control, but in some ways we have less control because it's very complicated It's too complicated to actually control. So is there a way to change that dynamic in the metaverse? I do think what you're saying is it we have the opportunity now to reinvent some of what we've learned from the previous iterations of the internet So, you know, we're focused on enterprise and one of our the earliest use cases is health care So things like pre-surgical planning rather than looking at a 2d screen and seeing the brain there You can put the brain in the middle of the room and and plan the surgical pathways Certainly, we don't want any advertising in there when they'd actually then take that into the operating room The world's most terrible at That's something pops up there But I I think that we have the opportunity to reinvent and we should explore all those things now It because of what we've learned in the past from, you know, the Projectors we would take it to date. So there is a thing when you go to university You have this orientation class you get oriented into what is expected from your university and what you should do You get that at work you get that in life in general You don't get that when you use the internet So most people are ignorant to what the trade-off is and that's why we have these problems off I did not know that I'm giving this much information and this is how it's going to be used against me to Monetize, right? There needs to be a way for us to orient people on what it means first to go to the digital world Not even the metaverse what it means to use the internet and this should be something that is in Basic education in every single school in the world because you need to understand that okay You can manage your cookies you can remove certain things that you don't get targeted There are ways for you to actually pay and get that service if there is that becomes a business model And then it becomes a person's choice if the person says I actually like it the way that is right now I go for it for free and they can monetize everything from me then it's a personal choice Today people do not have the right for information. They do not understand what is happening and how they're playing a role They don't have in many countries maybe in Europe they do but and probably the way the right of access to access their data And on the time what is being collected and the right to be forgotten these rights in that way This needs to happen today for the digital world first and then get implemented into the metaverse right because I completely agree with the points being made certain business models made sense for the internet and social Media for the metaverse we need to actually take them to the next level Can I ask you all question? I think one of the great opportunities for the metaverse potentially Could be around issues around education and ultimately could solve issues of inequality But I was talking to a fellow last night who made a very compelling argument to me I did I don't think I personally agreed with but I was fascinated by it and he said look there's gonna be people of Means who are going to travel and then there's gonna be people maybe who are lesser means who might actually be able to use an Oculus or a magic leap or some other kind of device to travel to the same place But from their own their own couch, but in many ways It's actually gonna create even more distance between those the the those two people that that Psychologically, and I think that we've experienced this through social media in many ways It's brought people closer in certain ways But actually created this remarkable divide because there's it's even more visible Actually the divide in certain ways and how you all think about that Well, I mean I can I know that's a little deep but no I mean, it's okay. I think it's one of the central kinds of questions We need to be asking we need to be studying and we need to be understanding. I mean at the core. I think good technologies help us feel closer and The key the premise of the smartphone the premise of the internet at some level at its absolute most Sort of primitive level is it is a democratizing force It provides tools it provides power for people it especially provides tools for connection for people who cannot travel And we've seen some of the most powerful examples of how the internet has changed health care has offered access to a cataract exam has offered access to a bank account has offered access to Education on almost any issue is Just a really powerful idea and I think what needs to be one we don't lose sight of I think It is true at first But with economies of scale while you scale up the actual product or the platform with time more and more people actually come on board So ultimately I don't think it's going to be a problem. Maybe in the beginning the initial stages it will but there are a few very high potentially positive impacts of this the first is There's a statistic of you know 70% of what you read you forget within the first two minutes, right? It's because you don't actually experience that content. It's flat You're reading it some people have better recall or better memory. Most people forget it. It's the same with video If you can actually experience what you're learning It sticks for much longer And I think the same way that the internet unleashed a revolution of really improving human intelligence Democratizing knowledge and today you have people building nuclear reactors in their backyards and they're 16 years old In some cases, it's because that's sure about that one Sure, that's a good thing is what I was saying. No Well, it just shows you the level of intelligence that people have to be a 16 year old kid has the level of intelligence of what a PhD in the 60s would take 20 years to study in the cheap So these things are positive and I think that this will actually lead to a better future There's also a lot more understanding that can be incorporated into the metaverse There are people who have never traveled in their lives in the US and China and India many countries And they've never experienced seeing an Arab country in African country seeing an Asian and to some level There's ignorance there. I think in the metaverse You can actually go and live in their houses like in the metaverse and see their culture and be a lot more understanding So these are the positives There are also some things that need to be addressed as you rightly said How do you ensure that it becomes a You know not to have and have not kind of future but a future like the internet where everyone can get on board and Benefits from the positive outcomes of the metaverse from the get-go and how can we reduce the delta the internet? The first people on the internet. I think they were 10 years ahead of everyone else today We're seeing people in India and you know in Africa going going on board. How do we reduce that delta? So, you know, I think that to just restate it, you know Inequality in all its forms specifically wealth inequality is as grave a concern for us I think it's climate change as we move forward and and you know Second life for example is a company that for a long time has been meeting as avatars as you might imagine For years and we have people all over the world And so we've had a lot of experience with this getting together and having meetings as avatars rather than a zoom But I do think as you say for an example of a grave Challenge and danger that we now face is precisely this that as we begin to travel again We will separate into two classes basically those with the means to travel and meet face-to-face and those who are left behind on zoom and Know and in in hybrid meetings a particular concern I have those meetings we have with our teams where two or more people are in the room together and thus enjoy real eye contact and real intimacy and Everybody else is on the zoom call think think how bad that's going to be we don't know it yet because in covid We were all on zoom right the CEO was on zoom everybody was on zoom now We're about to have half the people on zoom. I have a different question and this is something from your second life experience I'm very curious about one of the things we've seen on social media is that people Act one way in real life when we're we're here something. I might say to you face-to-face I Wouldn't necessarily say to you something. I would say online. I might not say to you face-to-face I think we're seeing this on Twitter all sorts of social media platforms where people and by the way even slack Inside people's companies people will say stuff to each other digitally that they wouldn't say in person And I'm curious what your experience with that has been in second life And how do you think that manifests itself if it will in a much larger? Metaverse universe that we would all live in a great example about that Way back in the beginning when second life started out But we had a substantial number of people that were hanging around in there We had a precisely this experience where we had a text forum You know something like reddit or slack as we have today and people would get in that forum And just as you say they would get very nasty with each other about you know What what had happened in the world and why they were mad about it and why that person was terrible And I would sometimes intervene in these things and I would immediately go log on into second life and walk right up Now this is not with a headset. You don't need that for this experience But if you walk up to somebody Synchronously as an avatar and get within arm's length of them You know as an avatar and they see that you both see that and you say to them. Hey, I saw what you wrote in the forums What's up? That's a you're really upset, you know every time the person as an avatar would say Just what we would say face-to-face. I'm so sorry. I don't know what got into me I'm here to listen to your perspective. I understand there's two sides of you know four sides to this or whatever So absolutely one of the positive things that moves me every day to you know keep coming to work is that When you get together face-to-face and it's synchronous and you're really talking Even online even as avatars not yet even in the headsets It definitely makes you behave the way we all behave to each other here And is your sense that there will be people who will live under their own names But possibly other people who will live anonymously as avatars and how does that work? Yeah, I want to take that. Yeah, go ahead Peggy. Well, I that's that's interesting. Just you know given what's going on now with you know anonymous Twitter handles and things I think it's gonna be Particularly when we get to the point where there are Cameras on you or you wanted to picture yourself that way it's gonna be as if I'm standing right next to you And I'm going to have that same difficulty saying things to you even if the virtual Andrew that I wouldn't have maybe if I was online So it the closer we get to replicating the physical world. We're gonna feel that again I feel it now when we have our meetings just my internal meetings and two of my team are over in the corner laughing about something I'm like, what are you talking about over there? And you know, I feel like they're there What what what are you thinking about in terms of anonymous? I mean because this also has to do with democracies I mean some people would argue, you know the Arab Spring Happened in part because there were people who could actually act anonymously, but as a group online Sure, how does that work in the metaverse? So I think you'll have both systems In the early internet, we had pseudonymity pretty much as the norm pretty much everywhere We can all remember the version of 2004 where you had your AOL handle And that was how you used eBay. That was how you used You know the early services reddit flicker sort of the first version of events I mean the the primary insight of the early Facebook experience was that your real name was required And that that was going to come with a completely different set of social norms for all the same reasons that there's Centuries of research that the more distant you are from your real name and your real face. You'll take on different behaviors I think that's also good things in that But as I said before and I think as a lot of folks have said having spaces with different rules Is going to be very important because you're gonna get spaces where you want real identity as the norm I think a business meeting is probably a good idea. We're all wearing our real name on our in front of us And there's gonna be some places where you want to let people explore other identities If you look at Roblox right now one of the most amazing examples, I think of the metaverse already being here If any of you have kids who play Roblox, you already have a hundred million people using Roblox, right to it's on any screen And so because of cloud rendering and other technologies any phone or any PC And I think this is part of the equality conversation by the way is that VR and AR will be Devices you can use but they also need to be accessible from any device any smartphone with an internet connection So to the core of the question you're gonna want pseudonymity You're gonna want it in certain contexts for pseudonymous context Do you want either a shared space like we're doing something together? We're at the same concert We're at the same comedy club. We're in the same church or mosque or you want moderation So you want somebody in that space who feels responsible for keeping track of what the rules are and who feels responsible for the behavior inside But you don't think that it creates any disconnect meaning if all of us I don't know if you think I'll ask you the same question. I asked Peggy before do you think that We could have a Davos a world economic forum that is completely in the metaverse And that if everyone is just sitting on their couch all day long all the time how that changes just the personal Dynamics that people ultimately have there's gonna be trade-offs I mean I can imagine a lot more people being here that Didn't need to you know burn a bunch of carbon flying planes and then expose ourselves without masks I would kind of prefer that experience in some ways But on the other hand you're gonna there's gonna be personal interactions that are missed and so I agree with Peggy You're gonna want some version of events where you didn't really need to go travel there But you could have the interaction it should bring on people who weren't able to travel But on the flip side, we don't want this replacing a real-life experiences We have about five to ten minutes left I do want to open up for questions because I know there are people who probably have them I say a hand up I think there's some likes around the room and I will try to get to as many as we can in the limited time we have Go ahead Hello, and thank you very much. My name is Sharif and I want to ask a question with regards to another session That I have attended earlier Focusing on upskilling I think that the metaverse will definitely play an empirical role in addressing this challenge because it was mentioned earlier that historically One needed to upskill once every decade. However, more recently it should be done once every three years How do you think that the metaverse can help address this point? Peggy, this is what you're doing. This is exactly what we're doing a plant. Yeah. Thank you Right now we were finding that Training inside the metaverse is Much easier to understand if you can be actually in situ So for instance a factory worker Rather than bringing everybody all the new factory workers together and putting them in a room and training them for three weeks And then sending them out onto the factory floor. You can actually almost from day one Put someone in with a headset on bring them up to a machine You can in their field of view they can walk through how to maintain the machine how to diagnose the problems Maybe call an expert in either a live expert or someone who's retired who had tribal knowledge of that machine that may have been lost But now lives on in the metaverse for that factory worker We're finding the companies that we've worked with are seeing about an 80 percent Reduction in the amount of time it takes to Productivity from a factory worker. So I think it's a super awesome way to upskill people in the metaverse I think we got a question on this side. We're going to try to go very quick So we're going to keep each question to 30 seconds so we can get around the room as quickly as we can Yes, Bastian shiro. I'm a member of parliament from Switzerland Very quick question also important for democracy what we see in social platforms is that extreme people? Tend to stick together and and stay together all the time now if metaverse is super attractive People spend the whole time in metaverse Isn't there the risk that they don't meet real other opinions and this extreme divide? No, or extreme groups and the divide of the society is reinforced or what can we do to avoid the issue of polarization Who wants to take it I'll take it first. I think there's two ways that we there's two ways that we avoid that the first Way is that our virtual spaces like the real world need to have in between spaces where we can meet in between groups We cannot it is very difficult to become extremist when you are in a room containing a number of people who have Different viewpoints and so virtual worlds can bring people lots of people together in one shared space and by doing that They can reduce the risk of Extremist behavior the second one which we can argue on is I think that Some of the business models like advertisement Unfortunately have at least cracks that are slipped through where we are amplifying these behaviors through Suggesting essentially worse and worse forms of or pushing people farther and farther into polarization So no ads and letting people share a single space rather than just be in a small room Great. Thank you for that. We have a question up front here And I'll come around to here and back there metaverse has three important dimensions One is a massively multiplayer co-creation one is monetization with NFTs and manas and so on and so on and one is The whole notion of immersive experience and interactions. We commented the two letters What about the first one what about unleashing collective creativity? How will you take that to the next level compared to social media? I Think when the when the common platform is established then it will naturally become a massive Millions of people online platform that they actually use the challenge today is so we're trying to solve two dilemmas You have the hardware issue So how do you actually get the hardware for the metaverse and they have people trying to create the actual platform? so Facebook migrating from a social platform to a metaverse engine, all right and What we're trying to currently do is I think first get the platform right and then see how the hardware is going to Compliment it because that's how it's going to work my opinion. I don't what you think. Yeah. Yeah, I just I would say that if you think about UGC Video is being it's one of the most important trends animating what you see on the internet today UGC content was sort of what animated the first version part of what you see in in Roblox Just as an example or part of what you see in Early versions of these world building experiences creating a world Is actually just a really phenomenal kind of UGC that is just beginning to happen right now I'm even the early versions of Second Life. You were mentioning before we're about world building building I think about my seven-year-old kid like playing with Legos and then inviting his friends to come see the world It's like a very creative thing To build a universe and then to invite people into it So part of what I'm tracking is what are the worlds that are getting built by creators? We had a gentleman named Gabe Galt who came to visit Metta to build a replica of 1960s Memphis In order to sort of celebrate for Black History Month The Tuskegee Airmen Martin Luther King so you would visit Memphis in the 1960s It was sort of a memoriam to black history just an incredible thing that Could have been a film five years ago or it could have been a text post ten years ago But to your point because you could visit and be embodied in that place it took on a new meaning So when we talk about creativity I think we're talking about hundreds of millions of people or billions of people Being able to create these environments and then invite others into them And I think that touches on a lot of these things. We're gonna sneak in a couple more We've got this one and I'm gonna go here then I'm gonna go over here And if I can I'm gonna go there, but I may run out of time This is a lot has a me I work in emerging technology R&D's in you My question is how do you see the metaverse revolutionizing the way we build emerging technology today? Because number one we're basing this a new model on a legacy system And we need to be very careful because for example the right not to be analyzed We don't have algorithms at the moment to prevent analysis if I choose as a user not to be analyzed the right to be forgotten We don't have actually Algorithms that are built to forget you if you have a digital trace Online plus the fact that this technology is built on Specific type of security parameters a cryptographic parameters that if the next evolution as we have seen today There was a declaration from the IBM CEO saying within 2025 We will have quantum power and we have quantum power a deem 70% of our security obsolete So what would happen to the metaverse in this sense? So how can we change? The development a change of technology here the way we develop technology for the metaverse How can we change it? How would it impact the emerging technology norms that we are building number one and number two How can you build a rebel effect? 40% of the world is disconnected. How can you build a technology where it creates a rebel effect? Automatically connecting the rest of the 40% of the world because you're focusing on connecting the actually 60% who are connected Let's get let's get a view from Chris real quick and a view from our Our government official on the same issue So first is I think to the question of how do we build something that's inclusive I think part of what's so good about the way the metaverse is happening is we're in the very early stages And we're having the conversation at Davos. We're having the conversation in Among industry the internet sort in some ways just just happened And we found ourselves in many cases scrambling to understand how to apply some of the safety standards We wanted we hadn't figured out encryption when the internet was born We hadn't figured out Examples like the right to be forgotten I think the good news for now is we're going in with it with at least the internet as a set of examples that we Can use for better and for worse on some of the how we solve some of the problems to the question on connectivity a lot of us You know collectively are working on connectivity There's gonna need to be infrastructure. That's not built yet one I think a number of the folks here and a number of the panels have focused on that infrastructure But I think number two we need to make sure that it doesn't require expensive hardware There needs to be consumer experiences on phones. We're quickly getting to a world where most people are gonna have a phone Where they can have access to the experiences so that we're not we're not building a universe for expensive sort of wealthy sort of early adopters You know, I just want to add a few points here web 1.0 The level of knowledge and sophistication that we had about building this universe was very limited It was like a yellow pages online on the screen and there weren't any rules or very limited rules And as we evolved we actually found out that there are so many requirements that we have within web 2.0 And today within this socially connected world that we need to enforce and actually put forward like the right to be forgotten The right of access and so on so forth. I think going into the metaverse We are a lot more sophisticated about what the digital world needs Especially since we have presidents like the second life. There are so many examples here that can help us Actually understand what are the first founding blocks of the metaverse. That's the first thing on emerging technologies I really think that Expression is going to be better in terms of expression of imagination IP and so on so forth We'll be able to build things on the metaverse Even if you did not have a lab in the real world or the chemicals or the resources Necessary to build them and second we can simulate a lot better So I think that we will be able to really build fast some of the metaverse and deploy the real world if it works We have to leave the conversation there. We have gone over time I want to tell you this was just so good We could have kept going for a very very long time and I imagine that we will be doing this again at Davos next year Hopefully in person live but maybe in some version of the metaverse as well want to thank you want to thank everybody here