Money & Trust, and generative AI, in Digital Society, and Metaverse Telecollaboration

Web3 and the metaverse are being driven by issues of trust with incumbent internet providers and the potential for a new form of digital society. The market for large-scale social and immersive metaverse has low adoption and may not meet societal or business needs. From a business perspective, metaverse is not a good choice for remote collaboration. The term "digital society" may be more relevant and extend to spatial and augmented reality technologies, Web2, digital money, and trust. Investment in the recent Web3 bubble is coming from Facebook/Meta and others, with a focus on distributed financial tooling and digital assets in the metaverse. A global ledger (such as blockchain) may be necessary to create transferable digital goods across society. Crypto has several problems, but its main strength is in creating "money-like networks." It is unclear which technology will succeed, but the tools are available now for integration and testing. The UK is imposing significant controls and restrictions on internet use and metaverse applications, which may impact small companies. New open source tooling from StabilityAI may address issues of accessibility, creativity, language barriers, safeguarding, and governance. Image generation ML may enable the creation of collaborative global networks for virtual production. AI and ML, or "supported creativity" or "augmented intelligence," blur the boundaries between the digital and physical world. Building an inclusive, open, and federated metaverse with transparent governance is a complex challenge.