The Metaverse is poised to replace cyberspace and the Internet as we know it. Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and boss of Facebook, has bet everything on the Metaverse and says he is ready for his company to gain a dominant position in the new virtual world similar to the one it has in social media.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the Metaverse and its various potential downsides. But for the first time one of the most experts in this field is projecting fears that cause intense reflection if not concern.
Brian Shuster is a pioneer in the field of virtual reality and has been involved in it for the past 17 years, having even created his own version, the Utherverse.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Schuster presented a truly nightmare scenario for the Metaverse.
As he argues, if the Metaverse falls into the wrong hands, if it is controlled by the wrong people, then it will become a tool to manipulate users for the benefit of those who control it.
He even considers the Metaverse to be the most dangerous technology for humanity since the discovery of nuclear weapons.
“The Metaverse can be used to brainwash entire populations into operating under the control of the person who moves the strings in the virtual world,” argues Schuster, who makes an all-out attack on Zuckerberg as having nefarious purposes.
“I don’t believe that Zuckerberg or Facebook in general will ever decide that they will sacrifice money for the benefit of people. Money comes out when people are happy or angry. So it’s a matter of choosing which of these two paths you want to follow. We’ve seen the path that Facebook is taking, and I believe it will follow the same path in the Metaverse,” says Shuster.
A few days ago Zuckerberg stated that he believes that by the end of the decade there will be one billion users in the Metaverse, each of whom will spend hundreds of dollars every day on digital product purchases.
“You’ll think you’ve met the love of your life in the Metaverse, but in reality Zuckerberg will have decided who you meet and who you match with. Of course, Zuckerberg is not the only risk, but anyone who decides to make a profit from the Metaverse” says Shuster, who points out that, among other things, the Metaverse will create a new generation of even more isolated people, who will live exclusively in the virtual world like the one created by Facebook.
Chinese emotion control devices
Since about 2014, many construction, manufacturing and transportation companies in China have required their workers to wear helmets equipped with brain sensors that use artificial intelligence technology to track emotions.
Companies participating in the project claim that such a system saves them money by helping and educating workers. The devices are worn under workers’ helmets, after which they constantly monitor the wearer’s brain activity. After that, AI analyzes them to identify changes in the emotional background.
Brainwave surges and dips can be interpreted as changes in emotions and feelings associated with panic, fatigue, and sadness. The devices are reportedly being used for workers doing high-stress jobs, such as driving a train.
The sensors also have the ability to measure whether a worker is napping and sound an alarm to make them more alert. One official who runs the Zhejiang state power grid’s “emotional surveillance” program told Chinese media that the devices are essential to running a business efficiently.
The company’s profits are reported to have grown by $315 million since the company began using the devices in 2014. More than a dozen companies in China are using the technology developed by the state-funded Neuro Cap brain monitoring project, based at Ningbo University, according to The South China Morning Post.
“At first, the workers thought that we would read their minds, which caused some discomfort and resistance,” Jin Jia, a professor of neuroscience at Ningbo University, told the publication. “After a while, workers got used to the device… They wore it all day at work.”
Thus, the first thing China did was to learn to read the emotional background of the users and automatically wake them up, or encourage them to work more efficiently with an electric discharge. Seven years later, Chinese bosses took the second step – reading a person’s emotional background when viewing prohibited content.
It’s scary to even imagine what will happen to the world in the nearest future that any higher civilization that has come into contact with it will have a desire to subject this planet to a deep cleansing and total extermination, so that only cockroaches remain, which began a new development of evolution.
