The recent Bloomberg intelligence report pegs metaverse as an $800bn market in 2024.
As I talked about in the previous blog posts, metaverse is the merging of the real and virtual worlds and is seen as the natural next step in our internet evolution.
The Bloomberg researchers predict that the metaverse market may reach $783.3b by 2024 representing a CAGR of 13%. The existing gaming companies and others who elevate their existing games into the virtual worlds are expected to capture about 70% of $413bn of the market. Gaming hardware, including gaming PCs, AR\VR hardware account for remaining 30% or $124bn.
As an expansion of the current practice where the gaming platforms host specific live events, the gradual elevation of video games into social networks may provide a great opportunity to host concerts and sporting events to larger audiences. And this market is worth about $200bn. Social media ads will account for the rest of the market and this is the space that companies like Nike, Walmart and others are girdling up to maximize their share of revenue.
With this predicted boom, one of the key engines that makes the whole metaverse run, is AI. There is a severe lack of understanding among regulators about how AI works and the ways to regulate it. It was left to the social media and other internet companies for decades to regulate themselves. The recent Facebook whistle-blower situation has clearly shown us where the focus of these companies is – on their user engagement levels and profits. While this is how corporations run, the impact on children/teens and even adult mental health has been significant.
There has been a lot of focus in the recent months, including the recent investigations into TikTok and Instagram, the impact of AI on metaverse and consequently the wide swath of users going to be delivering the $800bn revenue is going to be colossal. From the limited research on AI and biases, conscious and unconscious, of the programmers, there is urgent need for psychologists, sociologists to get involved to provide input on human behaviors and to draw a clear line for what is not acceptable. For eg, global communication is going to be a lot easier, the term language barrier is going to be non-existent as AI can translate the communications to the language of the person on the other side. However, intent, tone and empathy need to be captured by the AI to create an emotional connection.
In addition, lawmakers need to understand and regulate the activities of these companies in addition to increasing the research dollars provided to behavioral scientists so that there is deep independent research which can frame policies and help with the creation of watch dogs much like the SEC which moves in tandem with the market.
https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/metaverse-may-be-800-billion-market-next-tech-platform/
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/04/in-the-metaverse-responsible-ai-must-be-a-priority/
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