The metaverse, crypto, and the evolution of the internet

What exactly is the metaverse? Some say it is the future of the internet — a broad shift in how we interact with technology, including new and more ways to collaborate in virtual worlds. Others say it creates even more infringements on privacy and creates chances for identity theft. Foteini Baldimtsi, an assistant professor in George Mason University’s Department of Computer Science, and James Casey, an associate professor in Mason’s Computer Game Design program talk to Mason President Gregory Washington about what the metaverse is, and could be, and how the volatile world of cryptocurrency fits in.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
(Narrator) Trailblazers and researchinnovators in technology,
and those who simply have a goodstory all make up the fabric.
That is George Mason University.
We're taking on the grand challenges thatface our students graduates in higher
education is our mission and our passionhosted by Mason President Gregory
Washington. This is theAccess to Excellence podcasts.

(00:26):
(Gregory Washington) So what exactly is the Metaverse?
Some say it's the future of the internet,
a broad shift in how weinteract with technology,
including new and more ways tocollaborate in virtual worlds.
Others say it creates evenmore infringements on privacy
and chances for identity theft. My guest,

(00:48):
I hope you will help us understandwhat the Metaverse is or will be
and how the volatile world ofcryptocurrency fits in with all of this.
So, James Casey is an associate professorin George Mason University's computer
game design program,
and he's the associate director ofthe Virginia Serious Games Institute.

(01:10):
He has more than 12 years of experiencedeveloping video games and has
extensive knowledge of the productionand live management of Gaines,
and has worked on titles from MythicEntertainment, electronic Arts,
and EA Mobile.
Fonteini Baldimtsi is an assistantprofessor in Mason's computer

(01:30):
science department. Shereceived a career award,
which is one of the highest awards thatcould be given to a young faculty member
from the National ScienceFoundation in 2022.
And her research is centered aroundcryptographic protocols to help prevent
infringements on privacyand identity theft.

(01:51):
To both of you. Welcome to the show.
(James Casey) Thank you.
(Gregory Washington) So let's start talking very,
very high level here and then we'llwork our way down into the weeds into
specifics. Jim, let's start with abasic definition. What is the metaverse?
(James Casey) Uh, of course you start withthe hard question, right?

(02:11):
So the metaverse is interestingbecause depending on who you ask,
the definition changes. So some people,
it's just a virtual world where youinhabit a avatar and you do stuff that
mimics real life to some degree. You know,
games and other things out therealready do that. But to a lot of folks,
it's a little more broad.
It's like you have a computer andthen you have the internet connected

(02:35):
everybody's computer, right?
The metaverse is this idea that it's avirtual world where people have avatars
and it becomes their virtual lifeand it takes over and you can work,
you can play, you can buy,
and it's all interconnectedand persistent and all
these cool buzzwords. Sodepending on who you ask,

(02:56):
it's somewhere within thatkind of spectrum of what
we currently have to what we want to have.
And so the Metaverse is thisbroad great idea that we're still
developing.
(Gregory Washington) Is it the same thing ordifferent from Web 3.0?
(James Casey) Another great question.Basically, we're in Web 2.0.

(03:17):
I could go into the history ofweb one versus two and three,
but web three is just really the iterationof the internet that we will see in
the future to some,
this includes blockchain andcryptocurrencies and some of the other stuff we'll
talk about today.
Some people include AI and machinelearning as a big part of that, uh,
and to some people as well.

(03:37):
The idea of virtual realityof a metaverse is kind of the
evolution of the internet.
Whether that becomes specificallyWeb 3.0 or somewhere in the future
still is to be seen.
But Web 3.0 definitely includes some ofthe same things that people are looking
from in the metaverse.
(Gregory Washington) So Fontein, you focus incryptography. Cryptography, yeah.

(04:02):
And its connection to privacy. Correct.
And these two worlds arecolliding at an enormous rate.
Let me highlight what has happened andthen let's talk about it a little bit.
Mm-hmm. , I'mgonna give you a little story,
and then I want you all to think abouthow these worlds connect in a very
interesting way. So my sonis a junior at Ohio State,

(04:24):
just completed his junior year,and he came home and decided, okay,
let's spend some daddy son time.
So I'm gonna take him and we'regonna go hang out and go to a
restaurant and just talk.And so on the way there,
he's on his phone the whole time,
but I see him and he's using some app,
and then he'll press an iconand then he'll listen to it,

(04:47):
and then he'll just crack up laughing andthen he will, you know, and so I said,
Hey, you know, you're not talkingthat much. Tell me what's going on.
So he says, dad,
it's a new app where you can sendanyone an actual voicemail from
a famous person. And I said, what doyou mean? So he lets me listen to him.
Somebody had sent him a messagefrom Drake and it was Drake's voice,

(05:11):
but Drake wouldn't be talkingto my son like this. Right.
. (James Casey) Right.
(Gregory Washington) Right, right.
(James Casey) Good old deep fake talking.
(Gregory Washington) Oh my goodness. It was phenomenal. Yeah.
And he kept letting me hear all thesevoices and I, I'm sitting here listening,
I'm like, oh my goodness. I said,
so you can send me a message fromanybody except from anybody. I said,
send me one from Kim Kardashian. .

(05:32):
.
(James Casey) Nice.
(Gregory Washington) Anyway, we were just joking. Right.But you send a message, right?
You can send it from anybody. I say,really? And then I start thinking, well,
if you're on a metaversemm-hmm. ,
and now any public figure'svoice that's online,
that can be synthesized and thenrecreated by a computer and then sent

(05:54):
out anywhere in a virtual world, youdon't know who you're talking to. Mm-hmm.
.
(James Casey) No.
(Gregory Washington) Absolutely. Because there'ssomebody behind it typing the words.
And what's being mouthed is thevoice of a famous person. Yep.
You could actually think you're in avirtual house with Drake. Oh, sure.
And it can be Jake from StateFarm, right? Absolutely. You can.

(06:15):
(James Casey) Yeah. You could even have avatarsthat look exactly like the celebrity,
almost realistic.
You could even have the stuff youtype into the computer be adjusted so
that it actually sounds more likethe person that would be speaking.
So it would still No.
(Gregory Washington) No, that's what I'm talkingabout. I mean, that's what this.
(James Casey) Not, not even just changing thewords to sound like it, but I mean,

(06:36):
you could actually change the word,
like you could put in what you wantedto say, like the gist of it. Right.
And then it could actually modify thewords to be more in the lingo or more in
the, the way that something.
(Gregory Washington) Like, oh, the way the person,the way the person.
(James Casey) So it's not just, oh, hey, I'm a stuffyguy and I'm trying to be Drake. No,
it's actually, this iswhat I want him to say.
And then Drake says it using hisown kind of cadence, his own lingo,

(06:59):
throwing in some stuffthat Drake might say.
And you could do a whole lot with itto really make it convincing. I mean,
now we're veering into the AI,the machine learning aspect of these things.
(Gregory Washington) Well, but I thinkthat's where this thing is going.
So what are the privacyconcerns with this ?
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Well, um,
the good news are that cryptography canactually help in situations like this,

(07:21):
because no matter what AI can do,
it can only simulate public information.
So the way we speak or the way wewrite is something that is public,
but the way that we can actually secureour communications or authenticate
ourselves in a secure way relies onsecrets that we shouldn't be making

(07:41):
available.
This essentially says that in order toauthenticate in the future is not enough
to just call someone and then claim thatit's us and people believe us based on
our voice and our tone. But we mightactually have to provide more than that.
That actually relies oncryptographic secrets.
(Gregory Washington) Oh man, this is getting hot. I.
Love it. (James Casey) It's like you had towatermark your voice, right?

(08:03):
You have to watermark your.
(Gregory Washington) You have to watermark yourvoice. This is exactly the point.
(James Casey) In fact, some internet creators havebeen creating fake Drake and, you know,
Kanye songs.
(Gregory Washington) Oh no. This is actually,if you go online right now,
Spotify Yep. Has takendown Yep. Thousands. Yes.
Not a few songs. Yes, absolutely.Thousands of songs Yep.

(08:26):
That were developed by bots. Yeah.
But made to sound like real artists.Exactly. Who we all know and love.
Thousands of songs have beenremoved. I couldn't believe it.
(James Casey) Some artists I've seen,like, I think it was Grimes,
the previous other half ofElon Musk, who is like, Hey,
if you make something using myvoice, I just want 50%. Right.
And other ones are like, yeah, no, don'tuse my stuff. Right. .

(08:50):
But yeah, it opens up awhole new level of ...
(Gregory Washington) But are you even using, so if meand you are talking mm-hmm.
and Iimpersonate Drake's voice Yep.
And I'm talking to you in thatcontext. Well, there is no mm-hmm.
issue therewith copyright or anything.
And even if I sing like I, you know,

(09:11):
I sound like him or anything like that,
as long as I'm not using his music oranything like that, it's just me. I,
I listen to artists that sound like otherartists all the time. You listen to,
oh, he sounds like.
(James Casey) I would argue yes and no, because itdepends on what you say as Drake.
So we should have done this.
That would've been actually really coolif you had come on and used a voice

(09:32):
changer. Right.
(Gregory Washington) I should have done that. I should've donethat. That would've been really cool.
Actually have Drake interviewing you.
(James Casey) If you did not,
if you did not say you were usingDrake's voice and you weren't saying, oh,
this is, you know, Dr. Washington,but I'm using this voice.
If they just thought for somereason and we didn't correct them,
that I was talking to Drake,
and then you as Drake were to saysomething very controversial that

(09:57):
would get the real Drake in trouble,
then we fall into some issues becausethen you are basically acting as Drake
and defaming him and orliable whatever the Correct.
(Gregory Washington) I get it. But this is the point. Themessages that my son let me listen to. Oh,
I'm sure they were bad. Were ofstars cussing people out. I mean,
basically in their ownvoice. You'd be like, whoa, I'm shut.

(10:20):
(James Casey) Drake curses. Come on, .Have you heard his songs? Come on?
(Gregory Washington) Yeah. But, you know.
(James Casey) Not in the way, but what.
But what about Joe Biden? Okay. Yes.
So you get Joe Biden calling you andhe's just ripping you a new one. Oh.
And it's because they havesynthesized his voice and put it on.
There are some.
(Gregory Washington) You know what I'm saying? Some.
(James Casey) There's some actually great videoswhere they have Biden Trump,

(10:43):
and I think Clinton all like playingCall of Duty on the same team.
I like and ripping each other.Oh man. And it is the funniest thing,
and it's just, it's just taking soundbites and stringing them together.
And not even, not evenin the sophisticated way. Right. But, and it's just,
it sounds so funny, but youknow, it's a joke and you know,
with parody in that case. That's right.

(11:03):
But will you always be able to tell that?
(Gregory Washington) And that is the, I think that's, to me,
that's the quintessential privacychallenge. Mm-hmm. because,
and you brought it up, Fontin,
if you don't have a way of authenticatingmm-hmm. mm-hmm.
, who a person is now,
all of the tools that we havetraditionally used on listening to a

(11:26):
person's voice or to their lilt andtheir tone and, and how they speak,
all of that can be digitized. All ofthat can be replicated. So, you know,
I can receive a phone call from my sonright now where he's asking me to send
him, yeah.
150 bucks or 200 bucks soI can do abc or I just got
in an accident, I need blah, blah,blah. Mm-hmm. . Yeah.

(11:48):
And it cannot be him. Absolutely. So,
and then when you get in these virtualworlds where there are two or three
layers behind the disguise,
so you think you're interacting witha person and you're interacting with
somebody else, or you're actuallyinteracting with a bot. Yep. Well,
I had a very normal conversation withchat G B T the other day,

(12:08):
and it seemed normal to me. You know,
bill Gates says the Metaverseis already here. Right.
But then the guy whose company took thename Meta mm-hmm. ,
mark Zuckerberg turnsaround now and says, oh no,
it's still five to 10 years away.. So, so who's right?
(James Casey) Well, and Business Insider, ifyou read them like the last week,

(12:28):
they said the Metaverse is dead. Soit depends on who you ask. Right?
If we go with this grandiosevision of everything connected,
like the movies Ready Player One, orthe Snow Crash book, or these fantasy,
you know, ideas of essentiallytaking the internet,
but making it into a virtual world whereeverything's connected and blah, blah,
blah. And we can go intospecifics, and I know later in the,

(12:51):
the conversation that is stillyears away and there's a lot of
technical reasons. Why do we havethe lower end versions of Metaverses?
Sure. We've got people claimingthey have Metaverses right now,
fortnight's probably the closest becausethey have so many different types of IP
and content.
Roblox has tons of people cominginto their world and sharing space.

(13:12):
So there's these ideas,these seeds of a metaverse.
I made massively multiplayer online gamesfor a living before I came here that
essentially was its own kind of metaverse,
because it was virtual worlds wherepeople played and bought and worked and
talked mm-hmm. .
It was just in its own worldversus connected to every world.
And I think that grandiose visionis what's still years away.

(13:36):
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Right. And I,
I don't think we're gonna have like aclear distinction between web two and web
three. I think we're gonnatransition to it slowly.
It's the point that we'll not be ableto tell when we are actually there when
we're actually in Metaverse.
(James Casey) Yeah. Someday they're just like, Hey,we're on web three. Web four though.
Right. Web four, that's goingto be great. Right, . No.
(Gregory Washington) Exactly. So this whole idea ofcryptocurrency mm-hmm. ,

(14:00):
and if you're in a digital world,
it seems to me that you're gonnawant to use digital currency. Right.
You can't use paper currencyobviously in that world,
because the definitionof it, it's digital.
The currency of choice wouldhave to be a cryptocurrency. So,
so talk to us a littlebit about that. And uh.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Yeah. Um, yes. And.
(Gregory Washington) And it's going, it's ebbing andflowing, right? Mm-hmm. ,

(14:22):
every other week you'll hearthat crypto is gone, it's.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Dead .
(Gregory Washington) And then the next weekyou'll hear, no, it's not.
And you see the price ofBitcoin just oscillate.
I've seen it go down to 16,000and go back up to 34,000 and
then, and now it's somewhere in there.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Now it's been an rollercoaster.Yeah. Yeah. . Yeah.
So let me try to put some definitionsfirst into case. Okay. I'm,

(14:44):
I'm a computer scientist. I work intheory, I want to define things first.
Digital payments exist forever.
And they're not necessarilyrelated to cryptocurrencies. Okay.
So we could as well go into Metaverse inwhatever way James refined it and just
use digital payments usingthe fiat currencies that we all were used and love or
not. Cryptocurrencies bring adifferent perspective into that.

(15:05):
So it's not just the fact that theyallow us to do digital payments.
The main innovation of digital currenciesor cryptocurrencies is that they try
to take the intermediaryout of the picture.
They try to take the idea that thereis a trusted financial institution or a
government that handles the waythat the currencies operating.

(15:25):
And they are democratizing that,
quote quotes in a way thatnow is decided by a set
of parties. And who are theseparties? Well, everyone.
So you can participate inthe governance, if you like,
of these cryptocurrencies anddecide how the system is gonna work.
Participate in the system,maintain the system,
and be rewarded for it if you doso. Hmm. So the main idea, again,

(15:48):
of cryptocurrency is not just a payoutdigital payments. They do. Absolutely.
They do.
And they have certain perks as opposedto doing digital payments through our
financial institutions.
I can send coins money toAustralia without paying any fees
for intermediaries and, uh,having a constant payment later,
early in a matter of seconds.

(16:09):
Although if I try to do thatthrough my traditional bank,
it'll take days to clear .That's the big perk of it.
But the main revolution is the fact thatthey're taking the idea of a central,
trusted party. Mm-hmm. out of the picture.
(James Casey) Ah, very good. Very good. And, andthink about it this way,
like we have this idea of the metaverse,

(16:29):
but if you really wanted to boil it down,
the internet is kind of like a metaverse.
You just don't have the 3D world on topof it. Right? We can play, we can talk,
we can pretend to be Drake, wecan buy stuff on the internet.
And we did not create a singlecurrency for the internet. Right.
Just like we have multiple currenciesaround the world. And you know,
some people say, oh, dollar is king. Orsome people are like, no, we use ours.

(16:52):
But there's still this idea thatregardless of what you're using,
you can convert it or you can get it intogoods, whether they're virtual, real.
And so in that virtual metaverse, yeah.
The dollar can still be what you paywith, or you can pay with Frank's,
or you can pay with pounds,you can pay with a credit card.
Cause that's fake moneyanyways, right? mm-hmm.

(17:13):
or that money thentranslates into metaverse bucks or
whatever we want to call it,right. Me bucks. Me bucks. Right.
And it has its own exchangerate. And you know,
a lot of games or worlds out therenow do that for several reasons.
And one of them being,
once you take a currency and youabstract it into another layer,

(17:36):
you are less likely to be asstringent on your spending.
So if I spend a hundred buckson a thousand meta bucks,
that dollar value,
that cost becomes obscured andyou're more likely to spend.
So whether the metaverse ends up withone kind of virtual currency really is
gonna depend on who ownsand who runs the metaverse.

(17:58):
And that's why things like blockchainand cryptocurrency are being pushed by
some people is because they want tomake sure it's outside of Facebook
owning it or a governmentowning it.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Right. I mean, if you think aboutonline game platforms right now, yeah,
they do have these currencies,
but they are controlled by thecompany that runs the game.

(18:20):
So if that company decides to shut downthe game today mm-hmm. ,
nobody's gonna give these fundsin some form back to the users.
But if instead they were using acurrency that was decentralized using a
blockchain system,
nobody can really set it down becauseit doesn't really belong to someone
specific.
(Gregory Washington) That's right. That's right. And itmakes it harder. Although ,

(18:43):
we've seen examples of this the other way,
but it makes it harder for individualsto steal your coins as well, supposedly.
Yes.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Uh, yes and no .
(Gregory Washington) Well, yeah, that's a hardproblem. Yeah. Because death is,
death has actually happened,
but it's still much easierto take your physical money.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Right? Yeah. Well, well,although it turns out that well,
people should not have physicalmoney. Don't think, well,

(19:05):
not should not . No.
People should have depositedtheir physical money to some financial institution.
Right. And the good news arethat if you lose, let's say,
your password to your online bankaccount, there are ways to recover it.
Why? Because there is this centralinstitution that has ways to physically
authenticate.
You might ask you to literally walk intoan office and sew a passport and have

(19:27):
ways to recover your password.
If you lose your passwordor your secret key for
funds for coins that youhave on a blockchain system,
then this becomes so much harder torecover. Almost impossible. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

(Gregory Washington) Look, I forget my passwordsall the time, ,
because they keep makingus change it. So, ,
how much money do you think is sittingin cryptocurrencies now that people can't

(19:51):
recover because they cannotfigure out their key.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) A lot .
(Gregory Washington) I'd be willing to bet you it'sbillions of dollars.
(James Casey) Oh, yeah. No,
there was people back in the Bitcoin daysbefore it became big that had a bunch
sitting on a hard drive somewhere,and that hard drive is lost or dead,
or they don't know the passwordto get into the computer.
And that was tiny amounts ofmoney for Bitcoin back there.

(20:13):
And now it's 30,000 of Bitcoin and Right.
That's millions of dollars in justone space. So yeah, there's, yeah,
there's lots of stuffthere. I mean, I mean,
look at what's happeningwith banks recently. Right.
The nice thing about a lot of that isthe government is going in and bailing
them out, or there's the F D I C, whichcovers deposits up to a certain point,
you know, that if you put your moneythere, you have some degree of security.

(20:37):
The thing with the cryptocurrency is,
although it is de democratized or however you want to put it, right?
(Gregory Washington) Democratized.
(James Casey) Yeah. Essentially, yes, you havecomplete control over it, but you also,
like you said, if something goes wrongor you lose it or something goes on,
like there is no backup to that.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) The hope for that is to change it.
And I think that people whoare serious in the space,

(20:57):
they actually want to haveregulation over cryptocurrency.
(James Casey) And I'm very optimistic on that.I think that it is gonna, I mean,
it is gonna happen one way or anotherbecause people are using these systems.
And I think the same thing needs tohappen for the metaverse for it to take on
too. Absolutely. We canget to that in a minute.
(Gregory Washington) So that kind of brings me back tothat. The reality is, you know,
you had movies like Blade Runner mm-hmm., and even the Avatar,

(21:19):
the ones that, that showthese futuristic worlds Yep.
Where people in their avatarsinteract in the world and
in Ready Player one, thecurrency was digital currency.
And if you lose it in a in a virtual world,
you lost it in the realworld. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
So how accurate are the predictors?

(21:39):
They talk about this dystopianworld where, you know,
you really can't go outside,
you really can't live in theenvironment because we've corrupted it.
So and so people kindof engage one another
in a virtual framework. Now,let me preface this by saying,

(21:59):
you know, we were, we were kindof there for a while mm-hmm.
with thepandemic, right? Yeah.
(James Casey) Covid was a nice, uh, precursor. Right?
(Gregory Washington) So talk a little bit about that. Howaccurate are those in terms of a future?
(James Casey) How accurate is the dystopia ofthe science fiction? Oh, well,
I think that there aretrends that could point to us
going down some of thoseroutes. Absolutely. I think,

(22:23):
and you see more and moreadoption of technology and virtual
aspects, just like with your son,right? , uh, always on the phone.
And I think that we could become addictedto certain things just like we could
anything else.
The allure of the virtual worldis that it is better than your
station in life.

(22:43):
You've got a better house where you'vegot better clothes or you have better
friends, or you can't get out likein the Covid and get to your friends.
So this is your way to communicate.
So it becomes a surrogate for otherthings that you do not feel are
positive in your life. Thispositivity replaces that.
Could that become somethingthat is troublesome? Absolutely.

(23:06):
Hopefully as a societywe do better in general,
as well as looking at how do we lookat these kind of technologies to
prevent that not beingdraconian like China,
where you can only play gamesthree hours a week, certain hours,
specific hours on like a Friday night.
But how do we ensure thatsomebody does not become,

(23:28):
like in ready player oneliving in shipping canisters just being on the internet
all day long. Mm-hmm. .
And while there's advantages to maybeattending school in virtual space at the
same time, you gotta get out and asthey say on the internet, touch grass,
be real. And so if Iwas a pessimist, I'd say yes,
we could definitely see that becomingmore of a reality. But I think, you know,

(23:51):
the optimist in, in me is that wewill adopt the technologies, uh,
and we seeing, you know, more andmore social change and more social,
whatever the right words are,justice or knowledge or shared bits,
I think more people will be able tosee that going into it, hopefully,
than we give them credit for .

(24:15):
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Yeah. I,
I think also our role as scientistsis to actually develop mechanisms
that make these tools and thesetechnologies to work in the,
in the favor of the society. And thisis, this is a responsibility for us.
And just for example, on, onthe blockchain space, right?
So all these payments are nowbecoming transparent, right?

(24:36):
Mm-hmm. , so thinkfor a second that right now,
when you're making transactionsthrough your credit card,
it's only your own financial institutionthat knows exactly how you're spending,
right? Mm-hmm. . But now,
if all these transactionshappen in the blockchain space,
then they're essentially in one way oranother, becoming fully public, right?
So everybody now knows how you'respending. But then also as scientists,

(24:59):
we know, and as cryptographers,
we know that there are tools that canactually work towards adding privacy in
these transactions in a way thatnot even your bank knows more than
what they should know. .
I think this is a greatresponsibility in our hands,
and we should be trying to make thesetools to work for the benefit of the
society.
(Gregory Washington) Interesting. Well, let me give youa, a little spin on this. Mm-hmm.

(25:23):
, you canget your reaction to it.
Our group of researchers at StanfordUniversity in Google mm-hmm.
have created a miniaturevirtual world mm-hmm. ,
where 25 characters controlledby chat, G P t mm-hmm.
and custom code Yep.
Live out their lives independently withwhat a r s technical has described as
a high degree of realisticbehavior. Yep. In addition,

(25:45):
they created an architecture thatstimulates minds with memories and
experiences. Yep. Then they letthe agents loose to interact,
and now humans can interact with them too.
(James Casey) Smallville, I think they called it.
(Gregory Washington) How is that not like.
.
The kinds of things that we sawin, you know, an early version of,

(26:08):
of a ready player one Right.
Or an environment where youare interacting like Matrix
with bots. Right. The only,
the the good thing is if theykill you in a virtual world,
you don't die in the real world.Right. , at least not yet.
(James Casey) I think it would be closer probably tokind of like the West World model, right?
Like you're Oh.
(Gregory Washington) Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

(26:28):
Like you're developing this, like,
in this case the AI to mimicreal world interactions.
And so I'm familiar with the Stanford, uh,
little research that they did onSmallville, and I think it's great. Now,
to be fair, when I grew up, there was aprogram called Little Computer People,
where we got to watch, watch people livein their house and go about their day.
And it was very similar, but it wasmuch more strict and programmed.
In this case,

(26:49):
the AI is learning based on thedata that it was trained on,
the goals it was fed andall these different things.
And what's nice about it is it givesus insight into how it takes this
information and creates thoserelationships, these, uh,
conversations and creates memories. Andhonestly, one of the big things for,
you know,

(27:09):
the general intelligence is this ideaof how do we mimic how people's brains
work? And part of that isthe memory construct.
(Gregory Washington) That's right. And and that wasgreat that they gave them those.
(James Casey) Oh, yeah. In fact, um,
one of our companies out at the VirginiaSeries Game Institute was founded by a
guy who worked on Ultima Online, amassively multiplayer online game.
And he's working in this field, and hetook the same thing that Stanford did,

(27:31):
but he actually had the AIcreate the world instead
of just, Hey, here's your town andhere's, we've already created all this,
the art for the world and theway the world worked. And the,
the streams and the valleysand the roads and the,
the resources of the world wasall created by the AI as well.
And then it populated it within NPCsthat took a look at what was around,

(27:55):
and they built a campfire. And then oncethey had that and they met that need,
they'd go and grab resources and builda, a cottage. And they had apple trees.
So they made a fruit stand and theybuild this whole backstory for themselves
using ai.
And then that can be put into a game ora world where then you interact with a
guy and he is got thiswhole history of, oh yeah,
when I first got here and it wasjust a campfire and we had to,

(28:17):
and so this AI is buildingall this content ,
essentially for a game or a virtual world.
And it's not just let 'emloose and see what they do.
It's from creating theworld proper with AI
to every little aspect of it.
And so the next step for them is obviouslythey're gonna do 3D and they're gonna

(28:37):
do a few more things and they're,
I think they're reaching out to thesame folks at Stanford as well as the
researchers here. But again,
the promise of what AI and machinelearning can do is huge. And yes,
there's always horror storiesabout what it could do if it
approaches the singularity as they callit, and things like that.

(28:59):
(Gregory Washington) But see, I think this whole singularitything, I think is a red herring,
to be honest with you.
I think these technologies are going tobe incredibly influential in our lives
long before that concept isreached. Mm-hmm. .
And in some sense,
I'm blown away by the earliestforms of artificial general

(29:20):
intelligence and it hasn'teven been optimized yet.
(James Casey) Oh, yeah.
(Gregory Washington) You don't have thebreakthroughs yet. And to me,
this will all play outin virtual worlds. Right.
(James Casey) It's a great place for it. Cuz again,it's content generation. Mm-hmm.
, it's a tool to makemore stuff at the end of the day,
whether it's coming up with achemistry equation and showing a proof,

(29:43):
or whether it's creating a world orwhether it's making people talk to each
other or pretending to be Drake .
(Gregory Washington) So recently mm-hmm. ,we've heard Jeffrey Hinton,
one of the groundbreakers inartificial intelligence mm-hmm.
talking about the idea thatthis stuff can get smarter than people
is not that far off. Hmm.
You've heard the warnings from manyof the individuals in open ai mm-hmm.

(30:07):
, which is thecompany behind chat, G B T,
including its ceo mm-hmm. ,
that basically warn of the challengesassociated with it and how they are
actively have to, for lack ofa better way of putting it,
dumb down the AI before it's releasedto the public because they're worried
of some of the damage it can actually do.
Maybe the metaverse is theplace for this stuff to develop

(30:32):
and flourish where it's not touchingthe physical world and let it grow.
And you can interact with the currenciesand you can intermingle all of this
stuff. Sure. Because they're unintendedconsequences to everything you do.
We know some of the intendedconsequences of artificial intelligence,
but it's that thing you're not thinkingabout that will creep up and sure

(30:53):
Just knock you down.
(James Casey) When Microsoft first put out a AIchatbot, I think it was called Tay.
(Gregory Washington) And started.
(James Casey) Training and it and became racist. Right?
(Gregory Washington) Not just racist.
(James Casey) It was, yeah.
(Gregory Washington) It was all of the ists. Yeah. .It was racist, it was homophobic.
Yeah. It was, oh my goodness.Sexist. It was everything.
(James Casey) But I think what it boils down to again,is it's, it's just like with people,

(31:13):
right? The inputs you give it, thetraining you give it, you know,
the whole nature versus nurtureand all this stuff, like for ai,
you're feeding it information. Ifyou put this AI into a virtual world,
it is going to end up being aproduct of its virtual society,
just like people are. And to thatend, it is very much like a person,

(31:33):
because it is taking all this informationin and some rules that have been set
up by society or by the programmer andwho programmed it and how they programmed
it and what they designed it for. Now,
if we put AI in charge of nuclearweapons, then we deserve what happens,
right? Just like a terminator.Right. But what it can do,

(31:54):
and what we allow it to do,those are the questions, right?
Training in virtual worlds,
whether they're 3D with avatarsor this little smallville with 2d,
uh, guys,
that's essential for us to see howthey grow and to make them better
and to remove bias and to removeother elements that get put in as

(32:15):
part of the programming, right?Whether it's the initial programming,
whether it's the training and data,
or whether it's stuff that comes inafter the fact that affects them,
the learning module.
(Gregory Washington) So if we pull back in,
think about it in the environment andin the world in which we live in today,
the real world, right? Andyou look at cryptocurrencies,
do you believe that there will be fullyintegrated in any time in the near

(32:38):
future?
(Foteini Baldimtsi) I'm gonna say my personal opinions here,right? So I don't think it's a matter,
we should not be focusing on thecryptocurrency part of this technology.
I think we should be focusing on thetechnology beyond the cryptocurrencies,
which is the blockchain. Theblockchain technology. Sure. Uh,
so the blockchain technology can offermuch more than just digital payments.

(32:59):
So digital payments in a sense, are justone application of blockchain systems.
And the main idea,
the main advantage of all theseblockchain based systems is that,
as I said before,
they take away the idea that yourely on a specific third party.
And since we have James here,
let me give you one of the most prominentapplications of blockchain today

(33:20):
beyond payments, that is thegeneration of good randomness.
And let me explain why this is very,
very important in the gaming industryand in metaverse in all these games that
try to offer some version of virtualreality. So it is, uh, in many,
many parts of these games, theusers, the gamers, need to be sued.
That what happens in the next phase ofthe game is actually random done in a

(33:44):
random way.
And not in a way that the companythat controls the game can alter
the sequence of the game in order togain more money. At the end of the day,
so many of these verylarge gaming industries,
they care to prove to their usersthat they use good randomness.
That for, in a verifiableway, in a truthful way,

(34:06):
they do randomly decidewhat's the next phase?
What's the next thing that will happenin the game? Mm-hmm. .
So now where do you takethis randomness from?
Blockchain systems are an excellentresource of randomness. Again, why?
Because they're not controlledfrom a single entity,
but they pull together randomnessfrom thousands or millions

(34:27):
depending on what blockchain systemsthey're looking at of people around the
world in a way that it's very, very hardto bias us the randomness. And again,
this is just one applicationand, uh, believe me,
it is one of the applications that peopleare using blockchain today a lot or
are looking into blockchaina lot. So that said,
cryptocurrencies are one part of thisblockchain systems. And if you ask me,

(34:50):
yeah,
I do think that some ofthese cryptocurrencies will become more mainstream,
but I don't think that thisis the main contribution of
blockchain in web three. So I thinkthat blockchain can do much more things,
many more things than justallowing for this mm-hmm.
cryptocurrenciesfor these digital payments.
(Gregory Washington) I get the blockchain portion of this.Let me pose the question a little bit.

(35:11):
Just don't ask me to give like, uh,investment, uh, investment advice.
(Gregory Washington) Let me, let me pose,
let me pose the question alittle, a little bit differently.
Right now in our country,
we are spending trillionsof dollars a year,
and we're driving large amounts of debt.
And as we continue tohave more spending beyond

(35:37):
the revenues that we are taking in,and we go into more and more debt,
at some point in time,
you're gonna see a dramaticdownward pressure on the value of
the dollar. Now, in termsof having a global economy,
large enough, in order tobecome the global currency,

(35:57):
you basically got the r and band you got the dollar, right?
Maybe it could be the Euromm-hmm. ,
but it doesn't leave you alot of alternatives as you devalue the dollar, right?
Mm-hmm. .
So at some point you startgetting driven towards a
digital based currencyor cryptocurrency as an

(36:19):
alternative.
All you need is one or twocatastrophic market events with
our currency in order todrive people to these.
So I don't believe that it is totallyunrealistic to think that at some point
in time, people will,
will want to engage more withthese digital based currencies.

(36:41):
(Foteini Baldimtsi) And we actually, sorry James, uh,
we actually saw that happening likea few years ago when like the banks
collapsed in Cyprus, for example,
we saw that the prices ofcryptocurrencies went up.
We do observe that happening in the world,right? I mean, I'm not an economist,
but there is certainly relation on that.
(James Casey) I think the biggest thing thatbecomes a part of that is like,
so you mentioned the dollar, right? Anda lot of our economy in human or debt,

(37:02):
right, is based on this idea thatwe are a kind of a world currency,
but all currency to somedegree has a historical value
to it based on usually some kind ofphysical resource. So in the, in the past,
it used to be gold, right? Itused, it used to be gold used.
It's really no longer. Most people maynot even realize it, but it's, you know,
we're just printing money. But, um, and.

(37:24):
(Gregory Washington) It's the full faith incredit of the United States government is what it's based
on and trust. And if thattrust is ever broken,
you will see the currency collapseand there's no real global alternative
outside of the cryptocurrency.
(James Casey) So we'd have to work togetheras governments around the world on a currency we
all accept within that parameter.So that if we said, you know,

(37:46):
what we transfer from the dollar toBitcoin or Dogie coin or whatever the,
you know, doji coin or whateverlatest coin is, right? Mm-hmm.
or the, thedollar coin or the, you know,
I didn't know they were playing aroundwith some of these, right? It's,
it's still based on, you know,
if the US has trillions ofdollars worth of Bitcoin,
there's still going to be some of thatinherent instability behind it if all of

(38:07):
a sudden the US is not good for it.
And that's why some people were reallyskeptical about cryptocurrencies in
general, or this idea ofdigital currency is because,
is there something behindit? Except what we say.
It's the same thing with stocks, right?
The stock market is one of those thingswhere, or you know, the banks, you know,
failing because people startto lose faith and they're like,
how do we get any value out of it? Andif there's no value originally in it,

(38:30):
how does that translate in the longrun if we do lose faith in the system?
(Gregory Washington) I guess what I'm kind of driving to,and as we start to wrap up here mm-hmm.
, you start tobring all of this together.
So we talk about themetaverse as a construct.
We talk about cryptocurrencyand the like as a construct,
and we talk about how these entitiescan actually connect mm-hmm.

(38:50):
the connectionwith the physical world.
I remember Pokemon, I rememberwhen my kids got into it,
they were into it big time. And so theywere into it so much. I said, okay,
let me figure out what'sgoing on with this thing.
You'd have a camera from your phonewould overlay over the physical world
in an environment which youwere in. Yep. Pokemon Go.

(39:13):
And you'd see a little Pokemon over itin the corner and you can walk over to it
and get it. You werein the physical world,
but you were also in thevirtual environment also.
(James Casey) Mixed reality.
(Gregory Washington) Exactly. Is that a possibility?
Is it a possibility that these worldscould indeed collide? You know,
I got cryptocurrency Yep. AndI have real currency. You, you,

(39:36):
you get what I'm saying? Yeah,absolutely. I have, you know,
exist in the virtual world and I existin the physical world, right? Yep.
So talk a little bit about that.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Yeah. I mean, so a as you're saying,this is already happening. Uh, I,
I'm not sure if this is part ofweb two or web three now, ,
but it is certainly happening.
I do have both cryptocurrenciesand real currencies. Yeah.

(39:56):
And wrapping back to the, you know, thebeginning of this discussion, right?
Are we gonna move completely into ametaverse reality? Mm-hmm. ?
Well, I think it's not clear, right?
So I think we'll probably end up havingfor many more years a mixed reality of
people trying to finda harmony between the,
the virtual world and the real world.And again, in one way or another,

(40:17):
our role as universities andresearchers is mm-hmm. Uh,
to try to make this balance asfair as possible and as, uh,
secure as possible.
(Gregory Washington) Try to make sense. We have totry to make sense in all of this.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Yeah, absolutely.
(James Casey) We also have to make it easier for folks.
Blockchain and cryptocurrenciesat the end of the day,
are not the easiest things forpeople to understand. Yeah.

(40:38):
So I know Amazon is working on adigital marketplace for NFTs, you know,
non fungible tokens, butthey're abstracting it. So it's,
it's as easy as buyingon the Amazon website.
And I think for us to go to thatroute where we can buy physical stuff,
we can buy virtual stuff,we can combine them,
we have to have that same kind ofthing. Cuz again, at the end of the day,

(41:00):
if you can keep it simple, people willadopt the technology. You know? And as,
as Bitcoin became more popular,you could use it to buy a Tesla.
I know somebody bought pizza with it wayback in the day and regret it now cause
it's worth a lot more.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Because they could have bought aTesla now.
(James Casey) Yes exactly.
(Gregory Washington) They could have bought the Tesla.
(James Casey) With the pizza. Theycould have had a Tesla . Um.
(Gregory Washington) Amazing.
(James Casey) But to get to this idea of whatreally the idealists want

(41:24):
Web 3.0 or the Metaverse to be,
requires us to reallyput in regulation work
procedures, technology likeblockchain or, or similar.
We have to agree as both either acountry or a society as a world,
much like we did with the internet, wehave to say, look, there are some rules.

(41:47):
There are some things that have to happen.
Cuz right now nobody ina capitalist society,
no company is going to want to sharetheir version of the Metaverse with
everybody else. Because as you said,
if I spend $10 on Nikesneakers in this virtual world,
that $10 purchase can't translate toNike shoes in every other game because of
so many technical problems. Right? Right.

(42:09):
So what is that $10 Nike shoe worth? Well,
it's worth $10 worth of skins inFortnite. Mm-hmm. .
But in order to use it in Call of Duty,
so many technical things would haveto happen for it to even have an
equivalency. So this idea,
this idealistic view thatthe currency or the items
or things that you share within a virtualworld, like the Metaverse should be,

(42:33):
requires us to get on board in somany different ways and pass some
technological hurdles.
And maybe AI and machine learning canhelp us on that cuz maybe they can help us
make translationsbetween different worlds.
But there has to be much like we havethe back end of the internet. You know,
we all rely on https and we all relyon these different protocols and we all
rely on these differentthings that make it fair,

(42:53):
not necessarily equitable at all times,
but make it at least fair andthings will work together.
And we know if we do this, it will work.
That has to be done for the metaverseand people are are on that. It's just,
it's a lot more slow going I think,than when the internet took off.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Yeah. And I thing James and whatyou're saying, it's, it's really,
really important to bring togetherpeople from different disciplines. Yes.
And so far it has been a game that hasbeen played too much on the side of

(43:17):
computer scientists and engineers. Yep.
But now it's becoming a part in that nomatter what technology we're building,
it cannot get out therewithout regulation, without people from the policy side.
Mm-hmm. without economists,
without psychologists tounderstand how this impacts people.
So we really need to close the gap here.
(Gregory Washington) So in conclusion, what does thefuture look like in your opinion,

(43:40):
in both of these contexts? I'm nottalking 10 years out. Sure. You know,
even five, I'm saying overthe next three years or so.
What happens in the contextof what both of you all do?
What do you think happens? Look,
I get the caveats that it's almostimpossible to predict the future. Here's
The thing. If you predict it and it's right.
I will refer back tothis recording.

(44:03):
As.
positive proof of thePower of Mason faculty. All right.
So have at it.
(James Casey) So with the idea of the metaverse, I'llhandle that side for, to start with.
So a lot of the metaverse isbuilt around virtual worlds.
And right now the technology,
like the Meta and you mentioned MarkZuckerberg is betting on this idea of VR
goggles and all these ways that we canenter the world and become immersed in

(44:26):
part of it. And then we canshape it is not catching on.
That's why Business Insiders saidthe Metaverse is, is dead. Right.
Is because that technologyisn't making it.
But I think there's an opportunity overthe next few years to start striving
for setting up parts of the networkthat we need to make this work
to not just be a dominatedAmazon marketplace, which, you know, they took over.

(44:48):
Right. And eBay controls thispart of the, the internet.
There needs to be a push forhow do we make this a shareable
marketplace, a shareable world.
And I think that is going to startbeing where we see the most growth.
I don't think we're necessarily goingto see Fortnite become the place where
everybody goes, you know, and transformit. And I don't think unfortunately,

(45:11):
you know,
meta from Facebook is going to be the bigthing that Mark Zuckerberg wants it to
be.
I think we'll see some iterations on thoseand everybody's going to do their own
little pointer of the metaverse,but it's still a little ways,
way before they start toconnect to each other.
We make those valuable connectionsthat will help us both from a society

(45:32):
standpoint as well as obviously fromtheir point maybe making money. Yeah.
So I think we're still a little ways away.
I think VR is takinga small step back and,
and we'll see this still valued about,
but I think we're going to hopefullyconcentrate on the technologies around it
more.
(Gregory Washington) So. Well you all rememberthe Newton mm-hmm.
(James Casey) . Mm-hmm.
. (Gregory Washington) That's what happenedwith the Newton, right? Oh yeah.

(45:52):
Many of the technologies that happenedin Newton wound up in the iPhone, right?
Yeah. Right. Yep. And so when the Newtonwas developed, it was a huge flop. Yep.
Right. I remember Bart Simpson wascracking jokes on it. Right. You know.
(James Casey) It's like the Google Glass. TheGoogle Glass was a great idea.
It's this augmented realitygiving you information.
I could look at somebody and see theirname and get information. It just wasn't,

(46:14):
that would've really well.
(Gregory Washington) Well. That would've been reallyhelpful for me. But everybody's,
I'm bad with names.
(James Casey) Same. Same here. I tellmy class all the time,
I'm never gonna remember your name.But if I had that on my phone,
we already have that poweron the phone phone right now.
It's just how do we get it out of thephone and in front of you and everyday use
and make it useful.
That's why phones have taken off isbecause their user experience is perfect

(46:38):
for most people.
No, I get it. So as we end, Foteini, you tell me.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Yeah, I mean, just to,
to bring up the blockchain aspect hereon the near future, I don't think,
again so much is gonna changeon the end user experience.
I don't think we're all gonna going tobe transacting in cryptocurrencies in
three years, . But again,

(46:59):
I do see aspects of the blockchaintechnology being more integrated.
So the example that I brought up beforewith gaming industry and how they're
using randomness,
I think that this is something thatin three years it might start becoming
mainstream.
So we might not start trusting companiesthat they claim they generate their own
randomness.
(James Casey) If there's money for it, thecompanies will go for it.

(47:19):
And that's the key generating that value.
(Foteini Baldimtsi) Exactly.
So I think that we will be seeing moreapplications of the blockchain space,
not necessarily just digitalpayments, but mm-hmm. .
But more part of it will go hand inhand with the metaverse, you know,
like reality as it canhelp in some aspects of it.
But blockchain is also very differenttechnology that can have comp completely.

(47:41):
You know, even if Metaverse dies,blockchain might not die or the,
the other way around. .
(Gregory Washington) No, I hear you.
(James Casey) We're never gonna get rid of virtualworlds and the virtual environments,
but the overall view of what themetaverse is probably will change to some
degree. We also talked aboutAI and machine learning.
I think in the next few yearswe'll see some scary developments,
but I don't think they're gonna be scaryin the way that people talking about

(48:03):
the singularity or, or thatkind of stuff is gonna be.
(Gregory Washington) No, I think, I think we're headedfor disaster and some other things.
It won't be the singularity,
but I think criminal enterpriseis gonna have a field.
(James Casey) Oh, sure.
(Gregory Washington) Day with artificial intelligence.You're gonna spoof phones,
you're gonna spoof people.
When you couple that withcyber security issues and

(48:25):
cybersecurity, it's gonnaforce us, it is going to,
we got a rough couple of yearsbefore we figure out all of this.
(James Casey) It's like Covid though, right? Like Covidforced us to do things we were Right.
Not comfortable with. Right.
The rise of AI is going to force us tolook at things we have not wanted to look
at for a long time. Mm-hmm.
and figure out how to bendto this new technology and how to use

(48:47):
this tech new technology. Cause at theend of the day, AI and machine learning,
I mentioned earlier, in my mindit's just content generation, right?
It's just like a computer ora painting brush. You know,
when you were doing cave paintings, you,
you had certain tools when you startedto do paintings, you had different tools.
When you started to make digitalpainting, you had different tools.
Now we have more tools. Howdo we use that responsibly?

(49:10):
And I think the great thing is, andI've seen it here, both, you know,
with what we do and what CS isdoing and all across our campuses,
we've got people that are thinking aboutthese problems and we got people that
are developing solutions now. So thatat least makes me hopeful. . Oh.
(Gregory Washington) Outstanding. Outstanding.Well, look, this has really,
really been a fascinating discussion.

(49:33):
And the one thing I can say for sure isthat we're gonna be hearing more on both
of these topics.
(James Casey) Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
(Gregory Washington) So I'd like to thank my guests,
Foteini Baldimtsi, assistant professor atMason's Computer Science Department.
And James Casey, an associate professorat Mason's computer game design program,
and the associate director of theVirginia Serious Games Institute.

(49:56):
I am Mason President GregoryWashington saying, until next time,
stay safe. Mason. Mason. (Narrator) If youlike what you heard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take onthe grand challenges facing our students graduates and

(50:18):
higher education. That's podcast.gmu.edu.