November 12, 2023

The metaverse has virtually disappeared. Here's why it's generative AI's fault

"It's basically going through the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies," she says. "We've had the hype and now we're seeing the reality. The metaverse was capturing people's imagination. But we're still looking for proven use cases that are going to generate value."?Searle's assertion that the metaverse is suffering a familiar fate to other over-hyped technologies is certainly one explanatory factor for the drop in interest in the metaverse. But another huge contributory factor is the rapid rise of?artificial intelligence?(AI). ... Of course, the rapid take up of generative AI isn't the only narrative in this story; there's a whole series of potential concerns, such as hallucinations, plagiarism, and?ethics, that need to be dealt with sooner rather than later. But if you want to impress your family and friends with a tool that seems to work like magic, then generative AI is the one.?On the other hand, the metaverse -- just like the blockchain before it -- feels a bit like a rabbit that's stuck in a magician's hat. Entering the metaverse often isn't as easy as its proponents have promised.?

Why the service industry needs blockchain, explained

The difficulty of integrating blockchain with existing infrastructure and processes is a significant obstacle. Because service providers frequently use a variety of platforms and technologies, achieving seamless integration can be difficult. It might be difficult to protect data security and privacy while still adhering to regulations. Blockchain’s transparency conflicts with the requirement to protect sensitive customer information, necessitating careful design and implementation of privacy measures. Another major challenge is establishing communication and data exchange across various blockchain networks and traditional systems. To facilitate seamless interoperability, service providers need to spend time developing standardized protocols, which can be expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, there are scalability concerns. Blockchain networks, especially public ones, may face limitations in handling a high volume of transactions efficiently. Delays and higher expenses may result from this, especially in service industries where several quick transactions are necessary.

Why developer productivity isn’t all about tooling and AI

Creative work requires some degree of isolation. Each time they sit down to code, developers build up context for what they’re doing in their head; they play a game with their imagination where they’re slotting their next line of code into the larger picture of their project so everything fits together. Imagine you’re holding all this context in your head — and then someone pings you on Slack with a small request. All the context you’ve built up collapses in that instant. It takes time to reorient yourself. It’s like trying to sleep and getting woken up every hour. ... Another factor that gets in the way of developer productivity is a lack of clarity on what engineers are supposed to be doing. If developers have to spend time trying to figure out the requirements of what they’re building while they’re building it, they’re ultimately doing two types of work: Prioritization and coding. These disparate types of work don’t mesh. Figuring out what to build requires conversations with users, extensive research, talks with stakeholders across the organization and other tasks well outside the scope of software development.?

Here’s What a Software Architect Does in an Agile Team

An architect is probably not a valid role on an agile team. I admit I have at times been overzealous with non-coding members of a dev team. The less militant version of this is to be aware of ‘pigs’ and ‘chickens’ in the agile sense. When making breakfast, chickens lay eggs but pigs literally have skin in the game. So only pigs should attend daily agile stand ups. There are three problems with the role of architect in classic agile. Think of these as Lutheran protestant theses nailed to the door — or more likely to the planning wall.There are no upfront design phases in agile. “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams”. An architect cannot be an approver and cause of delay. This leads to the idea that architectural know-how should be spread out amongst the other team members. This is often the case — however it elides the fact that architectural responsibility doesn’t fall to anyone, even if people feel they may be accountable. Remember your RACI matrix. Should all agile developers be architects in a project? This makes little sense, since architecture describes a singular plan.?

AI’s Ability to Reason: Statistics vs. Logic

As a simplistic existence proof that today’s AI does not reason with logic, consider the following problem in basic algebra which was given to Bing/OpenAI GPT to solve. The gist of the problem shown in the figure below is that there are two rectangles, each having the same height (though this detail is not clearly stated in the sourcing 6th grade math text) but different widths. Areas for each are given. The rectangles are positioned in the corresponding math text to suggest that they may be aggregated into a larger rectangle having a width that is the sum of the widths of the smaller rectangles — maybe as a hint toward length. The request to find the length (height) and widths is a test to see whether OpenAI’s GPT via Bing would determine if there are sufficient equations matching unknowns. There aren’t. GPT didn’t discover the number of equations is one too few. Instead, it attempted to find length and widths, and it responded suggesting it had successfully solved the math problem. Everything started to go amuck when the insufficiency of the number of equations matched to the number of unknowns was missed, and the third equation given above simply is a function of the other two.

Security Is EVERYBODY’s Business, But CISOs Need to Lead

Cybersecurity is not an audit or internal audit. There is a fine line of difference there. And as much as the CISO is seen as somewhat more of an enforcer, they need to be seen as an enabler to the business. CISOs need to have very direct, effective, and transparent communication with the board members when it comes to quantification of everything that they’re doing. And when I say quantification, what I mean is quantification of risks to the organization. Some of the board members will be closer to cybersecurity risks. Some of them may be closer to a reputational risk or a financial risk. But if a CSO can stitch that story together and quantify it for the audience of the board, I think that goes a long way. That’s what’s needed because, in the situation in the market that we are in right now, with the threat landscape changing, with new capabilities coming into play, I think it’s critical. CISOs need to ensure the message is articulated well in the boardroom.

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