Metaverse technology sinks into the deep sea: brief glory and future prospects

Suddenly, ChatGPT became popular on the entire Internet, the metaverse sank into the deep sea, and the decline of the upstart technology from "Little Tiantian" to "Mrs. Niu" was so short, about It's equivalent to "a flash in the pan".

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man and founder of Microsoft, recently publicly stated: The emergence of ChatGPT is no less significant than the birth of the Internet and personal computers. Artificial intelligence is revolutionary and a major technology. "Web3 is not that important, and the Metaverse is not revolutionary." However, just two years ago, Bill Gates predicted that the Metaverse will greatly change people's work in the future, and remote working will draw more people into the Metaverse. universe.

Bill Gates is not the only one who likes the new and hates the old. Recently, Wang Huiwen, the co-founder of Meituan with $50 million in hand, boasted about "building China's OpenAI" and modified his immediate signature: learning. AI. Previously, this signature was "All in Crypto" to show his determination to enter the metaverse.

Yuanverse: From "upstart" to "abandoned"

In the past two years, Yuanverse has been the "Super star" in the technology circle: Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Baidu, Tencent, NetEase and other global technology companies have entered the game.

In October 2021, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be renamed Meta, making the world's seventh-largest company by market value the "number one player" in the field, and it was in the limelight for a while. But just one year later, Meta's stock price fell from over $300 per share to under $100. According to the unaudited financial report for the full year 2022 released by Meta, the company's Metaverse division Reality Labs business revenue was US$2.159 billion, with operating losses reaching US$13.717 billion, which further expanded compared to the previous fiscal year's losses. In the end, Meta laid off 13% of its employees. Zuckerberg publicly apologized, promised to reduce expenses, and said he would be more rational in investing in the Metaverse.

Similar to Meta, technology companies that have shrunk or are shrinking their Metaverse business all use "cost reduction and efficiency increase" as their reason.

Microsoft has disbanded the Metaverse Application Team, which was only established for four months, and all about 100 employees of the team were laid off. Instead, it embraced AI technology represented by ChatGPT and invested in ChatGPT three times - US$1 billion, US$2 billion and US$10 billion. At present, Microsoft has launched Bing search engine and Edge browser that integrate ChatGPT, and office software Office 365 and Teams are fully integrated with ChatGPT.

In China, in August 2021, ByteDance acquired the VR startup PICO for 9 billion yuan to seize the entrance to the Metaverse. A few days ago, PICO carried out a new round of organizational optimization, while Tencent’s XR team was disbanded. The Metaverse business that had previously been aggressively moving forward began to retreat rapidly.

ChatGPT is so popular

Compared to layoffs, stock prices, market value, and losses, a more obvious feeling is that nowadays, whether on the Internet or in reality, the "voice" about the Metaverse has been significantly reduced. . At the same time, the popularity of ChatGPT skyrocketed. Almost overnight, ChatGPT became the subject of heated discussions around the world.

In just two months since its launch, ChatGPT has gained 100 million monthly active users, and news related to ChatGPT technology is endless. After Microsoft launched the artificial intelligence search engine Bing, Google also launched the next-generation AI dialogue system Bard and said that the dialogue system will soon be integrated into Google's search engine.

At present, domestic Internet giants Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, JD.com, Byte and Xiaomi are promoting research in the related directions of ChatGPT and AIGC (using artificial intelligence technology to generate content). Among them, Wenxinyiyan (English name: ERNIE Bot), a ChatGPT-like project owned by Baidu, will complete internal testing in March and be open to the public.

As for JD.com, Alibaba, and Pinduoduo, they are more focused on intelligent customer service. ByteDance is gradually migrating from the original UGC (user-generated content) of Toutiao to AIGC. There are also players such as NetEase, iFlytek, Zhihu, 360, SenseTime, etc., who are also following up on the innovative technology of AIGC in different directions.

In the past two weeks, ChatGPT concept stocks such as Baidu, Zhihu, Yuncong Technology, and 360 have all seen sharp rises. 360 has hit the daily limit for three consecutive trading days. Zhihu’s highest intraday increase on February 8 was close to 60 %, and the stock price hit a record high. In addition, several companies such as Haitian Ruisheng, Hanwang Technology and Yuncong Technology have also seen their stock prices rise all the way because of their status as "ChatGPT concept stocks".

Will ChatGPT become the next "Metaverse"?

The technology circle has witnessed too many "flash in the pan". The explosion of the "upstart" ChatGPT has almost copied the path of the Metaverse. Will it follow in the footsteps of the Metaverse and become the next Metaverse?

As Google Bard gave incorrect answers to questions raised by users at a press conference, Google’s stock price plummeted by more than 7%, and its market value evaporated by hundreds of billions of dollars overnight. The popularity of ChatGPT has also subsided.

However, it is undeniable that the dialogue and writing skills displayed by ChatGPT are very "powerful". The biggest difference between it and the Metaverse is that the definition of the Metaverse is vague and the landing scene is abstract. In C There is no truly phenomenal application on the C-end so far; in comparison, the implementation scenarios of ChatGPT are richer and more concrete, and you can have conversations, code, write articles, work as customer service, etc. It has become popular on the C-end more than two months after it was launched. .

At the same time, concerns about ChatGPT are also rampant. Elon Musk said: "One of the biggest threats to future civilization is artificial intelligence. It is both positive and negative. It has great capabilities and can be used at any time." With that comes great danger.”

Kai-fu Lee, founder of Sinovation Ventures, believes that AI has three major shortcomings. Even by 2042, AI may still not be able to fully master creativity, empathy, dexterity and other abilities. Therefore, “On the one hand, we need to make the public more aware of the short-term pain and long-term benefits brought by AI; on the other hand, we need to work together to proactively respond in advance. Only in this way can we gradually cultivate the ability to embrace the advancement of AI technologies such as ChatGPT.” Adopt a responsible and rigorous attitude and let AI truly be 'Tech for Good' to benefit mankind."

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