Over the past year, attention across the board has shifted away from the metaverse to advances in AI. While AI’s breakthrough moment took decades to materialize, many wonder if this same moment for the metaverse is finally about to happen.
Big technology companies must think there is promise in the idea because they continue to make large investments in extended reality (XR) gear. XR is an umbrella term for virtual, mixed and augmented reality. The devices are becoming lighter, less bulky, and more powerful with each generation.
And even though the various metaverses remain disconnected – and the grand idea of a 3D internet isn’t yet a reality – it’s impossible to ignore the millions of people interacting in XR metaverses every day as they play games, collaborate on projects, and use augmented reality (AR) to try out items before making retail purchases, travel virtually to faraway destinations, and even dance in raves.
As explained by Ori Inbar, Co-Founder and CEO of Augmented World Expo (AWE), during his keynote address at this year’s event in Singapore recently, there’s good reason for the skepticism about the metaverse. Advancing XR devices is hard because they rely on complicated optics and physics, and building high-quality, 3D immersive experiences is an expensive and time-consuming process.
AI will undoubtedly accelerate XR
Nevertheless, fueled by AI, the months it used to take to develop an XR experience will soon be reduced significantly. And the even better news is that this high-tech power combo of AI plus XR is bound to reshape education, offering more personalized and interactive experiences that drive more impactful and tangible outcomes.
IMD has already launched its first ChatGPT capabilities, allowing learners to ask questions about the topics covered in classroom sessions and gain invaluable insights grounded in the research and thought leadership of IMD faculty. The next frontier is to integrate IMD’s “expert AI” capability into XR worlds that challenge learners to think critically while helping them widen their perspectives and to work on developing new skills.
Hyper-personalization in practice
As AI models continually learn from interactions in XR worlds, their understanding of students becomes more refined and precise, enabling tailored learning experiences that engage and adapt. Unlike conventional educational settings, constrained by a single instructor’s capacity, AI-driven learning permits students to pose questions and receive answers based on the collective expertise of numerous faculty and vast sources of information.
This bespoke approach gains even more traction when integrated with the metaverse. These virtual worlds empower students to exercise their own agency in an environment ripe for individualized learning.