On the morning of January 27, the sky was still drizzling, and the 45th floor sightseeing hall of the West Bank Zhi Pagoda was surrounded by clouds outside the window at a height of 200 meters, and the figure of the Huangpu River meandering could be faintly seen.
Inside the window, however, is a clear and open space, and a seminar on leading enterprises in the "meta-universe" industry is being held here. At the three-hour seminar from breakfast to lunch, on both sides of the conference table sat the heads of more than 10 professional departments and state-owned enterprises from Xuhui, and on the other side were the heads of institutions and enterprises from Pujiang Laboratory, Shutu Blockchain Research Institute, East China Branch of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Huawei, Tencent, Ali, SenseTime, NetEase, Mihayou, Lilith, Qujia Interactive Entertainment, MR glasses manufacturer Nreal and other institutions and enterprises.
Not long before the seminar was held, SenseTime, a leading AI company headquartered in Xuhui District, was successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the largest IPO in the global AI field. In SenseTime's listing prospectus, the company defines itself as "one of the largest 'meta-universe' enabling platforms."
Seminar site
Digital economy enterprises such as artificial intelligence and the Internet are seizing the highlands of the meta-universe. However, whether the "metacosm" is a concept, an industry, or a "future trend of mankind" with a broader dimension and a more far-reaching intention, there is no standard answer at present.
Xu Hui held such a seminar at this moment, in addition to speaking freely, it is also to explore what kind of practical actions the government can do behind closed doors in the fiery "meta-universe" topic.
Is WeChat the "closed form" of the metacosm?
"WeChat is actually a bit like the initial version of the metaverse." Speaking of the APP that everyone present was using, Xu Siyan, deputy director of Tencent's Smart Industry Research Center, immediately attracted the attention of the audience.
As a "simple application" in the eyes of developers, the richness of The WeChat usage experience comes largely from the massive content created by users every day. Tencent provides the underlying standards, such as how to write the official account, how to develop the Mini Program, and the actual tweets and service content are co-created by individual and institutional users.
"But WeChat is still relatively closed, and can only circulate information in WeChat's own system, but the meta-universe can adapt to the content developed by various companies, can open up to each other, and finally achieve different goals such as cross-border production, cross-border collaboration, and cross-border trade."
Xuhui Binjiang is building a digital transformation demonstration belt
Many heads of enterprises and institutions have mentioned that a major feature of the metaverse is that the real society is mapped in the metaverse, including people's identities, social relationships, assets, etc. In the Popular Switch handheld game "Animal Forest Friends Association" since the epidemic, people have migrated the social interaction of real society to the game world, and graduation ceremonies and afternoon tea parties that are difficult to achieve in reality during the epidemic can be realized in the game. These behaviors are driven by the user, and the game does not assign specific tasks to the user.
"The real metaverse is the migration of life, you can work, live, make money, enjoy yourself, and a large part of the authenticity of the metacosm comes from here." Xu Siyan said.
This migration now appears to be gradual. Yang Guang, research director of Shanghai Shutu Blockchain Research Institute, believes that human activities have migrated from the physical world to the digital world, and there is no singularity in the development process. In the hardware dimension, the technology and content ecology of the mobile phone terminal have matured, and vr/AR devices are still "one foot in the door". In the vertical field of artificial intelligence, metaverse-related technologies such as blockchain have been relatively mature, but there is still a long way to go before the ultimate goal of "strong artificial intelligence".
The game closest to the metaverse?
At the seminar, the heads of lilith and Mihayou's two major game development companies also spoke - games are being regarded as "the closest field to the metaverse".
For this "definition", Hu Rui, vice president of Lilith, said that games are indeed the closest product form to the "metaverse", but only when the development process of the game is instrumentalized, automated, online and intelligent, can the virtual environment in the metaverse cover more real-world production and life scenarios.
"The metacosm is not from the real to the virtual, but through virtual technology to empower the real world."
From the perspective of the industry, the currently recognized concept of the metaverse began with the science fiction novel "Avalanche". While there is still a discussion about concepts, there is already a part of the consensus on metaversms, such as immersive interactions.
"Now, a mature open-world product has integrated functions such as avatars, super scenes, and instant interaction, and users have a higher degree of freedom." Hu Rui said that the game is a product form presented by the superposition of a variety of virtual digital technologies, so it can be regarded as one of the entrances to the metaverse.
The metacosm needs people to look up at the stars and rely more on people to be down-to-earth. From the perspective of game development, the technologies used in research and development such as cloud computing, unreal engine, physics simulation, and real-time rendering are considered to be the basic technologies for building the metaverse. To complete a head game product, it is necessary to cooperate with hundreds or even thousands of people at the same time for ultra-large-scale production.
"Including game companies, many metaverse-related enterprises are talent-intensive, and need to base themselves on regional development and carry out different gradient layouts in talents and scientific research, so they are in great need of corresponding policy support." Hu Rui said frankly.
Who can define the metaverse
In the speech of the enterprise representative, Yu Linwei, deputy mayor of Xuhui District, who is in charge of regional industrial development, raised a question: In ancient times, people thought that 600 square kilometers was already the upper limit of the ecological area of the city, but now many cities in China have far exceeded this area. Will the cities in the future metaversary be individual megacities, or will they be made up of hundreds of thousands of cities of different sizes?
Centralization or polycentrism is an eternal topic, both in real urban planning and in the virtual digital world.
"I think both cities will exist at the same time." Yang Guang gave his views from the perspective of blockchain. He said that on the one hand, the head concentration effect in the real world will still exist in the metaverse, especially in the digital world, when people are concerned about housing prices, settlement, educational resources and other issues are no longer limited, the emergence of "strong centers" is not surprising.
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On the other hand, due to the infinite expansion of the virtual world space, the long tail effect will gradually become prominent. Personalized, niche needs are gathered online, and "small cities" will be formed in the metaverse.
"Whether it is a 'big city' or a 'small city', it can generate higher quality industries by gathering and supporting wider development." Yang Guang said.
At present, in the field of game technology, Xuhui District has gathered Tencent, NetEase, Mihayou, Qujia Interactive Entertainment, Lilith, Ubisoft and other well-known game companies at home and abroad; the blockchain field, led by the Treemap Blockchain Research Institute, focuses on the underlying technological innovation of the public chain, and has actively explored in the field of NFT digital collections; in the field of interactive technology, industry-level applications such as the AR auxiliary diagnosis and treatment system of Zhongshan Hospital are rapidly emerging; in the field of Internet of Things, network and computing, Xu has gathered the Amazon Cloud, Huawei Kunpeng and other platform companies strengthen regional original innovation and industrialization capabilities.
The gradient agglomeration of industrial resources also makes enterprises feel quite touched. Fang Sizhe, head of technology at Huawei's Shanghai representative office, suggested that XuHui could take the lead in trying to define the metacosmity, and the government would drive the enterprises related to the metacosm in the region to discuss. Liao Yunfa, chief engineer of the East China Branch of the Chinese Academy of Information and Communications Technology, proposed that Xuhui could take the lead in establishing an industrial alliance, building a meta-universe standard system, and conducting research in advance on the rule of law and ethics involved in the future meta-universe.
In 2021, the total output of artificial intelligence in Xuhui is expected to reach 55 billion yuan, maintaining an average annual growth rate of 30% since 2017. As a key technology for maintaining stability and content creation in the "meta-universe" system, how to make good use of the first-mover advantage of the industry is not only Xuhui, but also the entire Shanghai examination question.