Artificial intelligence is overtaking the Metaverse as a future technology

Survey: Artificial Intelligence is overtaking the Metaverse as the technology of the future

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is considered by the people in Germany as the most important future digital technology. This is the result of a representative YouGov survey published on Sunday, commissioned by Internet node operator DE-CIX in Frankfurt. Forty-one percent of those surveyed assumed that artificial intelligence would prevail in the future.

The topic of AI has garnered a lot of public attention in recent months thanks to the GPT language model and chatbot ChatGPT based on it from California startup OpenAI. Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, has invested billions to integrate OpenAI technology into its products across the board. This is related to an attempt to question the sovereignty of the Internet giant Google. Google, in turn, has countered the advances with its own AI chatbot (“Bard”) and widespread AI integration into Google Search and the group’s other services.

Hype around artificial intelligence is pushing back the metaverse as a trendy topic. On the other hand, the term “Metaverse” refers to a digital and interactive environment that can be entered using virtual reality glasses. In it, users can work, play, meet or shop as an avatar. The metaverse also includes applications in which digital information is displayed in the user’s real field of view. However, only 14 percent of people in Germany currently believe that new digital virtual reality worlds such as the Metaverse will prevail as a future technology.

On the other hand, four out of ten respondents (40 percent) believe that the smart home concept will also be permanently relevant as a technology. The term refers to a “smart home” where electronic devices are networked and processes are automated in a way that makes daily life easier for residents or helps save energy. E-health (28 percent) as well as smart city and autonomous driving (24 percent each) are rated lower.

In the Yougov survey, 59 percent of respondents said that the network should be better expanded in order to meet the future demands of new technologies. Half of Germans (51 per cent) would like to see lower costs for Internet connections (mobile and fixed) in the future. 20 percent of Germans would be willing to pay more for better connections.