Category: Presence in the News
News stories explicitly or implicitly related to presence from a wide variety of sources
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A parody ad shared by Elon Musk clones Kamala Harris’ voice, raising concerns about AI in politics
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Read more: A parody ad shared by Elon Musk clones Kamala Harris’ voice, raising concerns about AI in politics[Another use of deepfake technology in politics with the potential to mislead viewers is in the news; this story from AP provides the details. You can evaluate the video for yourself at X-user Mr Reagon’s original (and labelled) post. An excerpt from coverage by the CBC follows the story below. –Matthew] [Image: Source: CBC] A parody ad shared by Elon Musk clones Kamala Harris’ voice, raising concerns about AI in politics By Ali SwensonJuly 29, 2024 NEW YORK (AP) — A video that uses an artificial intelligence voice-cloning tool to mimic the voice of Vice President Kamala Harris saying things she…
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I watched the 2024 Olympics in VR on Peacock, here’s what it was like
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Read more: I watched the 2024 Olympics in VR on Peacock, here’s what it was like[Here’s a first-person report from Android Central on what it’s like to use the virtual reality app from the NBC television network’s Peacock streaming channel in a Meta Quest 3 headset to watch the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris (an experience I assume is similar in other headsets including the Apple Vision Pro). Here’s a key quote about presence from near the end: “Being able to take the coverage with me around the house is brilliant, and watching that same coverage in a personal movie theater is unforgettable, but if I’m doing this in VR I want to feel like…
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The metaverse was supposed to be your new office. You’re still on Zoom
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Read more: The metaverse was supposed to be your new office. You’re still on Zoom[This story from Wired about the slow adoption of virtual reality for remote work in offices includes many of the explanations and predictions voiced by scholars in the presence community. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Wired Staff; Getty Images] The Metaverse Was Supposed to Be Your New Office. You’re Still on Zoom Tech founders painted a vision of employees clocking into virtual workplaces. But the adoption of VR at work has been slow. By Amanda HooverJuly 14, 2024 When Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook as Meta in 2021, he estimated the metaverse could reach a billion people over a decade. Not long after,…
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Virtual reality training for physicians aims to heal disparities in Black maternal health care
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Read more: Virtual reality training for physicians aims to heal disparities in Black maternal health care[As reported in this story from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a diverse team of doctors, professors and graduate students is creating an ambitious three-module training program that uses virtual reality and presence to help medical professionals, initially those involved with maternal care, experience and understand how implicit bias based on race and gender harms patients and increase the cultural competency skills needed to improve patient care. See the original story for two more images and follow one of the links at the end below for the new article about the project in the journal Health Communication. –Matthew] [Image:…
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The Simulation Argument: Unedited wedding dress photo captures bizarre ‘glitch in the matrix’
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Read more: The Simulation Argument: Unedited wedding dress photo captures bizarre ‘glitch in the matrix’[A new story from Indy100 led me to this earlier one from Comic Sands about a technology-generated illusion that many people interpreted as evidence for the Simulation Argument that we are all living in the ultimate presence-evoking simulation. See the original Comic Sands story for more images and reactions; coverage from UNILAD includes the recap video from the person at the center of the story, Tessa Coates; and user iPhonedo explains and even recreates the illusion in a 10:42 minute YouTube video. –Matthew] Bride-To-Be Horrified After Unedited Wedding Dress Photo Captures Bizarre ‘Glitch In The Matrix’ Instagram user Tessa Coates…
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Jumping on an asteroid: How VR is being used to visit worlds we can never reach
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Read more: Jumping on an asteroid: How VR is being used to visit worlds we can never reach[The author of this story from Space.com describes what it’s like to stand, walk on, and jump off of (!) a virtual version of a distant asteroid only visited by human-made unmanned spacecraft. It also mentions and provides a link regarding the experience of attending an academic conference in VR. See the original version for three more images. –Matthew] Jumping on an asteroid: How VR is being used to visit worlds we can never reach There was something about this experience that felt “sticky.” By Jackson RyanJuly 7, 2024 I’m standing so close to JAXA’s Hayabusa2 asteroid lander that I…
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How the Gates Foundation is using presence to spread awareness and eradicate polio worldwide
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Read more: How the Gates Foundation is using presence to spread awareness and eradicate polio worldwide[Here’s a story about another very positive application of presence: The philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has collaborated with immersive experiences company REM5 Studios to produce and distribute a video for virtual reality headsets designed to raise awareness and resources to rid the world of the last cases of polio. The story from the Star Tribune provides the details; the original version includes the trailer for “Polio’s Last Mile” (it’s also available on YouTube). See the REM5 website for more information. –Matthew] [Image: At a Rotary conference in Singapore, attendees watch an immersive video created by REM5 that shows…
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Researchers use VR and presence to study effects of being in space on sensory perception of food
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Read more: Researchers use VR and presence to study effects of being in space on sensory perception of food[In this essay from The Conversation, a group of researchers from Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) describe their work on an interesting application of presence that has implications for the design of food for long-term space missions and people on Earth who live in “isolated or confined environments, such as nursing home residents, individuals on military deployment, and submarine crews.” Follow the link to the group’s new publication in the fourth paragraph for much more information. –Matthew] [Image: Participants smelled different scents while immersed in a VR space station environment. Credit: Seamus Daniel / RMIT University] Astronauts don’t…
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Most users think ChatGPT is conscious, survey finds
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Read more: Most users think ChatGPT is conscious, survey finds[A small survey study has found that most people believe that ChatGPT is conscious and can “make plans, reason, and feel emotions,” suggesting that much of the public experiences medium-as-social-actor presence when they use current AI. Some of the details are in this story from the University of Waterloo. Coverage in Futurism concludes with this: “Obviously, there will need to be way more research to determine how widespread these beliefs may be — but for now, it seems that many users are on the side of the small minority of AI experts who also think LLMs have become sentient.”…
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Inverse presence: The UK politician accused of being AI is actually a real person
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Read more: Inverse presence: The UK politician accused of being AI is actually a real person[As technology gets better at simulating reality, it seems inevitable that we’ll be more likely to misperceive reality as simulation, i.e., inverse presence experiences will become more common. The short story below from The Verge provides an example from the recent UK elections. Follow the links, and an official debunking of the accusations about the candidate from Logically Facts, for more details. –Matthew] [Image: Source: The Independent] The UK politician accused of being AI is actually a real person Mark Matlock, a candidate for the far-right Reform UK party, aroused suspicion when he didn’t show up for campaign events.…
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Not just at Euro 2024: Virtual advertising is playing an increasingly important role in sport
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Read more: Not just at Euro 2024: Virtual advertising is playing an increasingly important role in sport[As this story from Heise Online notes, virtual advertising – in which physical ads in a stadium are replaced digitally with different ads for home viewers – isn’t new. But the technology involved is advancing to make the (presence) illusion more convincing, personalized, and common. As the author notes at the end, “Virtual advertising opens up new opportunities for marketers and broadcasters, but it also raises questions about the authenticity of the sports experience and, like developments in AI, puts the concept of reality to the test.” The story was “originally published in German and… automatically translated” and I’ve made…
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Shifting mindsets: Integrating virtual reality in conflict mediation and peacebuilding
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Read more: Shifting mindsets: Integrating virtual reality in conflict mediation and peacebuilding[We could sure use more of the kind of applications of presence described in this story from the United Nations’ Politically Speaking magazine. See the Futuring Peace website for more resources. –Matthew] [Image: Security Council members hearing a Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia in 2022. UN Photo/Manuel Elías.] Shifting Mindsets: Integrating Virtual Reality in Conflict Mediation and Peacebuilding When applied to conflict mediation and peacebuilding settings, Virtual Reality (VR) can help conflict parties step into their opponents’ shoes and enhance reciprocal understanding of local communities. In this story, we look at the impact…
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