This, the third in an article series titled Life and Crime in the Metaverse, examines the idea of trust, how to engage in online transactions and other interactions in its absence, and what this signifies in the metaverse context.

This is the second in a series of articles titled Life and Crime in the Metaverse. Contrary to popular belief, creating a metaverse takes just a few minutes, costs just a few dollars, and can be done almost without technical skills, so criminals are bound to take advantage.

As our four imaginary friends feted the New Year, they end this series by spreading cheer with examples of AI’s failures that may have ruined or caused lives to be lost. Their moral is blunt: Never unloose AI unless it is under adult supervision and subject to actual intelligence.

This time, the four imaginary friends gather together once more to consider the importance of precision in language as they examine vocabulary, grammar, and inflection. Imprecise language can be especially problematic with AI, which can easily get confused and spit out answers or take actions that are incorrect.

‘Seeing is believing.’ The Four Imaginary Friends dispute the nature of truth vs. semblance as they seek to pick apart the fundamental nature of Web 3.0 and the metaverse and their distinctions and overlap.

The Four Imaginary Friends continue to debate the fundamental question of whether humanity can expect machines to relate to the real world when the real world communicates in human language that has all kinds of peculiarities and nuances.

‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘Machine Learning’ depend on, among other things, the language used by humans. Four imaginary friends discuss the many uncertainties that creates.

The use of biometrics seemed unstoppable just a few weeks ago. But then questions of data protection were raised and now the when, where, and why of how images of people can be used has become a lot more complicated.

Four imaginary pals pick up on their discussion left off in ‘Yes, No, Maybe,’ chatting about some of Alan Turing’s views of the integration, or fusion, of humans and machines.

What is artificial intelligence really, and how does it work? AI has drawn much attention in recent years, but all the hype and the potential surrounding it often obscure the true situation. AI’s dominance is far from preordained or inevitable, and one must step back and assess things from time to time, as these four characters A, B, C, and D do here.