Our Next Reality: How the AI-powered Metaverse Will Reshape the World

"Our Next Reality breaks new ground by exploring both good and bad possible outcomes of widespread deployment of an AI-powered Metaverse."
-- Neal Stephenson, Best-Selling Author | Entrepreneur

"In Our Next Reality, Alvin and Louis have done a fantastic job of giving a balanced and insightful analysis to some of the most pressing questions our society will face in the near future. The material is data driven, digestible, and very actionable."
-- Ray Kurzweil, Author | Entrepreneur | Futurist
 
"Finally, AI has the potential to transform VR and AR, making it essential across all human endeavors. This book brings clarity to why this really matters. It left me hopeful for the potentially abundant wolrd that is described and informed me on how I can play a role at this critical moment."
-- Peter H. Diamandis, Best-Selling Author | Entrepreneur
 
"I really liked Our Next Reality. There was lots of stuff about immersive tech I had not heard before. Like the authors, I believe that there is no alternative reality without cheap pervasive AI. Overall, it was a very worthwhile read."
-- Kevin Kelly, Best-selling Author | Editor | Futurist
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Over the last 100 years, technology has changed our world. Over the next decade it will transform our reality. 

We are entering a new technological age in which artificial intelligence and immersive media will transform society at all levels, mediating our lives by altering what we see, hear, and experience. Powered by immersive eyewear and driven by interactive AI agents, this new age of computing has the potential to make our world a magical place where the boundaries between the real and the virtual, the human and the artificial, rapidly fade away. If managed well, this could unleash a new age of abundance. If managed poorly, this technological revolution could easily go astray, deeply compromising our privacy, autonomy, agency, and even our humanity.

In Our Next Reality, two industry veterans provide a data-driven debate on whether the new world we're creating will be a technological utopia or an AI-powered dystopia and give guidance on how to aim for the best future we can. With a Foreword by renowned author Neal Stephenson and section contributions from industry thought-leaders such as Peter H. Diamandis, Tom Furness, Phillip Rosedale, Tony Parisi, Avi Bar Zeev and Walter Parkes, this book answers over a dozen of the most pressing questions we face as spatial computing and AI accelerates the digitization of our world. Find out why our actions in the next decade could determine the trajectory of our species for countless millennia.

Alvin Wang Graylin is a respected tech entrepreneur and executive, who has founded four venture backed startups in the area of conversational AI search, mobile social, location-based AR services, and big data AI analytics, and invested in over 100 companies. He's also a recognized industry leader in the immersive computing space having served as Chairman of the Virtual World Society, Global VP at HTC, President of the Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance, Vice-chair of the Industry of VR Alliance, and Distinguished Professor of VR at BeiHang University. He is invited to keynote at major conferences speaking on the future impact of exponential technologies. Mr. Graylin holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, a M.S. in computer science from MIT and a M.S. in business from MIT Sloan, where he started his researched in AI, VR and CPU design over three decades ago. He is currently based in Seattle area. 

Louis Rosenberg is an early pioneer of virtual and augmented reality. His work began over thirty years ago in VR labs at Stanford University, NASA, and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) where he developed the first functional mixed reality system. In 1993 he founded the early VR company Immersion Corporation which he brought public on NASDAQ in 1999. In 2004 he founded Outland Research, an early developer of augmented reality and spatial media technology that was acquired by Google in 2011. He received his PhD from Stanford University, was a tenured professor at California State University, and has been awarded over 300 patents for VR, AR, and AI technologies. He is currently CEO of the artificial intelligence company Unanimous AI, the Chief Scientist of the Responsible Metaverse Alliance, and writes often for major publications about the dangers of emerging technologies.