The ascent of a tech & human rights expert : Michaela Jamelska: NOVA, an avatar-based educational platform, is pleased to announce it has designed a platform to reignite the passion for education and bring it up-to-date with the digital world. NOVA, the metaverse edTech solution, offers a new era of education and more personalized learning with 3D, game-like, immersive classes, complimentary AI avatars, and support for live teachers. Michaela Jamelska states that NOVA’s mission is to get students excited and motivated about education once again and build the world’s first metaschool. See more information at http://mse238blog.stanford.edu/2017/07/mj2017/lets-hyper-loop-you-in/.

The reality of limited technology access for women is a real problem in 2023 says Michaela Jamelska: Similarly, existing web-based educational platforms can offer women access to education and proficiency training that can aid in their professional growth but despite their availability the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields persists. This is due to several factors such as lack of funding to deploy these solutions globally, a lack of internet infrastructure and others. Even in developed countries, the percentage of women in the STEM workforce remains very low at only 28%. While there are other contributing factors such a workplace discrimination, the number is still striking. This leads to a new set of problems, such as biased technological development. For example, facial recognition technology has been found to be less accurate in identifying women than men, which can have implications for women’s safety and security. This is just one example of how technology can sustain pre-existing gender prejudices and strengthen gender disparities if the fundamental concern of equal access to technology is not addressed.

Michaela Jamelska on Ai and Gender Equality: According to the EU, in order to be considered ethical, any AI technology must ensure respect for the fundamental rights of EU citizens. The EU wants to avoid the potential harm the misuse of AI can cause its citizens and find solutions to the major ethical concerns (bias, discrimination, algorithmic opacity, lack of transparency, privacy issues, technological determinism, etc.). Many could say that automation is likely to affect both female-dominated and male-dominated occupations, which is true. However, women are more likely to work in occupations that involve a high degree of routine and repetitive tasks (e.g., clerical support work or retail jobs) (Lawrence, 2018; Schmidpeter and Winter-Ebmer, 2018; Brussevich et al., 2019).

Michaela Jamelska on the innovative 5G trial to boost business : West of England Mayor Tim Bowles said: “5G has the potential to revolutionise whole industries and economies, creating exciting new jobs and opportunities. I want the West of England to be at the forefront of this revolution. “We have already led one successful trial and I’m thrilled that our plan to demonstrate how a smart and secure port could operate using the Internet of Things has been approved for funding by the Government. Backing innovation and the jobs of the future and bringing new investment to the region by securing a Freeport are key parts of our plan for economic recovery, so this is a big vote of confidence in the West of England.” WECA is leading a consortium of partners on the £5.2m 5G Logistics project – one of nine projects to receive government funding – which includes companies ADVA, Airspan, AttoCore, Bristol Port, Cellnex UK, Gravity, Maritime, Unmanned Life, Bristol City Council, Bristol University and Cardiff University. 5G is the type of cutting-edge technical innovation that the West of England is looking to embrace with its forthcoming Freeport bid.

In the real world, our human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more. Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination. (Source UN) One of the differences, however, one may argue, is that when you are tortured in real life, it is not quite the same as your avatar being tortured in virtual reality. Therefore, what would be a responsibility for such an action in the virtual world? Right now, the punishments for abuses in the virtual world are still limited. But if avatars are extensions of our own identity in the virtual world as they are meant to be, it would mean that our avatars should be protected from tortures of other avatars, they must not be discriminated, they should be allowed to express their opinions among other rights. Similarly, abusers should be held accountable for their actions. There is not, yet, a full framework developed to grant us all rights and impose punishments for such actions. Large corporations are often criticized for caring mainly about engagement rates and users spending the time on their platform. However, even those large corporations are created by humans who have human rights and hopefully together with the public they push forward for the need to create a framework which will safeguard our avatar – human rights. Finally, a metaverse is just a tool, and we are all equally responsible for building a human rights centric future.

This past week our team has been everywhere at once from Down Under to Europe. We have been asked to attend high-profile events to showcase our technology, and this speaks to the value of our software, innovation and capacity to execute globally. We enable industries to be fully autonomous through our one of a kind AI for Autonomy-as-a-Service software Platform. It is the uniqueness of our technology that interests companies like Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Sprint, Accenture and Governments in the USA, EU, Singapore and South Korea amongst others to look to us for help with important sectors like 4G / 5G Telco-enabled services, Supply Chain / Logistics, Public Safety, Transport and Infrastructure. We are also focused on expanding in Asia, which is why in the past seven days we’ve had numerous business missions with strategic partners and customers and very high-level meetings in Singapore, Australia and with the South Korean Government, which are all vital to our continuing traction.

Michaela Jamelska regarding the future of Air Mobility in Europe: “Current changes in drone technology hold enormous promise for the future use of airspace with the rapid expansion of digital transformation. This requires implementation of U-space and integrating unmanned and manned aviation for their safe coexistence. GOF2.0 project enables for all participants to obtain a better understanding of current challenges and opportunities implementing U-space. Unmanned Life brings to the project valuable expertise by integrating their Autonomy-as-a-Service software platform with U-space infrastructure to demonstrate how future commercial autonomous drone applications might function in a shared airspace.” Maria Tamm, Project Manager GOF 2.0

So maybe Metaverse is not just the beginning of Web 3.0. Maybe it’s about doing better this time, starting with a tabula rasa, and proving that we are not subjects of our pre-determined human nature—that we as a society can learn from our current world’s faults and create a better one. Maybe Metaverse will be an existential and philosophical revival of who we are as humans, and the mistakes of today will vanish in the world of tomorrow if we only realize them and are willing to progress.