About this seminar series
Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and the metaverse, undoubtedly offer transformative potential for the augmentation and potential replacement of human performed tasks and activities within a wide range of industrial, intellectual, and social applications. The pace of change for this new AI technological age is staggering, with new breakthroughs in algorithmic machine learning and autonomous decision-making, coupled with developments related to blockchain, IoT and the metaverse, are engendering new opportunities for continued innovation. The impact and widespread adoption of these technologies is likely to be transformational within sectors ranging from agriculture, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, supply chain, logistics and utilities.
The metaverse has the potential to extend the capabilities and constraints of the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies, allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments (Dwivedi et al., 2022ab). Although the technology and infrastructure does not yet exist to allow the development of new immersive virtual worlds at scale - one that our avatars could transcend across platforms, researchers are increasingly examining the transformative impact of the metaverse. Impacted sectors include marketing, education, healthcare as well as societal effects relating to social interaction factors from widespread adoption, and issues relating to trust, privacy, bias, disinformation, application of law as well as psychological aspects linked to addiction and impact on vulnerable people (Dwivedi et al., 2022ab).
The seminar series on “The Digital Future for Business & Society: Emerging Perspectives on the Metaverse” will present various perspectives from a number of leading expert speakers to highlight the opportunities and challenges posed by the rapid emergence of the metaverse. The seminar series will offer a timely and thought-provoking insight to the metaverse, its impact on the future of business, management and societal factors impacted by the growth, direction and widespread adoption of this new immersive technology.
