What on earth is the Metaverse?

Speaker/s

Li is CEO and co-founder of Pinscreen, a startup that builds cutting edge AI-driven virtual avatar technologies, as well as associate professor at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI). He was previously a Distinguished Fellow of the Computer Vision Group at UC Berkeley and Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, where he was also director of the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. Li works at the intersection between computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning, with focus on virtual humans, reality capture, and AI synthesis. His goal is to enable new AI and immersive technologies that can make the concept of the metaverse possible, and enhance our lives with digital experiences that are otherwise not possible in the physical world. Examples include virtual teleportation and immersive communication using 3D avatars, fully autonomous AI agents that are indistinguishable from a real person, hyper realistic simulated worlds that can be generated and authored by anyone, as well as augmented reality technologies that can enhance our senses and enrich our experiences. With the rapid advancement of AI-driven content creation technologies, Hao is committed to prioritizing our safety and wellbeing by developing tools to prevent new forms of cyberthreats such as deepfakes used for disinformation campaigns or harassment. Li was also a visiting professor at Weta Digital, a research lead at Industrial Light & Magic / Lucasfilm, and a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia and Princeton universities. Hao was speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020 and exhibited at SXSW in 2022. His startup, Pinscreen, was recipient of the Epic Megagrants in 2021, and in 2022, Li was featured in the first season of Amazon's documentary re:MARS Luminaries.