In 2021, the word "meta universe" triggered a lot of discussion and brought some hype. Almost all media have reported content related to this topic. So what is the meta universe and what will it bring us? In short, the meta universe is a cyberspace, a virtual world that helps humans connect with each other. In the metauniverse, everyone has a virtual image representing himself, just like in a video game. With the help of VR head display, people enter the virtual world and can communicate with others no matter where they are. This is a must have skill for technology lovers. Anyone can cross into various 3D environments without leaving their sofa. And this is what science fiction writers dream of. Bill Gates predicts that within two to three years, all virtual conferences will be transferred from 2D world to 3D world in metauniverse. Microsoft, meta, Amazon, tiktok, apple and other technology giants are planning to invest money and energy to create their own metauniverse. At the same time, fashion and beauty brands seem to be interested in this business opportunity. JPMorgan expects the annual revenue of the meta universe market to reach $1 trillion a year. The game minecraft may be one of the platforms closest to the metacosmic experience at present. Since the beginning of the epidemic, the video game has been used as a space for people's social gatherings for many times. For example, a Korean University recently held an entrance ceremony in the virtual space of the game. In the spring of 2020, my world held a music festival, with pop star Charli xcx as one of its headlines at that time. In the spring of 2021, Brown University, a famous Ivy League school, also tried to organize music activities on the platform. As we can see, the metauniverse aims to be a social experience. The wonder of it is that we can communicate, cooperate, have fun or create art with people who are not in the same physical space as us. We don't have to be in the same room, country or even the same city. All this makes the concept of meta universe sound like something that can unite the whole world by overcoming the constraints of geographical and political boundaries. But it also makes people feel that the meta universe is completely Utopian, because even in real life, we do not have a universal understanding of all things. But if it is really possible, can we achieve all this in cyberspace? Artificial intelligence is crucial to communication in the metauniverse Although the metauniverse is a virtual space, we will still deal with the language and communication in it according to the same principles as the physical world. For example: speaking, expressing emotions, listening, being polite, empathetic and respecting others. Generally speaking, the communication between virtual world and real world is similar in many aspects. And that's a good thing, because we don't have to start from scratch. But at the same time, it means that the difficulties we face are the same. If we are talking about a global cyberspace that should unite mankind more, then we must solve the problem of language barriers. Mark Zuckerberg is leading the meta (formerly Facebook) project to develop his own metauniverse. At present, meta's social media platform gathers users from different countries, but they mainly stay in their own language circle without contacting people who speak different languages. As of 2019, Facebook officially supports 41 languages. This number doesn't sound like a lot, because we have hundreds of languages and dialects, but in fact, it's not easy. Obviously, in this case, it is very difficult to achieve complete unification, because users can only communicate and establish contacts with a limited number of people. This narrows their horizons and the possibility of connecting with the world. At the same time, if we choose only one language as the universal language, we will lose the diversity of language, which will be a human tragedy. And that's why the meta universe needs artificial intelligence translation. Artificial intelligence translation in metauniverse In the past decade, machine learning and artificial intelligence have developed by leaps and bounds. In the past few years, language technologies such as machine translation and speech recognition have also made great progress. At present, social networks make effective use of these breakthroughs through real-time text translation. Many people should have noticed this in Facebook posts and comments, or in video subtitles automatically generated by Youtube and tiktok. But in the metauniverse, we need to go further in artificial intelligence and language. In the metauniverse, people can speak with their own voice, just like in the real world. The language barrier between people should be solved as easily and seamlessly as possible. Mark Zuckerberg seems to have understood the importance of AI translation. In February 2022, Zuckerberg announced that meta was working to build an artificial intelligence driven universal speech translator for the language in its metauniverse, which is suitable for everyone in the digital world. It will use artificial intelligence to provide instant translation of widely used languages. Zuckerberg said: "being able to communicate with anyone in any language is a dream superpower, and artificial intelligence will help us realize this dream in our lifetime." It is said that meta's universal speech translator can translate speech directly into speech without transcription in advance. It will make the translation invisible, which will help to make the dialogue more natural. If the project succeeds, people won't even notice that they are talking to people who don't understand their language. This conversation process will be as smooth as a mother tongue conversation. This level of translation cannot be achieved seamlessly in the real world. AI translation also helps to save language diversity, because it will encourage people to continue to retain their mother tongue, and different languages will no longer be an obstacle to international communication. In the future, you can become a member of the international community without learning a foreign language. Of course, a lot of work needs to be done before we really realize this vision. Meta's universal speech translator must learn hundreds of languages and realize the ability of real-time translation. The engineers behind the project need to find training data, which is not easy to obtain for many languages that are not popular on the Internet. This is a complex and ambitious project, but it definitely has great potential to make the world a better place. (Xinhua News Agency)