Metaverse and Artificial Intelligence: TDIC Trends in Education
Authors: Marques Walter Rodrigues , Silva Ana Cristina Souza , Nascimento Suzana Pinheiro , Costa Francisco das Chagas Santos , Câmara Dediane Melry Martins , Farias Sherlene Regea Araujo 
Published: June 2024

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the possibility of using artificial intelligences (AI), metaverses and other digital tools understood as Digital Information and Communication Technologies (DICT) in educational activities, with the aim of discussing how education in contemporary times cannot escape the technological effect such as AI, because educational practice, especially in the post-Covid-19 pandemic world, has taken on contours that cannot be reversed. The school floor is permeated by practices such as consulting ChatGPT, Bing and other AIs, whether to plan or teach a lesson. With regard to educational practice, audiovisuals stand out as a technological possibility through futuristic-themed films to explore the dynamism and volatility of human life and its relationship with technology in the first quarter of the 21st century. In this way, it is emphasised that cinema plays an important role in introducing the digital world into everyday life, especially for young people, the new formats of reality for human adaptation to technology.

Theoretical Framework: The primary goal of AI is to emulate human intelligence. Some AI that are present in our daily lives are personal assistants such as Siri on the iPhone and Apple computers, Cortana from Microsoft, Alexa from Amazon and Google Assistant on Android smartphones through deep learning neural networks (Rocha, 2019). The year 2021 was a watershed for the use of virtual reality, especially when Facebook changed its name to Meta (Rospigliosi, 2022). The use of futuristic science fiction films brings the visual arts into the field of digital technologies for the classroom. Episodes from the series Black Mirror (Netflix) and The Peripheral (Amazon Prime) are used here to discuss the study of audiovisuals as a learning method.

Method: The methodology adopted for this research consists of demonstrating the concepts and functions of metaverses and AI, as well as the educational nature of films based on science fiction. The research is qualitative and is characterised by a literature review. The data was collected considering aspects of the ethnographic method in a virtual environment - virtual ethnography. The procedure consisted of creating an alert on Google Scholar (GA) by entering the terms: ‘metaverse and education’. A Scopus search was carried out on the subjects: ‘Artificial Intelligence’, ‘Distance Education’ and ‘Metaverse’. The most frequent references reported dealt with distance education and, secondarily, metaverse, and only one referred to AI. It is therefore with this theoretical scope that the inferences will be made and discussed.

Results and Discussion: It is concluded that learning is more effective when technology is explained in a playful way, for example through the use of cinema, because theory alone is too tiring. It is pointed out that there is still an abysmal social, economic and cultural inequality for different social classes and regions of the world, which implies different and unequal access to technological artefacts for these different audiences. It is therefore worth reflecting that there is no real investment in human development.

Research Implications: The main implications of the study are the lack of investment in both equipment and people, i.e. cognitive development alongside technological development, because there is no point in acquiring equipment that is not part of the daily lives of people in different parts of the world. Investments need to be tailored to the characteristics of each location.

Originality/Value: This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that there are still abysmal social and economic gaps in the world, especially in the different regions of Brazil, which has an alarming number of illiterates, especially digital illiterates. This is directly related to purchasing power, as public schools are scrapped and offer a much lower level of education than the financially, economically, socially and culturally superior classes.