The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Ori Inbar Co-Founder of AWE and Super Ventures Talks ChatGPT, AI, VR, XR and Metaverse Futures

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Ori Inbar Co-Founder of AWE and Super Ventures Talks ChatGPT, AI, VR, XR and Metaverse Futures Awexr.com Ori Inbar is a pioneer and champion of the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) industry since 2007, and is a sought-after thought leader, investor and adviser to numerous augmented reality startups and corporations. In 2009, Ori co-founded Ogmento, an AR games startup which in 2015 was acquired by Apple. In 2010 he co-founded AWE, the world’s largest community dedicated to advancing AR and VR via tradeshows, meetups, courses, and award competitions, In 2016 he founded Super Ventures, a fund dedicated to investing in early-stage AR startups.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here.

We have Ori Inbar on today. He's the co-founder of AWE and SuperVentures. You're probably familiar with the AWE show. I am. I've been there. We've done interviews at the booths, and it's always a great show. So we're going to get into the discussion of what that is and why you should be more interested in it in the future that it holds. We're going to be talking about his new nonprofit that they're working on.

I don't think it's new, but some of the different offerings that they have in some awards that they'll be doing for an XR price. So we'll be talking about that as well. And we'll also talk some chat GPT and some other things with AR, VR, Metaverse, all that sort of good, juicy stuff that kind of seems hot on people's minds today. But in the meantime, you know, the Chris F was show is almost like an mlm but not we don't require you to pay anything but we do require to recruit five people in your download no i'm just kidding are you downline download downline whatever it's all the same right uh no just uh refer the show your

family friends and relatives give us great five-star reviews there on itunes uh tell them to go to youtube.com for chest christmas goodrissfoss, goodreads.com, 4chesschrissfoss, the big 130,000 LinkedIn group, the big LinkedIn newsletter. That thing is killing it over there. If you're not subscribed to the LinkedIn newsletter, well, then you're not living your best life. So go ahead and subscribe to it because you know what? When you're smarter and you listen to the Chris Voss Show and all the brilliant guests we have on, which none of them are me, the great part about that is you become sexier in everyone's eyes around you. So be smarter, listen to the Chris Voss Show, and share it. Anyway, guys, we have Ori Inbar on the show. and a champion of the augmented reality and virtual reality industry since 2007,

and is a sought-after thought leader, investor, and advisor to numerous augmented reality startups and corporations. In 2009, he founded Augmento, an AR game startup, which in 2015 was acquired by Apple. In 2010, he co-founded AWE, the world's largest community dedicated to advancing AR and VR via trade shows, meetups, courses, and award competitions. In 2016, he founded SuperVentures, a fund dedicated to investing in early-stage AR startups. Welcome to the show, Ori. How are you? I'm awesome. Thank you for having me, Chris. Thank you for coming.

We really appreciate it. We're honored to have you. Give us your dot coms, wherever you want people to look you up on the internet or the AWE show, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, LinkedIn is definitely a good place, but our website is at awexr.com. You can find all the information about the events and the prizes over there. There you go. Give us a little bit of your background, your origin story. How did you grow up? What got you into technology and down this vein of career that you're in now?

So, you know, in the second half of the 90s, I was building internet software for enterprises. 2001, my startup was acquired by SAP. So I spent a few years there, kind of bringing this cool startup software to some of the largest companies in the world. And that was fun to a certain degree. But in 2007, I decided to take a break, spend some time with the kids.

And I realized they're always in front of a screen playing video games on the internet. You know, social wasn't as big at the time. And I, you know, I wanted to find a way to get them to play more in the real world. Like I used to as a kid and, and I thought I invented something new, something that would take some of the things that attract kids and adults to the Internet, video games, and bring it into the real world. Of course, I started to do some research and realized people have done it before. It's called augmented reality. It's been around for decades. But the thing that was hidden in a few labs around the world and nobody heard about it so i was kind of

it became sort of my mission to find a way to bring this technology to everybody because i felt this could really change the way we interact with computers with the world with each other and it could be the next wave of computing so so that became the mission. I started first, you know, what do you do start a blog or a podcast. And that allowed me to kind of, you know, meet a lot of people to gain a lot of knowledge in space. And in 2007, I started Augmento, which you mentioned, kind of an AR games company, not that different than you know, what we've seen from Nantic and Pokemon Go, you know, a game, a game that everybody

knows wasn't as successful. But in 2015, it was acquired by Apple. So a lot of our technology became the foundation for Apple's AR platform. So that was cool. But you know, at the same time, I felt like there's so few of us in this industry and nobody knows about us. So we have to get together. And that's how AWE was formed in 2010. First event, 300 people, you know, talking about ideas and concepts. Nobody outside of the room understood what's going on there. But then, you know, it started to grow. And, you know, with the iPhone becoming kind of a really cool device to experience augmented reality.

And a couple of years later, VR becoming a thing with Oculus and Meta buying it. All of a sudden, this industry became a thing. And this event grew to become, you know, an event that runs on, you know, across three continents, U. continents, US, Europe, and Asia. We have tens of thousands of attendees, as well as meetups that are running in 30 cities around the world on an ongoing basis, and courses, and awards. And all of a sudden, it became this huge influencer on this industry. So, you know, in addition to just kind of reflecting what the industry,

how the industry was evolving over these years, it also helped kind of make a dent in some way and really try to guide the community into a certain direction that we believe was where it should go. And the great thing about what you guys have done, because I've been to your shows, I've done, you know, we go do booth interviews and interview people at shows and, you know, try and find cool technology. And so, you know, we do that all the, all the major shows.

The cool thing about yours is you guys are really concentrated on the AR, VR, XR space and, and really it's a great showcase. And it's also a platform for a lot of these startups, you know, that they're trying to either get financing or they're trying to get their product out there, trying to, you know, get people to know what they're doing. It gives them a great leaping place that they can take and have where they can showcase their stuff. They can maybe get more investors, expand and grow. You know, it's a, it's a real foundation for, uh, startups and stuff. Uh, for a long time, I thought augmented reality was when I just drank vodka on Friday nights,

uh, have a bottle of vodka, but evidently that's not augmented reality. And we, uh, those of you who aren't watching, you're listening to the audio of the podcast, uh, or he has a whole collection of, uh, of different styles of augmented reality glasses probably virtual reality glasses behind him so if you can check the youtube and of course subscribe plug um so uh let's lay a foundation for the people who don't understand what the difference is what is ar and what is vr what's the difference and and why does this make uh important yeah i know it's it's it's incredible after you know i've been in it for 15 years, and every discussion still starts with, you know, what is AR and what is VR and what are the differences? So I don't know.

Maybe we're something we're not doing right. But it is confusing. I mean, and it's kind of a whole new computing paradigm, which I think just takes time for people to get used to. But the short answer is that augmented reality or AR is where you add a little bit of digital information into your field of view, into your environment to enhance it, you know, whether you play, whether you have fun, whether you work. So yeah, so you still see everything around you, you still see the people around you, the things around you, and you stay in your environment. VR is where you completely hide yourself from the rest of the world. And everything around you is completely virtual.

That's why it's called virtual reality. But the thing is that the way most of us in the industry see this is the continuum. On one end of the continuum, it's reality. On the other hand, it's virtual reality. And sometimes you want to move in between those two extremes. And we also think that the devices of the future will allow you to move from augmented reality, where you just see a little bit of information and everything around it, to a point where now you're completely immersed into a virtual world.

And that's what, you know, some people may call it the mixed reality, which is really the original name of this entire spectrum or continuum. But it's a bit confusing. So we decided to use the acronym XR as a way to specify AR, VR, MR, all these things. Just call it XR, and it's a simple way. At least within the industry, that's how we call it. There you go. You know, it's really interesting, this space. I remember seeing some of the early AR stuff in social media back in 2010, 2011, when the iPhone was really starting

to hit it. And, and, but it would take up a lot of utilization. It was really hard to do. It was really, you know, complicated. And I don't think the devices were quite ready, you know, to be able to run that sort of power, but you could see the potential in it. And, and then not only is there a great consumer potential, there's great business brand potential. You know, you can, you know, I've seen augmented reality where you can walk down an aisle in a store and, you know, the shelves can jump out at you or speak or play different ads in front of you in a kind of augmented way. You know, to get, you know, it's hard to get noticed on the shelf if you're, if you understand the dynamics of, of, uh, shopping and everything else. And so it's really interesting and I'm a gamer. I would love to have call of duty on VR, uh, you know, but a game that's that detailed and that complex, which probably is going to take some time, but you know, there's lots of great games that have

come out so far. And so it's a great, interesting space on the future of it. And you guys have done a lot of shows. How many shows have you guys done so far, just off the top of your head? Yeah, I mean, we started in 2010. This is 2023, so this will be our 14th year. And a total of about 25 events around the world, in addition to, again, hundreds of meetups that are taking place in, you know, smaller groups in different cities, whether it's in person or online. And then you guys, uh, for the USA, AWE USA, uh, 2023, you guys will be May 31st to June 2nd,

2023. Is that correct? That's right. Yes. We in, Clara, California, probably our biggest event yet or probably the biggest AR and VR event in the history of the world with we're expecting 300 exhibitors, which, you know, USA Today called it the CS of the future. Yeah. And gradually it's becoming more and more like that, you know, 300 exhibitors. And for what I hear kind of the number one feedback from attendees is that when they come to the show, it's like coming home because everyone there, you know, we're talking about five, 6,000 people, everyone is like-minded. They all are into AR and VR. They all know how hard it is. So they're, you know, it kind of bonds them together. And it's a really fantastic kind of opportunity to meet all these old and new friends and to do business. And that's really why everybody goes

there too. Like you said, you have kind of solution providers meeting enterprise end users from the biggest brands and do deals, have startups and investors. You have brands and creators and developers connecting, recruiters and job seekers. So it's really kind of bringing all these people together and helping us all connect, learn, and grow. There you go. And so people can sign up. You guys, I see on the website here, super early bird tickets for sale. You want to grab those up up get in the early bird because

the prices usually go up and hotel rates usually go up closer to these events one more week there you go get in now i see the join today uh before the early super early bird ticket sale ends um so let's talk about this uh uh prize that you guys doing. Tell us what's going on with that and your nonprofit. Yeah. So, you know, the since inception, we've always tried to also focus on the positive impact of this technology. So it's not just,

you know, let's build cool technology, but let's think about the social implications, the safety security. Let's, let's try to divert some of the talent and the funds towards social causes. And this year or last year,

we decided to take it to the next level. And we announced something that we call the XR Prize Challenge, Fight Climate Change, with the idea to harness the superpowers that AR and VR have to fight climate change with the idea to harness the superpowers that AR and VR have to fight climate change. I think we all agree that with the floods and storms and droughts we see all over the world, it's probably the biggest threat facing humanity in the next few decades. And, you know, what's really interesting is that, you know, in the literature and a lot of even sci-fi movies,

you rarely see AR and VR mentioned as a tool to fight climate change. And that pissed me off. So that's one of the reasons I decided to start this XR Prize. We announced it last year. The idea is to use those superpowers, you know, the ability to visualize, to educate with empathy, to optimize a lot of the existing green tech technologies. And, and we got, you know, hundreds

of submissions so far, kind of ideas, people that, you know, whether it's like one guy in a garage or a large company like Unity, kind of putting together some concepts of how XR can help fight climate change. And just a couple of weeks ago, we announced the 150 teams that moved to the next phase, which is the minimum viable product. So actually developing a demo or a product that can have an impact in the fight against climate change. And June 1st at AWE in Santa Clara, we will announce the winner that will go home with $100,000 cash. There you go.

So, you know, we put our money where our mouth is. And by the way, also the event will be carbon neutral. So, you know, we're trying to stay true to this whole mission. There you go. I'm looking at the page in your website, too, that talks about the XR Prize Challenge. $100,000 competition. Submissions are closed right now, it looks like, for this year. But you can see the showcases uh things here and i guess uh on may 1st like you mentioned finals be announced and

then june 1st uh the winners so this would be cool is there a tiered uh thing to it or is it just one person gets the prize or is there a tier so i mean we we first said, you know, there'll be one prize for the top winner. However, since then, we got a few big corporations decided to join this and will also contribute some cash. We're talking about Microsoft, Nvidia, Unity, and actually a dozen other tech companies that are contributing their software and hardware to participants in this competition. So there's a lot of benefits beyond just the cash prize. So, you know, as we get closer to the event, we'll announce more some of the

other prizes or kind of cash that teams could go home with. But, you know, the biggest win is already here now. For me, seeing the list of one hundred and 150 projects that are all kind of taking some great talent and tech and applying it to fighting climate change, for me, that's already a big win. And you guys have four categories, replacing wasteful material practices, which I think that replaces me, visualizing the causes and impacts of climate change, which is probably also me, causes and impacts of climate change, which is probably also me. Educating about solutions to climate change,

which is probably not me, although we talk about it on the show. We have a lot of great thoughts to talk about. Optimizing design and education of climate solutions. So awesome stuff. So there's different categories where people can get involved in. And of course, competition rules, guidelines,

people can check on the website. And, of course, if you missed this year's submission, you can join up for the future ones. I think this is great. Chris, the thing is that with the first category, replacing, when you think about it, almost anything we do in AR and VR replaces something that we would otherwise do in the real world. Yes. we do in AR and VR replaces something that we would otherwise do in the real world. Yeah. You know, you replace travel, you replace designing or physical stuff, you replace fashion

even and all these kind of things. So AR and VR are already saving a lot of carbon emissions as it is, but we want to take it to the next level. So, you know, how can you have like a significant impact with your AR or VR software towards that? So that's kind of the first category. But the visual, for me to visualize is probably one of the coolest things because that's really unique

to AR and VR. Think about, you know, you walk, I mean, I live in New York City, you walk in the city and all of a sudden you see the water level in 10 years from today when, you know, climate change really become a thing. And that kind of hurts you, you know, that you feel it so emotionally that you want to take some action against it. Right. It's not just an idea, just something that someone on TV is shouting about. It's something you can actually feel. And that's why I'm really kind of happy about this category

and to see some of the projects that will really allow us to visualize, you know, carbon emissions around us. You know, when I do, you know, light up this light or start a car or whatever, you can actually visualize how it affects our air quality and our pollution and things like that. And for me, that's a really unique aspect of what you can only do with AR. Yeah.

I mean, I think people being able to see the effects and the results, you know, as human beings, we're not good at risk management. We're not good at risk assessment. We're not good at really understanding, you know, people talk about the future. We're like, yeah, the future, that's a tomorrow. I'll deal with that then, you know, and, and so people really don't see it until

sometimes it's too late. It's kind of the human nature side of us. Man does not learn from his history. Uh, uh, and so, you know, uh, and I think being able to see it, you know, cause you, you see, you know, politicians from sides that don't support climate change, you know, and I think being able to see it, you know, because you see, you know, politicians from sides that don't support climate change, you know, throwing around all sorts of stuff. And you see people who support climate change throwing around all sorts of stuff. And I think some people are just kind of like, you know, I don't know. But I think, you know, me growing up, when we grew up in Utah, I grew up in California, then we moved to Utah as teens. When I grew up in Utah, the snow here grew up in California and then we moved to Utah as teens. Uh, when I grew up in Utah, the snow here was intense during, um, the, the winters. And I remember going through deep,

you know, we'd have deep, deep snow. Um, and now we don't really have much in it. It's very much. In fact, uh, the ski resorts suffer from climate change. Uh, you can really see the difference. I mean, you can see the difference in some of the recent drives, the lakes. I lived in Vegas for 20 plus years. You can see the difference in like need or water sources and just the effect that has everything and the storms seem harder and heavier, you know. And so being able to use these sort of techniques to future see, you know, what the results are going to be, I think kind of brings

the impact home to people like, oh, wow, this, this can really be bad in the future. We should do something now. You got it. That's exactly it. That's why they pay me the big bucks and I do the show. I don't know what that means. I bring the smart people on. I just kind of, I just kind of, I just kind of cue them up and roll with and pretend to be smart along with them. It rubs off sometimes and people believe it, but most people don't. They listen to the show. They're like, that Chris Voss is an idiot. I'm just kidding, people.

I am an idiot. Anyway, guys, so let's talk about a few things that are also hot right now in this space. Chat DPT. Everyone's talking about that. Everyone's trying to figure out, does that play into the AR, VR, XR world? I mean, the generative AI is definitely an important player. And in fact, you know,

everything that we're seeing with machine learning and AI advancement over the last, you know, five years has had a tremendous impact on augmented reality and virtual reality in the sense that it's, you know, when you try to visualize, you know, we've all seen

the Snapchat filters on your face. That's relatively easy. But when you try to visualize, we've all seen the Snapchat filters on your face. That's relatively easy. But when you try to kind of try on some new sneakers on your foot or a watch on your hand, it's been really a tough thing to do with software. But with AI, with machine learning, all of a sudden, it looks so realistic. It's just incredible. And that's all from the last few years. So AI has a really big impact on the advancements of AR so far.

But when you look into the future, I see, you know, AR and VR kind of together at XR, sort of the user interface for AI. AI, you know, obviously huge, will impact every aspect of life, but it's like a brain, right? But how do you actually manifest that? And I think a lot of that will happen through augmented reality. In fact, in the future, by 2030, I believe that these two things,

you know, AR and VR or XR and AI will become intertwined and almost it will be hard to distinguish between these two. So that's kind of the duality of these two things. But when it comes to chat GPT and DALI and all these other kind of image generators, I've been playing with it. It's cool. It makes tons of mistakes still. But it's just incredible to see how fast it's being adopted. I mean, we're reaching like numbers of hundreds of millions of people

in a matter of days. That's faster than TikTok, which is just mind-blowing. My good friend Robert Scobleoble he's is really uh a pro in this space and puts up papers and stuff with his company um and we were uh one of the first adopters of of uh google glass back in the day and i still miss it i really enjoyed it i really did i mean it's it seemed know, the battery feature was kind of low. It wasn't the greatest video. But when I go back and watch videos of my dogs and I was able to film them in first-person content

where I was able to pet them with both hands or throw the ball, you know, and still be able to record my interaction with them, I'll see those videos. I'm just like, oh, my God, I really missed that first person sort of experience. And I think one of the challenges with VR and AR and XR is trying to make these headsets so you don't feel like you're wearing 50 pounds of technology on your head and you're breaking your spine. You know, I get sweaty in them, which is an issue.

I really kind of, I kind of love that whole experience of the Google Glass where it was kind of mixed and it was very light still and very doing. Is that kind of where you're seeing more things head to? I know Apple might be coming out with something. That's the reason I brought up Scoble is, you know, he's talking that Apple is coming up with something soon. What are you seeing? Are you hearing those same sort of rumors of what Apple's doing? And they might really change the market if they come to market.

Yeah, you're touching on the most sensitive subject in AR and VR, which is how are we actually going to experience this technology? I mean, smartphones are good for now, you know, for Snapchat and Pokemon Go and these kind of things. But the ultimate goal is to really have it on your face in a way that looks like just regular sunglasses. And it's always on. That's the big thing, right? You want to be able to just walk around and AR will just make your life better. You'll work better and so on. The thing is that there's a trade-off. I mean, today, the tech is still very...

I mean, if you want to have high level of performance and good quality, it's going to be big and it's going to be heavy and the battery is going to be limited. So, and the thing is that, you know, there's Moore's law where a lot of the aspects of technology or, you know, computing advances or doubles every 18 months. And it doesn't happen with optics. And that's what we're really dealing here with.

Now, Google Glass was, I agree, it was awesome. And it was especially awesome that, you know, one of the largest tech companies really pushed this out there in a big way. Of course, you know, we all know about the backlash and, you know, Scoble has his own part in the shower. Well, when he did the shower scene and then he got yelled at by one of the co-CEOs of Google when he went to the show. But this shot, the infamous shower scene where he took the picture of him in the shower, and it went viral. And I thought it was awesome.

But I want to say that, you know, after the whole Glasshole battle and so on, people thought that Google Glass is dead. But in fact, it's actually alive and well in enterprises. Yeah. Hundreds of thousands of Google Glasses that are being used every day in enterprises, in warehouse picking, use cases,

or in field service management. So it's actually being used. That along with a bunch of other AR glasses that are being used in the enterprise. So that's one thing. But you also mentioned Apple. And that's the, you know, since 2015, many of us in the industry, you know, because Apple has done, you know, some acquisition in the space. They released, you know, the ARKit, which is kind of AR platform, and many other things that are contributing to AR. And, you know, Cook mentioned a few times that for him, augmented reality is really the next big thing.

So everybody has been anticipating those glasses from Apple since 2015. And every time it's like in two years. It's like it's a never ending prediction. And then we reached, you know, 2022. And it's like, at the end of this year, this is it. It's actually going to be released. Then, of course, it's delayed again to January. And then in January, it's delayed to April.

And the latest, it's delayed to WWDC in June. And by the way, it's not going to be ar glasses it's going to be really vr glasses but with uh kind of uh a lot of support for ar so you basically have what's known as um video pass-through so you can see everything around you but it's really through the vr display and uh you know we're all just waiting in anticipation for this. First of all, because, you know, it's Apple. They've timed the market well. So just the fact that they're releasing the product means that they believe the market is ready for that. Because that's kind of the big question.

When is the market going to be ready to go mainstream with AR and VR? So, I mean, if in fact it goes out this this year it's going to be a big sign but on the other hand it's still going to be relatively big expensive limited battery time so you know it's not going to be this ultimate thing that sometimes we're expecting from apple that will just change everything overnight um but you know we're all still very hopeful it will come on this year will be a big game changer do you think it will be something kind of like a google glass hybrid or it will be like a whole you know setup where you got to have the thing and computers to run it and stuff so i mean if

you've seen some of the more advanced vr headsets out there you know meta pro or um you know, from the Meta Pro or, you know, kind of the more Vario or some of the other kind of more advanced VR glasses. It's probably going to be like that. Stylish because, you know, it's going to be Apple's product. And supposedly it will be the high end, but it's still going to be,'re talking about 1500 to $2,000 price range. That sounds like Apple will have a lot of cameras and sensors on it. So the experience will be really good. But again, it's not going to be the shrunk down version that we're all expecting. And in fact, that I

mean, according to some of the rumors, people said that AR glasses are actually also in the plan to come out in a couple of years. But now this seems to be delayed even further. So that's kind of a bum for, you know, for all of us in the industry. So I think, you know, it's going to be probably one of the better vr headsets out there but not something that anyone you know buys just to play games like you with uh the playstation vr two that just came out or or even the meta quest which is much more affordable yeah you know what i like i like i like as a dog parent i would like uh ar vr whatever it would be because i'm not clearly good at it but i would like i would like a thing because i i i miss having my puppies my dogs and so it would

be cool if i could put on like a vr headset and then i could see my dogs with the mixed reality and they would be puppies again like they were and i could just kind of bathe in that for a little while i miss them as puppies i constantly bang my big my young puppy i'm like quit growing quit growing up stay a puppy um maybe people have teenagers you know and they're dealing with the teenagers dumb as parents they they can have those glasses and put them on and just remember how cute they were as babies and how they aren't cute now i'm just kidding um, you know, I was one of those glass holes. I dealt with that fallout. And it was kind of an interesting time for us to deal with the issue of privacy.

And I think it got addressed. And I think that's what Google Plus really achieved with those Google assets. Because it was the same time Mark Zuckerberg came out and said, privacy's dead, suckers. We sold you guys a long time ago. You guys are just waking up to the fact that you were the meat on the table. I had people come up to me and be angry at me

because I would be wearing Google Glass. They'd be like, you need to take that off. That's recording 24-7 Google. I don't want Google knowing what I'm doing. Meanwhile, they have mobile phones. I had people that were angry. I had people that thought they'd been videotaped. You know, you'd try to explain to them logically that look at the size of this unit.

The battery is not huge. It doesn't, it can only record video. I think two hours at the lowest quality video you could record maybe. Or I don't even think it was that long. It was really short. Maybe it was like 10 minutes or 20 minutes. I don't remember. But it was really short. I think two hours was like the run time. I think it was that long. It was really short. Maybe it was like 10 minutes or 20 minutes. I don't remember. But it was really short.

I think two hours was like the run time. I think that was it. You could run it for two hours and then you have to charge it. And then I think the video was like 10 minutes or 20 minutes. I think it was 10. And if you use that, if you use that pretty hard with a lot of notifications and stuff, you'd have problems. But yeah. And then we kind of crossed that threshold of dealing with privacy, and everyone just went, oh, fuck it.

I don't care. Give it all away. Let me do my face. Give that to the Russians. Okay, great. So it's kind of interesting. But when Apple jumps into anything, they tend to almost create the market. I mean, they're not the pioneers in it.

They don't really create it. But they make the market really explode and, they're not the pioneers in it. They don't really create it. But they make the market really explode and make it huge, I think. Yeah, I mean, you're right. Privacy was a big concern back in the Google glass days, and it's even bigger now. Because, you know, if we felt like we are the product with social media, when it comes to AR and VR,

often you have billions of cameras that constantly look and record, not just people, but everything around you, you know, at your home or wherever you go. And that could be a huge privacy concern. And in addition, you know, there's safety issues, especially in VR, where people go there and kind of like the chat rooms of the 90s. Now we have VR chat rooms where people

just do bad things. And, you know, security and all these concerns that are and ethics around around AR and VR. So I think the good news is that you see a lot of industry pioneers and leaders that are taking a very close look at these things. You have someone like Avi Barzev, which is 30 years a pioneer in AR and VR at some of the biggest companies you can think of. And he decided to now focus his entire time on what he called the XR Guild, which is really trying to tackle all these privacy concerns and ethical concerns and harnessing a lot of the smart people out there.

So is it going to solve everything? No, but at least, you know, we're thinking about it a bit in advance and hopefully we'll kind of tackle some of these issues. And like I said, Apple has been big on privacy. So hopefully that will also be a big part of their release and their influence on the market. There you go. What do you think about what Metaverse is doing?

Everyone kind of thought that when Facebook bought Oculus that they were going to basically do the Apple thing where they would normalize everything and make it popular. And it seems like the Metaverse sort of whole concept has been kind of a flop a little bit. I mean, the investors haven't been too happy with it. If you've seen Facebook's stock price just a couple days days ago for those who are watching this years from now uh you know facebook just followed in twitter's footsteps both money losing companies on the stock market right now they're

not money losing uh the stock inclined i i think twitter's money losing i think we can say that um but basically uh basically you know they've come up with subscription models where now you can pay for play, buy your verified check status, and have a payment model that you now have on Facebook or Twitter now. What do you think about all that, Metaverse? It's kind of a lot to unpack there. So, Chris, I thought we agreed not to talk about the M word during this interview. I'll check my writer and contract. I'm just kidding. But of course, you know, we call it the M word because it's kind of a double-edged sword.

You know, on the one hand, it brought awareness to what we've been doing for, you know, over a decade in AR and VR to a degree that we've never seen before. But on the other hand, it also made it feel like it's very futuristic and that we're really not ready for that. And that's been a problem because there's so much already happening with AR and VR today. You know, it's a $30 billion industry today. Wow. So it's not like, you know, something that will happen in the future. And, you know, to Mark Zuckerberg's credit, he is the one that invested the most in this field than anyone else, any other company or any other investor. And even, you know, rebranded this company, which I think is maybe too far off a bet on this

but you know there's probably other reasons like you know getting away from Facebook and all the things that we know we're not even talking about anymore from 2017 and 18 right we're now talking about the metaverse so in a sense you know his rebranding succeeded in that sense but I think that it created this crazy anticipation that one of the biggest companies in the world completely focuses now on the metaverse that, where is it?

What's going on with it? And the thing is that it's hard. AR and VR are hard. Not as easy as social media or even getting the level of adoption that we see with chat GPT. It takes decades. And like I said before, it's a huge paradigm shift for how we interact with computers. And it's new hardware.

It's new software. It's a whole new language of interaction. So that's going to take time. It's not going to be overnight. And I think a lot of the shareholders and probably other kind of outsiders that are looking at the share price are kind of disappointed that it's not having an immediate impact. That's okay. I mean, we know in the industry that this is inevitable. In a few years, it will become mainstream. And, you know, we have estimations from some of the biggest banks

that it will reach $1 trillion market share by 2030. Or some people say, you know, Citibank, I think said 8 trillion and JP Morgan upped it with $15 trillion, right? So it's going to be huge and it's going to have impact on everything that we do in our life, in our work. So we know we're going to get there. It's just going to be huge and it's going to have impact on everything that we do in our life and our work. So we know we're going to get there.

It's just going to be a bit of a bumpy road. There you go. I'll have to stop investing in the AR glasses I was invested in before augmented reality where I would just look through the glass of the vodka bottle. Augmenting that reality. Don't do that, folks. Stop drinking. augmenting that reality don't do that folks stop drinking uh anyway uh what what uh any anything you want to tease out in the future what you see kind of off in the distance of arvr and where we're headed yeah you know i a couple years ago um i did an exercise of kind of jumping

towards the year of 2030 i'm trying to imagine, so after we go over all these bumps in the road, how will the world look like when we are all using AR and VR and it's ubiquitous? And maybe it's a bit utopian because, you know, technology doesn't always deliver only on the good side, also on the bad side. But when you look at across the world, you know, technology doesn't always deliver only on the good side, also on the bad side. But when you look at across the world, you know, from health care to fighting mental, you know, mental issues and, you know, improving education and improving kind of just how we work and kind of giving us a fighting chance with the machines, you know, with AI that is taking over all our jobs.

AR and VR are kind of a way to give us some superpowers to be able to compete head-to-head with AR, or in other words, really to leverage it as opposed to fight with it. And, you know, when you look across the world almost every aspect can become better for humanity if we adopt it as as i predict we will there you go there you go you know that's the big i think i think that's a big dilemma we always have to really start addressing more and more with new technologies.

I'm seeing a lot of that discussion going on with ChatGPT. I'm a sort of out-of-the-box person where I try and step outside and look at every aspect of new technology now. I've kind of learned from social medias, Pandora's box. And I like what you're doing where you're supporting trying to, you know, use the technology for good and how it can be good. And hopefully there's a lot of people looking at how it can be used for evil in ways we can block or prevent that. Because, you know, I mean, I'm having these discussions with ChatTPT. joked the other day they go uh maybe we maybe it's time to open the gallery of of uh of of what uh human origin writing used to be and put in that in museums because it's about to disappear and we'll be out to come extinct you know it is there's there's good in every technology but i

think there's always that evil downside and so i think it's important that we uh you know look at these new technologies trying to figure out ways to do it. And I'm glad you guys showcased this stuff because I know a lot of startups that go to your show, they really need that platform to get exposure. Absolutely. And maybe for those in the audience who want to learn more about this, of course, you're all invited to our next AWE event in California, end of May.

Reach out to me and be happy to either, you know, offer a discounted or maybe even a free pass. If you're an enterprise end user, you could get a free pass. So just reach out to me at, you know, ori at awexr.com. And we're happy to have you join this community and learn more and help be part of it. There you go.

What is the Apply for Playground? What is that? I see that on the website real quick here. So the Playground, you know, we always had this expo hall where you have exhibitors showcasing their products and kind of doing business. But we wanted to add a part where it's not about business. It's really about experiencing things that you cannot experience at your home, unique AR or VR experiences. And that's what we call the playground.

It's, you know, we have all sorts of things on, you know, for playing games, but also related to healthcare or related to on you know for playing games but also related to health care or related to you know how to deal with grief and all sorts of things that are not uh necessarily for the uh economic purpose of it but really just kind of to experience this technology in a in a way that you cannot do otherwise so that's the playground. Well, this will be exciting to see you guys coming up this year. And we've got the.com out there. Give us the.com one more time just to get that plug in as we round out. The website is awexr.com.

There you go. Check it out, guys. Thank you very much, Rory, for being on the show. We really appreciate it. It's been fantastic, Chris. Thanks for having me. There you go. And thanks to my audience for tuning in.

Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, LinkedIn. See us over there, youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris. Thanks for having me. There you go. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Crispus, LinkedIn. See us over there, youtube.com, Fortress Crispus. You can see all the cool XR and VR AR glasses that Ari has on his shelf there. It's quite the collection. I think the last time I was at your show, there was a room that you

guys had that had all of the iterations of the attempts. The museum glasses from the last 30 attempts. Museum, yeah. Museum classes from the last 30 years. Yeah, that's something. It was wild.

I think I have a video of it somewhere. Anyway, thanks for tuning into my audience. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. There you go.